¶1[music] Hi guys, today I want to continue responding to Josh Mid's case for the existence of God. And the next topic is the argument for beauty. So basically Joe's argument is that the natural world is absolutely full of beauty and that this was highly unexpected under the hypothesis of naturalism. So, let's take a look. >> The world is utterly saturated with beauty.
¶2Almost anywhere you look, there's beauty, right? Okay. So, like, what's going on here? Like, does doesn't it seem really sus that the world is just shot through with beauty? Like, come on.
¶3Like, the world obviously didn't have to be this way. Like, there are absurdly many conceivable ways natural world could have contained little to no beauty. >> Okay, so why is beauty unlikely under naturalism? Exactly. So apparently the argument is that Joe can imagine like an infinitely many possible ways in which the world could be ugly or not so beautiful.
¶4But if that's the argument, I could say, well, I can imagine an infinitely different possible ways in which a world could be beautiful, right? I mean, it doesn't take much imagination to do that. I mean, uh, look, the world imagine there were like more interesting objects like in the sky, you know, like we wrote these geometric figures and stuff like that. Or imagine that the stars that some of the stars have different colors, you know. Or imagine the sky that change color like depending of the time of the day or or their of the region of the world, right?
¶5Like something more interesting or imagine that the rocks were like made of gems, you know, like there I mean again the point is you can imagine an infinitely possible amount of such words. So it's not enough to say okay there are infinitely many possible words that are ugly right because I can say the same thing you have to make an argument for why exactly are words that are ugly more likely a priority than words that are beautiful and to be fair Joe does have an argument for that his argument is that simpler words are like more likely to be are less less likely to be beautiful and that he says that these are more probable intrinsically. So yeah, let's take a look at his argument. >> Indeed, since the intricacy and complexity of the world is part of what makes it so beautiful, many of those alternative beauty deprived worlds will plausibly be much simpler and so more intrinsically probable than beauty filled worlds like ours. Okay.
¶6So, uh I actually do agree that simpler simpler words are more likely to be less beautiful. And let's let's take a look at visually at some interesting images that show why. So just look at this image. Which is the more beautiful one? I think everyone is going to say that the right one is the most beautiful one.
¶7Same with this image. Same with this image, you know, same with this other image and and so on. And you can you can kind of see a pattern here. And it seems to me that complexity or almost in fact I will say almost any complexity is enough to make something like visually interesting or or beautiful. Now Joe wants to say but again the world could have been simple right but hold on a second yo I think there is a good case to be made that life has to be complex and in fact when you're running the finetuning argument one of the core ideas behind it is that a certain complexity of structures is needed for life to even exist right you you are the guys who say that electrons and protons cannot possibly be alive right so even you want to say that life requires highest complexity.
¶8Okay. Then given that there is life, right? Then it's already highly likely that the world is going to have some amount of complexity, right? So you cannot say, oh, but the world could have been simple. And if you switch the argument and say, well, yeah, but the world could have been the case that the world is simple and had no life.
¶9Well, at that point, you you're basically running a a fine tuning argument, right? And this becomes a different argument. But it's no longer the argument from beauty. So first point once there is life the word is bound to have some complexity and this may lead to beauty. Another point and James Fo made the same point in my last video responding to psychophysics physical harmony is you may say okay this state of affairs is simple so it's more likely a priority to get instantiate to obtain for some reason right but hold on what if the amount of complex words are much much higher it's much much higher higher than the amount of simple words in such a way that they take up more of the probability space.
¶10If that's the case, then it will actually be more likely to to get a complex word, right? And that that also will defeat his point about, you know, a word a simple ugly word being more likely. And I do agree again I do agree that a simple word will be cl will probably kind of uglier like imagine if there are no colors no complex shapes I think that will be uglier right so that's one thing what's another point one could make against this h I could say that there is a very good case to be made that beauty is entirely subjective or at least very highly subjective And if that's the case, whether maybe the life forms that evolve in this ugly world will find it beautiful, right? For some reason, right, they're going to evolve like that because beauty is just a subjective thing maybe. Who knows?
