Biologist Ann Gauger writes about this at ENST. Here are a couple of salient excerpts:
If the world is evolved by a process of random mutation and natural selection, by a universe that does not care, then why is there beauty? Why is it so beautiful? Beauty is always a surprise, a delight. Beauty does not come from randomness.Indeed, the beauty of the world is far more abundant than what any naturalistic account seems able to explain. It's gratuitously excessive. From the gorgeous architecture of microscopically small diatoms to the glorious splendor of the night sky, beauty pervades every nook and cranny of our world.
It is beauty, not ugliness that must be explained. If we are merely atoms in motion, the result of purely unguided processes, with no mind or thought behind us, then beauty is completely unexpected.
It’s not hard to make a muddy brown splotch when painting, but to paint a beautiful flower arrangement requires knowledge of where to place the brush, and the restraint to choose wisely among colors. Choosing what to do and what not to do is design. The highest forms of art, of music, and of physical performance require choice, discipline, knowledge, and restraint in what is done and not done, by design. Architecture and mathematics require the same.
In fact, for any human endeavor to be done beautifully, discipline, knowledge of what to do and what not to do, and how best to bring things together in service to the whole are essential. The result is beauty, which is by design, not by accident....
The argument has been made that we evolved to like what are presumed to be safe environments, like the savannahs of Africa from which we came. This I doubt.
Mountaintops with blue glaciers, wind-sculpted sand dunes, and steep cliffs overlooking a restless sea are not particularly safe places to live. Yet something in them captures our eye. Their proportion and balance and richness move us. It’s design. And it’s what holds the biosphere together.
Consider these words from Mike Mitchell at his blog Thought Sifter:
A lot of people claim that the world as we know it came about randomly, meaning there was no one who intended the world to exist. They say all the universe just came about in the same way a certain pattern of dust collects on a bookshelf. They then try to use the same explanation for the stunningly sophisticated systems that fill our world: Our ecosystem, solar system, nervous system, digestive system, reproductive system, etc.The theological significance of beauty in the world cannot be overstated. To paraphrase the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, beauty is the battleground over which God and the devil contend for the heart of man.
These are all supposed to be random systems, but a "random system" is the same kind of phrase as a square circle. It cannot be both. A system is an intentionally ordered grouping of multiple parts which works to carry out a particular purpose. There can be no such thing as a random system that is intended to work in a certain order for a particular purpose, because random means that which is without intent, order, and purpose.
The same is true of beauty. We cannot coherently talk about "random beauty." There is an inescapable chain of logic that can't be broken without falling into nonsense. When we say something is beautiful that means the thing is important. To say something is important is to say the thing is meaningful.
To say it is meaningful is to say that it exists for a purpose. But again, "random" necessarily means the absence of importance, meaning, and purpose.
These three are to beauty what squares are to a cube. We cannot talk intelligibly about cubes while denying the existence of squares.
We might wonder why it is that Goodness, Truth and Beauty seem always to walk hand-in-hand with each other just as evil, hatred and ugliness seem always to be found in each other's company. Is it just a coincidence?
