Written and Directed by Justin Snyder
A blog.

Is Art All About Sex?

“Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.”  -Napoleon Dynamite

A philosophy professor named Denis Hutton said that art is nothing more than sexual selection at work.  The one with artistic skill has a reproductive advantage over the one without skills.

In other words, art is all about sex.

The common denominator in all art, Dutton says, is the attraction to “something done well.”  It is an “adaptive effect” belonging to humanity’s evolved psychology.  This was all in a Ted Talk he did called “A Darwinian Theory Of Beauty”.  Coming across this talk was a big deal for me.  In my mind, art and aesthetic beauty has always been one of the most persuasive evidences for the existence of God.  So listening to this talk made me stop.  Think.  Ponder.

Why do I think art and beauty is evidence for God?  Isn’t it easily explained by natural selection?

I am convinced there is much more to the psychology of artistic enjoyment then “things done well”.  We like music, not just because of the skill it takes, but because of how it makes us feel.  We don’t watch a magician for his skill, we watch a magician to be duped.  We watch movies because for some reason we identify with heroes and are moved by love, justice, and sacrifice.

Some of us like art that makes us think.  Some of us like art that makes us cry.  Some of us like art that makes us happy.  We like to be held in suspense, tricked, and carried away into other worlds.  We crave things that stimulate in us wonder and imagination.

Why do I think this is evidence for God?  Because the alternative is so much more implausible.

Sexual selection may be a good theory for why college guys that play guitar are more likely to get a girlfriend.  It doesn’t explain the complexities of imagination, beauty, and emotion that weave throughout the fabric our psychology.  Further, it can’t explain how art and beauty go beyond our inner emotions and unknowingly express metaphors that are open to endless interpretations (Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt write about the significance of this at length in the book A Meaningful World).

If there is no intelligent creator, than art is nothing more than a messy bi-product of natural selection.  This is kind of like saying that Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa by vomiting on the canvas.  At least, that’s how I see it.

What’s most interesting to me is that Dutton talks about evolution with a religious fervor, using phrases like “evolution tricks us”, “that’s evolution’s way of…” and “art is a gift.”  It’s almost as if in some way, he does believe in a creator, just not one that he has to be accountable to.