Perhaps The Reason For Conspicuous Beauty Is Just Because

I have made a point several times that music has no evolutionary value, and yet the ability to produce music and the ability to appreciate it is a common trait of humanity.  I have said that music is evidence of, though not proof of, the existence of God.  But humans are not the only ones in nature to display what author Glenn T. Stanton describes at The Federalist as Extravagant Beauty. While Stanton doesn't say it, I think I will: such extravagant beauty in nature may be more evidence of, though not proof of, the existence of God.

So why am I so insistent that these things provide evidence of the existence of God?  Because I believe that there can be no proof of God in this world.  Our God wants us to demonstrate faith in Him, and having proof would make that more difficult.

Stanton seems to want to stick to strictly scientific grounds, and to tweak the evolutionists nose.

In survival of the fittest, the fittest is the least complex and needy — Occam’s razor applied to living things. Extravagant, superfluous beauty is not evolution’s friend. Ironically, isn’t the environmental movement built on this very fact? Some species are less adaptive to changing environments, man-made or not, and rightly require protection.

Thus, beauty is one of evolution’s most serious and persistent problems. Its adherents have no good answer for it, and not for want of trying.

If we are at all like Him, one must suspect that He has a sense of humor, an appreciation of beauty, indeed all the traits that make us human. If so, it is not hard to imagine that He would have put such conspicuously beautiful creatures in the environment just because.