¶11I don't I don't know. Are you are we are really able to to rule that out a priority? I think no. And and so what are some good reasons to think that beauty is subjective? And for me, I mean, it's just kind of intuitively obvious that this is the case.
¶12And I will point to something like let me ask you this question. Who is the most beautiful woman in the world? Now answer that for yourself. I I'm sure that most people in the audience are going to have widely different answers to this question, right? There's not going to be like one obviously single woman.
¶13For me personally, the most beautiful woman in the world is Deborah and Wool. You know, when I see her in Dar, I got like it's like a I have a little crush on her, but she's never in like she's usually not like in the list of most beautiful women in the the world polls. And in fact, speaking about those polls, let's take a look at this one for example. This is a a contest or a poll on who is the most beautiful woman in the world. And as you can see, it really drives the point across that beauty subjective because so many people there are so many different opinions.
¶14Nobody has a a clear majority or even a strong majority. There the answers are very divided, right? And there are some in there are some in fact there are some choices there that I I just like I cannot understand that right like beyond really okay but whatever that's not the point the point is that beauty is a very subjective thing right and this kind of ruins what Joe wants to say because he wants to say like the world is objectively Beautiful. Okay. What's another argument that Joe Joe makes?
¶15There's a second part of the argument or an additional argument that has to do with humans having a aesthetic experience. Let's take a look. >> It's also quite striking that we have aesthetic experience. In other words, that we can actually appreciate and enjoy beauty. Even if there are evolutionary explanations of our aesthetic sense, the evolutionary process wasn't at all guaranteed to produce beings with an aesthetic sense, let alone an aesthetic sense directed towards the vast and diverse array of beautiful concrete and abstract structures in the world.
¶16Creatures without an aesthetic sense or with a pathetically emaciated aesthetic sense compared to ours easily could have evolved instead. So it's still unsurprising under naturalism that evolution happened to take a course that conferred upon us aesthetic experience. Okay. So the idea is that evolution is not likely to produce like this like conscious being with this feature of you know being able to visually look at something and find it beautiful. Now Jude doesn't give many arguments for that but let's still man his argument.
¶17What some people say is that this is just not necessary for survival. Like it's not a necessary thing for survival that you look at something and you visually get like the experience like the sense of finding it beautiful like it's not something you need to survive right so it was like it's not like guaranteed to to come about from evolution right I mean yeah okay so first of all I could just grant you that I could say yeah okay there's no survival I can I think I can dispute it but Let's grant that there is no survival advantage to to beauty or having a a sense of aesthetics. I could say that it that sense of aesthetics or beauty happens to be a a byproduct of having a complex brain like humor humor or enjoying fiction or stuff like that. I could agree to that. But here's the thing.
¶18Imagine humans had not had this sense of aesthetics, the sense of beauty. Well, but maybe instead we will have something else, right? And then Joe will be pointing to that other thing and he will be saying, "Oh, you know that was unlikely to happen on the revolution, right? So whatever ended up being the case, Joe will be running the same argument. So the point is that if there are some things that can be seen as byproducts or subproducts of having a complex brain then there is no objective sense where you can point to one and say wait this one was unlikely right again we will just have yeah may we if we didn't find find things beautiful it will be something else right so that doesn't do anything and on top of that on top of that I think there is a I think there are some a good case can be made for to explain why evolution produce conscious being that can appreciate that can have a sense of beauty.
¶19I think it's not hard to tell at least a plausible story about why this could be the case. For example, beauty may come from pattern recognition systems, some rewards systems, sexual selection phenomena, uh you know, stuff uh preferences for certain environ environments, stuff like that. Uh and I think here there are some things one can say, there are some strong correlations one can point to to make this argument even stronger like If some things are beneficial to us in a biological way, they're like more likely to be perceived as beautiful. And this is expected if evolution if this sense of aesthetics is was a part of the evolutionary story. For example, fertile land, healthy food, a fertile partner.
