140 - Beauty & Love with Paul Gould

In this episode, Brian Auten & Chad Gross engage with philosopher Paul Gould to discuss the profound connection between beauty, love, theism. They delve into why beauty is more likely on theism than naturalism and explore various philosophical perspectives on love and the recognition of beauty.

Topics Covered:
1. Introduction to the Topic of Beauty:
   - Beauty in Theism vs. Naturalism:
     - Gould explains why beauty is more likely on theism than naturalism.
     - Discussion on the analogy between human artistic creativity and the universe's beauty.
     - The improbability of a universe saturated with beauty under naturalism's unguided, blind forces.
2. Philosophical Arguments and Analogies:
   - Human Artistic Creativity:
     - Creating beautiful art requires skill and intention, paralleling the idea of a divine artist behind the universe.
   - Entropy and Beauty:
     - Examination of why beauty persists despite the laws of entropy and randomness under naturalism.
3. Exploring the Nature of Love:
   - Defining Love:
     - Gould outlines five features of love:
       1. Multi-directed
       2. Complex
       3. Deep and Enduring
       4. Active and Passive
       5. Valuable
     - Discussion on how contemporary philosophical views often fail to capture these features fully.
     - Aquinas's wisdom on love as a comprehensive framework.
4. Beauty as a Properly Basic Belief:
   - Plantinga's Concept of Properly Basic Beliefs:
     - Inquiry into whether the recognition of beauty can be considered a properly basic belief, not needing argumentation to be justified.
   - Experiences of Beauty:
     - Distinctions between judgments of beauty, experiences of beauty, beautiful things, and beauty itself.
     - The Christian story's integration of beauty, truth, and goodness, particularly through the narrative of the cross.
5. Listener Questions and Practical Insights:
   - Interacting with Listener Inquiries:
     - Addressing questions about the recognition and judgment of beauty.
     - Discussion on the practical implications of philosophical views on love and beauty.
Key Quotes:
- Paul Gould on Beauty and Naturalism:
  "If naturalism is true, and the universe is just the result of unguided, blind forces, you would not expect beauty to saturate the world. By analogy, just as beauty is very hard for human artists, it's surprising for it to saturate the world without a divine artist."
- **Brian Auten on the Christian Story:**
  "The cross being the God of the universe, sacrificing himself for sinners to save them, even when they hate him, is the most beautiful story there is. It brings tears to your eyes because it's beautiful."
- Paul Gould on Love:
  "Love is multi-directed, complex, deep and enduring, active and passive, and valuable. We need an account of love that captures all these features."

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Apologeticsthree fifteen podcast with your hosts Brian Auten
and Chad Gross. Join us forconversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics,
evangelism, and the Christian worldview.You cannot force open the petals of

(00:22):
a flower. Hello, and welcometo the podcast. This is Brian Auten
and I'm Chad Gross. And joiningus today is Christian philosopher Paul Gould.
Now, he's been with us beforein a couple of previous episodes that were
great. That's why he's coming back. We talked to him about cultural apologetics
and episode forty one and we talkedto him about a good and true story

(00:44):
in episode one ten. Now thatwas all about signposts of reality that point
to Christianity, and there was acouple signposts, if you will, that
we didn't really go very deep onour discuss in that interview. What were
those, Chad, Love and beautyAnd why we're having doctor Gold back on
is because he actually specifically expressed somedisappointment that we didn't get to those arguments,

(01:08):
and so we thought it might bea good idea to have him come
back to do so. Yeah,so we're just worried that something might happen
to us if we don't. That'swhy he's here now, exactly. You
don't mess with a philosopher, man, you don't mess with a philosopher.
Yeah. So anyway, he's theAssociate Professor of Philosophy of Religion and the
Director of the Ma and Philosophy ofReligion at Palm Beach Atlantic University. He's

(01:32):
also the founder and president of theTwo Tasks Institute and a past visiting fellow
with the Henry Center for Theological Understandingat Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He's got
a master's in philosophy, Religion andEthics from Talbot School of Theology and a
PhD in philosophy from Purdue University.So more information and resources for Paul Gould
can be found at Paul Dashgould dotcom. In the show notes, we'll

(01:57):
also link to some of his greatbooks which we would highly rectmen, including
Cultural Apologetics and the one we're talkingabout. A couple of topics from today,
A Good and True Story eleven cluesto understanding our universe and your place
in it. So, without anyfurther ado, let's go to the episode
Let's get ready Switch me on.Oh hi, Paul Gold, you're back.

