I just think that our appreciation of things is no less valid if we’re actually appreciating them, rather than attributing our appreciation to being telepathically forced to by divine law. What makes our own opinions less valid if they’re not the pre-programmed opinions of a divine being?

Also, I don’t think it’s really the same type of argument that Lewis’ character was making in the book, because Lewis’ character (the guard) was saying that two different substances (poop and milk, say) were the same thing, when it is both self evident and empirically provable that they are not, as one is the excrement of a creature’s intestinal tract and one is the excretion of it’s mammary glands. Lewis was making the point that that simply perceiving something a certain way does not make it so or change it’s nature. You’re equating it to subjective evaluations, such as “this is beautiful” which is entirely an opinion, neither self evident nor empirically verifiable. It seems to me that it’s actually quite the opposite of Lewis’ stance, as perceiving a song as more or less beautiful, by your reasoning, makes it so and determines its nature; making beauty not only it’s nature, but an objective, measurable descriptor. Which it clearly is not, as it means different things to different people.

Which doesn’t make it less real; it’s just not objective.

We are in agreement, then, that this is a real difference between us.

Well okay, but while I may agree with that particular example, I wouldn’t say that the New World Symphony is objectively beautiful. Both the New World Symphony and Welcome To The Jungle are a collection of sounds written by people to be consumed aurally by other people, hopefully eliciting an emotional response. Many people find the New World Symphony to be more beautiful than Welcome To The Jungle, as most human brains have the same basic responses to the same stimuli, but that hardly makes it objectively beautiful. If the vast majority of the population believed Welcome To The Jungle to be more beautiful than the New World Symphony, you would be making the argument that WTTJ was objectively more beautiful. For all you know, it actually is, and the majority of human listeners simply have it wrong. It’s still just what more people think about it, and lacks any quality one way or the other outside of a given listener (or many listeners)’s mind.

After all, to anything without human-like ears, they’re both just a series of strange vibrations in the air. It’s our perceptions and responses that make them something different.

Would you say, then, that beauty ISN’T in the eye of the beholder, but rather a hard and fast quality based in a greater reality that existed before we did? That if one person really thinks that oddly-painted antique piece of furniture is beautiful, and another does not, that one of these people is inherently Wrong, since God intended said antique to be either beautiful or not?

I’m not at all saying they’re the same thing, I’m saying that one tends to lead to the other when it comes to the reality of beauty and purpose. If there is no God, then all thoughts of beauty and purpose really are only “custom” (as Lewis put it), based on an illusion created for us by our genetics and not based in a greater reality that existed before we did.

I always want to ask the skeptic who is trying to inform me that I am no different than other animals: Why is HIS jumble of atoms trying to MY jumble of atoms that we are no different than the animals, but HIS jumble of atoms doesn’t bother convincing the atoms of animals? In other words, WHO exactly are YOU talking to?

Again great post Amy.

Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference?