Is nature's beauty proof of God

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Walking through the mountains and trails up north next to the Canadian border, beholding the the sublime glory of nature in all her splendor, and gazing into the scenic panorama of it all and absorbing the beauty of nature, it makes one ponder: is this indisputable proof of a God??

As I was on this vacation with my fiancee and sisters everytime we got a shot of a breathtaking scene of nature, especially the vast expanse of the High Falls, the largest waterfall in Minnesota and right next to the Canadian border, we couldn't help but marvel and my sisters who are more religious made a comment that got me curious:

"Only an idiot could deny God after seeing such natural beauty"

What do you think. Is it fair to say the same way a sublime piece of music from Beetoven is proof of an illustrious composer, is it fair to in the same vain declare God exists with certainty because of the splendor of nature and its beauty

I'd argue it's that seeing beauty makes life more livable so aesthetic appreciation makes sense as a trait that might be selected for.

Is ugliness a proof of God? If God created the world...

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Nice to 'Hear' 'You' Are Experiencing God; Truly An Outstanding Experience;

It's Noteworthy, Not All See And Hear Nature God As Sublime Beauty;

i Believe That's Sad; Better Put, i Understand 'Their' Emptiness in

Lack Of Feeling Sensing Connection to All That Is

As All That Is

Who Do

Not 'See'

All That Is This Way;

A Common Term for This

Divine Experience Is 'Frission'

in Autotelic Blissful Flow Mastering

A Feeling Sensing Divine Experience Yes

Commonly FLoWinG Science Suggests That It is Much

More Difficult For Folks Who Are Not Open Minded Now

To Feel and Sense 'Divine' This Way; The More Ya Open

Your Mind/Body (CaLL iT SoUL iF Ya Like) The More Ya 'See' God Nature

Ocean Whole Wave Water Same All That is Just the Kinda Experience

'Rumi' And A 'Zillion' Other Free Verse Poets Relate Experiencing Divine

Holy And Sacred Creative Spirit This Way In Tune As Music of All That is Within

Inside

Outside

Above So Below

And All Around

Experiencing All

'The Colors' Yes the

Feelings And Senses Freely

Flowing From Head to Toe And

More River Continues FLoWinG Freely AS Human Will...

Imagine Feeling Sensing Life That (This) Way Eternally Now In All

Ya Do And Ya May Relate How i Eternally Experience Life This Way

As A REAL Kingdom (Queendom) of Heaven Within is Basically Free Flow

Meditation With Mother

Nature Free Yes God;

A Dance

And Song

Free Will Do Even

A Solo Free Style 'Sufi Dervish Spiraling Way'...

Generally When Folks Reach This Human Zenith

of SPiRiT, SoUL, HeART What Naturally Comes Is Giving, Sharing, Caring,

Compassion As Love For All With Least Harm BRinGinG A Human Species UP

NoW iNSTeaD

of So Far

'Trump

Down'

Opposite

Meme of this

All Natural

God Meme;

Yes, The Anti-God-Trump-Meme... Yuck...

Hehe, i'll Continue Staycationing WHere i Am..

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I am with you and your sister on that one. How can one say it all happened by chance as in a big bang when one sees such beauty? It just HAS to be God!

No. While it can provoke the spiritual, I would not say it is proof.

Best thing to clear your head, and help restore mind and body, and spirit. Get out and hike in nature.

no.

there are a few points to make:
first: your perception of beauty is historically contingent. there are writings from a 17th century bishop, who, when travelling through the alps, had to close the curtains on the windows of the horsecarriage he was travelling in, brcause he couldn't bear the ugliness and the uselessness of the mountains. he described them as the shame of nature.
Enjoyment of nature is a modern concept - ever since humans had to live in crowded, stinking cities, they enjoyed going out into nature. There's also a lot fewer wolves about for a few centuries, which makes nature more enjoyable.

second: nature is beautiful? ever googled botflies, toxoplasma gondii, or how women used to loose their teeth when nursing because nature only cares about procreation, not parents?
beauty in nature is, at best, a question of scale.
on the small scale, it's tiny monsters. then it's humans and beauty -because we killed all the monsterous animals.
on the large scale, it's empty and cold.

in the words of the great werner herzog: there's no harmony in nature - only chaos, hostility and murder.

i mean: what are mountains? wrinkles on the cooled off skin of a glowing ball of molten rock and iron hurling through a vast cold emptiness. oh god, thinking about what mountains actually are makes me paranoid.

Thats true that in other centuries even Westerners viewed mountains as hideous.

But ... Salad, the original poster, is not a Westerner. He is a Palestinian Arab. So if he is getting off on looking at the Canadian mountains then that argues against your contention that his reaction is strictly culture specific to modern Westerners.

It would be nice----but Nature created itself.

You believe in God? (Sorry. I am using my wierd sense of humour as I think it is amusing what you said when you mentioned god).

To me that seems impossible, but we would end up debating this for years! Haha.

I can see what Salad means as I think the same when I see wonderful things like that.

not strictly specific, but contingent. it may or may not be so, there's reasons for it etc. but if just a tiny thing in history would gave gone differently, the outcome might just as well be different - there's no necessity. It's not a law of nature, like gravity or e=mc², that humans find the Canadian mountains, or any othe nature beautiful. And we rarely find it beautiful on other scales.

I mean, we find beauty in each other, but only with the skin on, and from the outside. There's quite good evolutionary explanations for that - but then you take that visual stimulus and artificially increase it, and you end up with the hyperreal, definitely man-made beauty of advertising and such - and if people didn't like that, it wouldn't be the industry it is.

(I'm an artist and I've read a few books on aesthetics, psychology of aesthetics and neuroaesthetics, which is a relatively new field. Mathematicians' brains react to "beautiful" equations in the same way their brains react to beautiful men/women. Violinists can look at notes, written on paper and their brains react to it. - what is and isn't beautiful is in large parts learned, and dependent on context)

No, but an interesting thing seems to surface when you see beauty in nature or human architecture. It seems to have a lot of math, symmetry, and fractal geometry involved.

"Only an idiot could deny God after seeing such natural beauty"

It is curious how bad the confirmation bias this sentence exemplifies. Beauty is a judgement that is extremely personal. Say so for argument we even agree that G*d must have done it given an aesthetic judgement, how does that then logically follow, at all?

And say anyone agrees with this sentiment, then does it also follow that all the rest of the usual Christian rhetoric follows as well -- like an avalanche of assumptions come to force us all to repent and accept your version of Jesus as Lord and Savior?

Step out of the box your mind is in!

Buddy chill. I'm not Christian nor did I make the above comment, my sisters did who BTW are Muslim. I was only asking WP what you all thought about this sentiment since I see it expressed all the time by theists arguing for the certainty of a creator based on the beauty of nature.

Quite ironic that you complain about "avalanche of assumptions" having made several assumptions about me that turned out to be not true. Pot calling kettle black