(02:21):
Hey guys, good to see youagain. Yeah, thanks for coming
back to the studio. Hey,what have you been up to since our
last interview? Oh gosh, I'mnot sure when did we talk six months
ago? Maybe just normal life.Our kids are getting older, so you
know, we're getting older. Inthe midst of a good semester. I'm
teaching philosophy of science, which isreally fun for me to kind of dig

(02:44):
deep into that. And I'm alsoteaching for the undergrad students a cultural apologetics
class. So it's always weird touse one of my books, but that's
something that's fun right now. Andwe're going on. We're we're exploring art
and beauty. I guess some ofthe things we'll talk about today. We're
doing a deep dive into art andthe imagination and beauty, and so it's
been nourishing as well as fun toteach. So yeah, things are going

(03:05):
well, excellent. For those listeningwho may not have caught the previous interview,
we were talking about your book,A Good and True Story Eleven Clues
to Understanding our Universe and your placein it. So you've got all these
sign posts that we find in ourworld. But things we didn't touch on
were elements of beauty in the world, Like, there's aspects of real beauty

(03:27):
in the world. And what aboutlove? What sort of worldview best explains
love? Is it theistic worldview?Is it atheistic naturalistic worldview? You know,
how do we make sense of ourworld with all of these sorts of
sign posts. What worldview seems toexplain them better? So we didn't really
talk about love and beauty. Wetalked about a whole pile of other things.
But these are deep ones of themselves. So let's just jump right in.

(03:49):
Okay, let's talk about beauty first. Okay, So we find beauty
in art, music, nature,mathematics, you know, the laws of
physics, literature, Whether it's manmade things, we can detect beauty,
whether and it's nature, there's beautywhen we're when we're painting. It's almost
like nature is this standard of beauty. If you can paint an accurate picture
of nature, it is beautiful.Things that are designed just are beautiful.

(04:13):
Hey, that works, well,it's beautiful. Why is that? I
guess we got to back up,though, and say, what is beauty?
We know it when we see it, But what is it good?
Yeah, I know that this isa fun, fun topic because it's something
Beauty and love are you know,two things that are of immense value that
we that make our lives rich andmeaningful. And so yeah, it's interesting.
You know you already noted four atleast, well, you know,

(04:35):
at least three of the five kindsof beauty that are often cited. You
noted nature beauty, artistic beauty,human beauty are three of the five.
Often there's a category of divine beautythat's thrown in the mix, and then
there's a kind of everyday beauty aswell. So these are the five sort
of sites of beauty that people talkabout. And then in terms of the

(04:55):
question what is beauty, that's youknow, a long and vexed question that
people debate. I think to startus off and then and maybe I'll just
say a few things and we cankind of take it from there. I
would want to say something like this, that there's an objective part to beauty
and there's a subjective part to beauty. And what I mean by the objective

(05:17):
part of beauty is this in thesame way that there are physical facts,
Right, we wouldn't debate that there'sa physical fact about the chair I'm sitting
on or the temperature here in Florida. It's quite hot right now as I
speak to you guys in South Florida. You know. So there's physical facts,
and there's also I would argue andwant to give a more sustained argument
for the fact that there's moral factsthat are part of the furniture of the

(05:39):
universe too, things like honesty isa virtue, you know, Torturing babies
for fun is wrong, or rapeis wrong and rape is wrong. Right,
These are facts that I don't thinkwe need to argue to. I
think they're just things that we see. And in the same way that there
are physical facts and moral facts,I would want to argue that there are
esthetic facts. It's part of thefurniture of the world. And to switch
from language of facts to language aboutthings, I would just want to the

