“[The] Garden is Beautiful”
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” –Douglas Adams
When I was a kid, I felt like the best defense of theism lay in its ability to explain the beauty of the world. The simplest explanation for beauty I saw around me seemed to be an artist or maker.
The reason why a sunset or a flower was particularly beautiful was not because of my brain and its idiosyncratic perception of the world; rather beauty was an objective part of the created order. When I sang “For the Beauty of the Earth” or “Fairest Lord Jesus,” I really shared the convictions of the authors that the world was beautiful.
It turns out that not everyone else shares that notion. Indeed, atheists attack the concept on many levels.
The Beauty of the Earth?
One approach is to question how the world could be beautiful when it is a hostile death trap for people and animals alike: “More than 99 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth are extinct.”
To the skeptic, nothing about all the species that no longer exist speaks to beauty: the calamities that killed off so many kinds of life are at best neutral, at worst, the sort of hostility that only a malevolent, all-powerful being could allow.
Another response to beauty is to say it is evolutionarily conditioned: I find my wife attractive, because my reproductive instinct tells me to. I might call it “love,” and it might motivate me to selfless acts on her behalf and on behalf of our children, but the instinct to assure the continuance of the species underpins my feelings of seeing my children as “cute” and my wife as “beautiful,” in this naturalistic retelling.
If you’ve ever seen another person’s child, for example, and noticed that babies are really sometimes oddly proportioned, possibly wet with urine, smelly with poop, and perhaps spitting up–you might get a sense of the disparity between the survival advantage of viewing the upcoming generation as so cute and viewing them as they sometimes really are. I struggled to even write that sentence because it is the opposite of my feelings toward babies to view them as gross. Yet, is it biological instinct that compels my notion of “cute?”
Similarly, the naturalistic reason a sunset looks beautiful is precisely because our eyes peak perception of the electromagnetic spectrum is exactly the range where our sun’s electromagnetic spectrum energy output peaks. On a naturalistic account of things, an eye that can see in this range has a survival advantage–perhaps–over one that does not, and might thrive in an environment like that of our planet. A good adaptation to the environment is a hallmark of evolutionary theory.
For the atheist, the simplest explanation for our experience of beauty, for the appeal of the world around us, and so on, is that it may confer a survival advantage.
If I view the world as beautiful, I am more content; if I view my wife as beautiful, I am more likely to bring her personal fulfillment, and we are more likely to endure the challenges of raising the next generation with care, conferring on our children the survival advantages of attentive parenting.
Must there be fairies at the bottom of the garden? No. But, might there nonetheless be?
Why the Garden is Beautiful
Adams’ metaphor for the world is a curious one: a garden.
After all, the most famous garden is the one God created for people to inhabit: Eden. And a garden seems to imply a gardener. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a garden without a gardener; but, that is precisely what the skeptic does. Perhaps for Adams, people are the gardeners, if we stretch the metaphor a bit further. It must be acknowledged: we are the ones perceiving the world as beautiful.
For a skeptic, beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. As Schopenhauer wrote: “One simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.”
One possibility is that the world is only truly pleasurable or beautiful to some at the expense of others: how many people work menial jobs so I can enjoy my running sneakers, my fast food, the manicured parks and long jogging paths of my neighborhood, as well as the plowed sidewalks and streets?
Or, more optimistically, perhaps it is simply that rare confluence of all these biological and natural phenomena that makes the world simply appear as a beautiful garden, well-suited to our needs–without necessarily causing harm to others.
Either way, such thinkers are trying to leave open the door to beauty (and the ugliness of the world as well), without resorting to God to explain the beauty. And, I might add, without having to contemplate how an all-powerful, all-loving God could allow mass suffering and ugliness to mar creation.
Spirituality Without God
Take the words of astrophysicist and science popularizer Neil DeGrasse Tyson, summarizing a sort of naturalistic spirituality as an example of what Adam’s sees in the universe:
“If you think of feelings you have when you are awed by something – for example, knowing that elements in your body trace to exploded stars – I call that a spiritual reaction, speaking of awe and majesty, where words fail you.”
Wonder for the skeptics or atheists is what you feel based on the scientific reality of the world around you: your connection (in the naturalistic view) to the universe by being “star stuff” and your evolutionary kinship with all other life across eons of time.
“The Fool Says in his Heart”
I was walking in the botanical garden with my mother. Every tree and flower was beautiful; overcome by the splendor of this cultivated landscape, my mom declared: “How can anyone say there is no God? The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God.'”
And that’s the main ideological difference, isn’t it?
We take Romans 1:20 as our victory lap: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
Though creation might be in a corrupted state, the evidence of the power, goodness, majesty, creativity, etc. of God is still there in every beautiful or sublime thing.
