aesthetic order

aesthetic order

• This refers to the presence of beauty and order in the world, which goes beyond necessity and suggests intentional design. 

• Eg the beauty of sunsets, flowers and galaxies which serve no apparent survival function 

tennant

• Tennant argued that the presence of beauty and appreciation of it cannot be explained by evolution alone 

• The universe is full of beauty 

• Beauty has no survival advantage under natural selection 

• This suggests a designer who made the world not just functional but beautiful 

swinburne

• Swinburne argued that the best explanation for the universe’s beauty and complexity is a divine creator.  

• Suppose a deck of cards is shuffled, and every card appears in perfect order 

• This would seem designed, even if random chance could technically explain it 

• Similarly, the universe is so finely tuned that God is the simplest and most probable explanation 

WEAKNESS: pov

perception of beauty might serve some evolutionary function that we just don’t understand. Or it might be the biproduct of something which does provide survival, such as mate-attraction. It’s hard to really prove that our aesthetic sense has no relation to anything evolutionarily advantageous 

WEAKNESS of tennant

• Tennant’s argument is now quite outdated in the face of our modern scientific knowledge.  

• Although the conditions on earth are very precise, given how large the universe is and how many planets there are in it, we should expect there to be many earth like planets completely by chance.  

• No special kind of explanation like design is necessary. In our galaxy alone there are 100 billion planets.  

• Many other earth-like planets have actually been observed.  

• Estimates put the number of earth-like planets in our galaxy at around 6 billion.