The Argument from Aesthetic Experience

This is the seventeenth in a series of posts responding to a list of 20 arguments for the existence of god from this article. To be fair, the article does state that these arguments don’t make a case except when taken all together, using the metaphor of a rope, but I am analyzing them individually so I have responses when I encounter the argument later in other sources.

There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Therefore there must be a God.

You either see this one or you don’t.

Seriously, that’s all it says. Check the link. My response is, of course:

There is the music of Kanye West and Justin Bieber.
Therefore there must not be a god.

You either see this one or you don’t.

More seriously, the most charitable interpretation of this argument is that it is saying that great beauty must come from a super-human (and therefore supernatural) source, probably because more cannot come from less. As I have previously, I could point to evolution as a huge example of more coming from less, but instead, I’m going to point to fractals.

The Mandelbrot set generates gorgeously complex pictures from a simple equation: z_{n+1}=z_n^2+c

No god required.


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