But, how do we help others see what we see? How do we speak to those whose experience hasn’t been as brilliant as our own?
I imagine trying to describe the sights from an airplane to someone. If they’d never been, the idea that I could gaze down on mountains, valleys, hills, and cities as insignificant before me could sound like foolishness to a person on the ground. My change of vantage point is every bit as real as anything they see from below, yet I can’t convince everyone.
In humility, I can speak to my experience and listen to theirs. Skeptics aren’t completely closed off to our sense of wonder; perhaps we need to be more acknowledging of theirs, and of the barriers to seeing things how we do.
God as Transcendent
Biology, chemistry, and physics offer up many compelling explanations for why the world is the way it is. We might not be comfortable with all of them as Christians, but I think we let our discomfort blind us to the fact that God is a wholly other kind of explanation.
Perhaps the hormonal changes, the racing heartbeat, the firing of certain neurons, when I look at my wife and feel what I’d call love are sufficient to explain my emotional state. But, would we in turn deny my emergent state of consciousness that decides to lean in for a hug or kiss, or decides to make her a cake as a surprise?
When I interposed my body between my children and (light) bodily harm: an haphazardly thrown ball that would hit them–I’m sure it was instinctual, but it’s also because I love them, I would argue.
The universe might have any number of observable natural phenomena to sufficiently explain its operations and beauty. Yet, like a computer’s programming being reducible to code, possibly even zeroes and ones in long sequences (for all I know about coding), it would be missing something to assume all that’s going on is little binary operations ticking away. A person could look at my screen and see if I was typing an essay, playing a video game, or streaming music–something a string of numbers could never tell.
God is transcendent to the universe and nature, even though they came from God (according to Christianity). Is it enough that the garden is beautiful? Sure. You can definitely enjoy it without resorting to the supernatural to defend your enjoyment.
Must God also be there? No. But, that doesn’t require that he isn’t. In fact, some of the attributes of the universe could coincide with the existence of a God: it’s apparent orderliness and predictability, elegance, scale, and so on.
Philosophical Zombies and the Disenchanted World
We are typically not skeptical about certain types of apparent complexity. I do not know anyone, by way of example, who seriously questions whether other people are capable of intentional behavior.
Think about it: Do you assume that everyone around you is a thinking, emoting human? Someone with a will? What reason do you have to do so–is it not the appearance of possessing these characteristics?
Everyone else around us could be unthinking zombies that do a good job imitating rational beings, despite being devoid of any such faculties. This kind of nightmare scenario has fueled stories like Blade Runner where artificial intelligence has escaped and infiltrated society. Or The Matrix where people are really part of the system, and will fight to protect it.
But, in reality, no one would fault you for concluding that it was possible that a walking, talking, emoting person could be what they seem.
Hopefully, along similar lines, the skeptic could–even if disinclined to think so themselves–forgive us for looking at the world and conceiving it as evidence of something more than the sum of its parts.
We can disenchant the world, and say it only gives off a sense of order to our pattern-seeking primate brain. We can furthermore argue that our consciousness itself is prone to failure: it can be tricked, conned, or otherwise plain wrong about the world around it. And yet, our consciousness is the first and arguably main tool we have to take stock of the world, and has refined our ability to do so by generating more tools: so we are in a bit of a bind.
The same brain that tells us there is an apparent orderliness in the world is the brain that tells us to be skeptical. The brain also tells us that both of those responses might be conditioned by biochemical imperatives that are as inscrutable as they are irresistible.
Beyond Mind Games
I hope this post challenges us to think out of our comfort zone.
We can be too ready to dismiss other viewpoints instead of discussing them. Are we able to be the beauty in the world for those who don’t believe it exists? Are we willing to be the presence of God for those who find it lacking?
Paul says: “For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16)
The response of “those who are perishing” may not be seeing the world as we do; it may be repulsion. But, we put ourselves out there anyway. My kid can respond with hostility when I try to love her: “Why did you give me a valentine? Valentines are only for my friends! I didn’t earn a valentine.” But, I give her things anyway; even if my card I got her doesn’t get the response I hoped, I learned where she is coming from and I can keep trying to speak to that attitude and change it.
Similarly, a dialogue with skeptics and atheists is not easy, and may result in difficult interactions, but we are called to do it anyway, as a pleasing aroma to God–who sees the beauty in living and loving as Christ did.
Dialogues with skeptics and atheists are not easy, and may result in difficult interactions, but we are called to do it anyway, as a pleasing aroma to God–who sees the beauty in living and loving as Christ did. Click To Tweet