(06:02):
claim would be that there are objectivelybeautiful things that exist in the world.
So beauty is an objective feature ofthe world, such that it exists whether
or not there are minds to perceiveit or to appreciate it. So that's
the first thing I would want tosay, and I'll just say one quick
second thing and then we can I'llpause. There is this subjective component to
beauty as well, and that's theidea that beauty is perceived by minds,

(06:27):
it's beheld by minds. Quinas famouslysaid that beauty is that which is pleasant
to apprehend, and his idea wasthat it's not just visual perception of beauty,
but like even like the mind's eye, like you mentioned the laws of
nature right that we could, orlike a mathematical proof or a logical proof,
these things are pleasing to apprehend withthe mind's eye. And so in
that sense, I'm pushing against thestandard pithy statement that beauty is in the

(06:53):
eye of the beholder. I donot think that's right. But there is
a truth in the nearby neighborhood,and it would go something like this.
The objective beauty that exists in theworld is beheld by eyes, and it's
beheld by you know, hands andnoses and and things like that. But
it's not strictly speaking, in theivy beholder, which usually is an idea,
the idea that there's it's not afeature of the world, is just

(07:14):
a feature of our experience of theworld. So maybe I'll stop there.
There's more that we can say,but that's to get us started. Well,
I know from reading your book thatyou know we're different, different aspects
that you unpack and things. Andone of the thoughts that came up when
you know we're talking there was,yeah, beauty's in the islet I have
the beholder and interrupt the book.You're you're talking about how certain things are
signposts towards theism better explained by theism. But I can imagine, of course

(07:41):
the skeptic or whomever, the naturalist, they're saying, well, there is
no God, So how do Iexplain beauty? Well, this is something
that is, you know, evolutionaryadvantage. You know, Oh, this
is a good mate, so I'mgoing to find her beautiful. Yes,
you might think it's an objective pieceof beauty, but but you're no,
it's not. It's subjective based uponsurvival benefit, that sort of thing.

(08:05):
Now, I know that you havesome answers to that, and that's why
I'm trying to ask this question,maybe to help listeners who are having the
same sort of thoughts coming in theirmind. Hey, this is just subjective.
Therefore, evolution explains this just fine. So I would say at least
two things to get started there.One, I would want to push back
on the claim, no, beautyis just subjective. It's just a part

(08:26):
of the human experience of the world, but it's not part of the world
itself. I think you can martialarguments. Well, let me say,
let me see. On one hand, I don't think you need arguments.
I think that we can just seein the same way that I think by
the light of reason we can seethat the proposition rape is wrong is true.
I think we can just see genuinebeauty in the world, right,

(08:48):
like looking at a sunset, lookingat the rocky mountains, things like that,
you know, looking at a painting, human beauty, any of these
things, we can see it.But setting that aside, I do think
that there are arguments that we cangive as well. Right. And two
that I briefly mentioned in the bookthat I find compelling. One is what
we might call just the argument fromdisagreement, right, that we disagree in

(09:09):
our esthetic judgments often, and thatdisagreement would be pointless without some sort of
objective reality that we're disagreeing about.And one that I find and actually the
second one. Maybe I'll say alittle bit more about the second argument that
I find really compelling because it revealssomething interesting about beauty. I called it
the indispensability argument. And the ideais that aesthetic properties, or this category

(09:31):
of aesthetics, is indispensable to ourtheorizing about the world. And what I
mean by that is that when wedo like mature theory building in philosophy or
science, for example, two domainsof intellectual inquiry, we develop models,
and we develop models to make senseof the reality that we're exploring. And

(09:52):
these models we seek to have certaintheoretical virtues in these models that we build.
And the theoretical virtues that are oftenthat we're often looking for our things
like simplicity, does our model,is it simple? Does it have explanatory
power, does it have explanatory scope, is it elegant? And things like
that. And what's so interesting isevery one of these theoretical virtues actually picks

(10:13):
out an aesthetic property. And it'salmost as if, as one writer has
noticed that that beauty and truth arealigned, right, because the idea is
that these theoretical virtues for your modelswhen you develop them, if they have
these theoretical virtues, the ideas thatthese that they're truth indicative, they point
to the truth. So notice youhave these theoretical virtues that all are referencing