¶20You know, think about what kinds of things you find beauty of nature is like green water, you know, flowers with trees and fruit, right? Okay, these are these were likely to be like beneficial for primitive humans in a way that barren rocks or you know a barren desert just just will will be le they will be will have been less beautiful maybe. So that makes sense. In fact, the part of repolution in fact makes a lot of sense. If you are a man, think about what is the one of the most potentally the most beautiful thing in the world.
¶21I think the answer is going to be the face of a woman, right? I I don't think this is controversial. And in fact, one could take that even further. What is one of the most commonly painted motives or things among art in history? It's actually a naked woman.
¶22Uh many many artists in the middle ages and so on, they they painted women like this and it was considered one of the most beautiful things to paint. Right? So here's going to uh I'm going to show show you this may be a little risky on YouTube but this I think this is allowed in the context of education or philosophical discussions. So I'm going to show you for illustration a picture of a naked woman. Here it comes.
¶23You really think I was going to show you that? Come on man. I wonder how many Catholics clicked away because they think they will go to hell if they they saw that. Okay. Anyway, let's move on to the to the next topic.
¶24Uh Joe says some other things that I want to comment on. At some point he mentions the beauty of mathematical proofs, right? And the example is there is a very elegant demonstration of why there must be an infinite number of primes. So the argument what Joe is implying here is that this is beautiful because God made it the case that it was like this. But Joe, if you think about it for a second, it's almost obvious that God did not made math the way it is, right?
¶25Math is like this mathematical tool. These are necessarily tool and God couldn't have possibly done anything to make this differently, right? This are nothing to do with the God having designed numbers in this way or something like that. It's just I mean for to me at least I know some people disagree with this but to me at least it's absurd to say yeah God made it the case like on purpose or made it like this right of course not the mathematicals have to be what they are okay and last he yeah he quotes a a part by Paul Darer where he's talking about beauty Theism is supported by the fact that the universe contains an abundance of beauty. The fact that the parts of the universe constructed by humans are not for the most part beautiful shows that there's nothing about physical objects that makes them inevitably beautiful.
¶26Thus, a beautiful universe, especially one containing beings that can appreciate that beauty, is clearly more likely on theism than on naturalism. And so is evidence favoring theism over naturalism. >> I think this is very debatable. I mean, you may Yeah, you may think at the beginning, yeah, yeah, nature is more beautiful, but look at this city at night. I mean, you really can we really say, "Oh, no, that's not beautiful." I think it's obviously not.
¶27And there are way nicer places like Las Vegas or something like that. There are there are very beautiful cities. And there is something else. Look, if we look at a way a city was in the middle ages or some buildings of the Middle Ages, we tend to find them beautiful. We or we look at some ancient Roman ruins, right?
¶28Even if just if it's just like a piece of a wall, we look at them and we we we say like, "Oh, that that's beautiful." Yeah. But that's what humans that was normal human construction back then, right? For those people, it was like mundane and and trivial to look at a building like that. Just like for us, if we look at a basic warehouse today, a normal gray building, and we say, "Well, that's not beautiful." Right? But maybe just the fact that we are used to that and we and we will look at something that we are not used to.
¶29We find it interesting and beautiful. So maybe again this is go go goes back to what I was saying that beauty has to do with some parts in the brain to do with pattern recognition with identifying new patterns with you know being interested in in like in the world having curiosity which is beneficial for for an intelligent species stuff like that I don't know so I don't think it's like massively surprising that beauty exists right I don't think one can say, "Oh, beauty was super unlikely under naturalism." Right? So, anyway, that that's all I wanted to to say for today. So, anyway guys, thank you very much for watching the video. Please give it a like.
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