The next sections of the ICR attribute causality of the things we appreciate to a god. The first deals with “God Caused Beauty“. The entire argument states that beauty is a ration and emotional reaction to the world around us and that we hunger for beauty:
That such a hunger exists only in the human being is a wonder in itself! The flower is not impressed with its own majesty; it merely exists with no conscious awareness. The chimpanzee does not gaze longingly on the enigma of the Mona Lisa, nor do the stars muse on the heavens they themselves grace.
First of all, we do not know for certain whether other animals see and appreciate the world in similar ways as humans. They certainly are not at a cognitive level where describing, labeling and recreating beauty is within their power, but that is not evidence for the lack of appreciation. Secondly, through evolution, humans are conditioned to seek what we describe as beauty in nature. It is a survival mechanism when hunting for colorful fruit or lush streams to drink from. We see “beauty” in the opposite sex as part of an attraction mechanism that is involved with natural selection. “Beauty” is a human observation given to visible things around us that we take pleasure in. If the human race evolved to what it has become today but on the planet Mars, we would think red skies and barren desert landscapes were beautiful. Things are what they are regardless of the human qualitative descriptor.
In fact, all humanity eschews destruction and random chaos as “ugly” and attempts to mask death with various levels of cosmetic disguises, and this speaks to the realization that some sights and sounds are not beautiful, and thus there must exist a standard of perfect beauty.
This deduction does not follow. The human perspective on human actions as positive or negative does not require that there be a standard of perfect beauty. The author here is using human attributes as proof for a supernatural perfect being while asserting that humanity is itself imperfect. Perfection does not equal existance.
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