Yes, I know, the videos below aren't colorful reef fish, but I'm drinking my morning coffee, about to pack and leave Grand Cayman, working on my laptop, so bear with me.
Diving yesterday, I had an epiphany. What if the real reason reef fish and other things in life are beautiful is simple joy? What if rainbows, reef fish, hummingbirds and flowers are gifts from God intended to bring pleasure? Their beauty is gratuitous, an unnecessary gift to us, given out of pure love.
I feel like secular evolutionary biologists take all the joy out of what we see by reducing everything to competitive advantage. What if that's only partially true and the beauty is not, in fact, necessary at all? I would bet that ChatGPT and I could generate a world model where there is very little beauty, but still has a highly-efficient ecosystem.
It's like there's a conversation going on like this.
God: Dude! Check out this stingray! I made it super graceful and elegant! Isn't it cool?
Evolutionary biologist: The stingray has evolved to be like this so it could KILL and EAT and MATE and DIE!
KILL EAT MATE DIE!
KILL EAT MATE DIE!God: (face-palms) Sigh.
I think that from now on, I'll see beauty in nature and say, "Thanks, Hombre Grande!"
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| God, listening to a secular, evolutionary biologist. |
"I feel like secular evolutionary biologists take all the joy out of what we see by reducing everything to competitive advantage. What if that's only partially true and the beauty is not, in fact, necessary at all?"
ReplyDeleteThe thing about this statement, is that I think it is missing the whole point of evolutionary change. Species don't evolve by picking the one approach to life that is most efficient. They evolve by trying every approach to life, including a lot of wild and unexpected ones, and then all the ones that survive long enough to reproduce are the ones that continue. Most of these don't look like much, some of them are things we regard as beautiful, and others we regard as hideous, but they all work well enough. Evolution isn't just about fine-tuning and efficiency, except maybe accidentally. It's mostly about filling in all the possible options.
And thats how we end up with, not two or three species of "optimized" beetles, but instead around half a million species of beetles that all do different things for different reasons, and with different levels of effectiveness. And out of this vast array of possibilities, we get some that are both spectacular, and able to survive in the real world. Something that we wouldn't expect from an engineer making purpose-built organisms.
"God, listening to a secular, evolutionary biologist."
ReplyDeleteThe "evolutionary psychologists" are even more irrational and self-contradictory.