(10:37):
a certain aesthetic property that are thoughtto be truth indicative. And so you
just can't do your theorizing without thesethings right. They're indispensable to our to
our theorizing. So I find thatas one among a family of arguments that's
quite compelling. M H. Ireally like what you say there about beauty
and truth aligning that when you know, you hear stories about mathematicians who when

(11:01):
there's a certain simplicity and a beautyto something that is truth, you know
proven I have also my kids knowme by always saying, oh I love
good design, I hate bad design. And I was saying to my daughter
the other day, is that youknow, have you noticed that when something
has designed well, it just bydefault is beautiful. Like if a car

(11:22):
works really well and everything is inits place, you don't really have to
try to make it beautiful. Itjust is. And and it's when something
doesn't work as it's supposed to,when it's out of its teleology or it's
design or whatever it's like, oh, well that that's kind of ugly.
You know, we want to Idon't want that. It's don't give me
that one because it's not working likeit's supposed to. So there along with

(11:45):
this idea of something being true andthen therefore beautiful, you've got something maybe
that's designed well or has a purposeor anything that fulfills its purpose. Like
you could have some dude who's notparticularly handsome, but if he's a really
good father, Like, wow,you're so attracted to it. That's beautiful
right there. That's beautiful. Seethat man hugging his child is like fulfilling

(12:07):
his purpose, Like that's a that'swhat it was meant to be, and
that's beautiful. So I love thatalignment there, And you're saying it's something
we just observe and see. Andin your book, part of these things
are signposts that are better explained,you know, better explained by theism.
Are there any arguments that you canmake directly from you know, instead of
just part of a cultive, cumulativecase. How might we make an argument

(12:31):
from beauty to towards God just directly? Is that? Are there few that
you would want to point us to? Yeah, so that was one of
the These two chapters that we're talkingabout today were my favorite chapters to explore
beauty and love because I find themboth fascinating and just intrinsically interesting, but
also surprising in the sense that thereis this kind of powerful argument in my

(12:54):
view, that you can you canget from the reality of beauty or beautiful
things to and the reality of lovewhen we kind of plumb the nature of
love to God too. So yeah, I think there is a good argument.
And what's interesting, there hasn't beena ton of work done on the
argument from beauty to God. Therehas been an there is an argument that's
been around, you know, sincepeople have been thinking about these things,

(13:16):
but there hasn't been a lot oforiginal work done on this argument. A
lot of times, what people willdo when they look at the argument from
beauty to God is they'll take themoral argument and then they'll just kind of
swap out moral facts, swap inaesthetic facts, and then it's kind of
the same basic argumentative argumentative structure.But what was interesting I went back to
the early twentieth century and there aretwo There was f our Tenant was probably

(13:37):
one of the last people to reallydo some rigorous and creative work. And
then more recently, Mark Wynn andPeter Force are some contemporary philosophers that are
writing in this that are building onfr Tenant's work. But f our Tenant
I really appreciated because there's something uniqueabout beauty that's different than moral morality that
I think cries out for explanation.And so in the book I tried to

(13:58):
make these two facts with respect tobeauty that cry out for explanation front and
center, and then generate an argument. And the two facts or pieces of
evidence are number one, the factthat beauty saturates our universe, like everywhere
we turn from the mundane to theextraordinary, from the minuscule to the grand
scale of the universe, everywhere themind's eye looks, we find beauty.

(14:24):
It saturates the world. And againthat cries out for explanation. The second
fact that actually theists and atheists allagree with respect to beauty is that there's
a kind of transcendent quality to beautyas one person. As one philosopher who
works on beauty puts it, beautyfunctions as a kind of personal communication.
So it's this transcendent nature. Oftenthrough history it's been associated with the divine,

(14:48):
it's been associated with eternity itself.So there's something about beauty that transports
us and is suggestive of the transcendent. And so I took those two pieces
of evidence and then plugged it intoa very simple arca, and it goes
something like this, These two factsare not surprising given theism premise, too,
they're very surprising given naturalism. Therefore, by the likelihood a certain principle

(15:11):
of reasoning, the evidence from beautystrongly supports theism over naturalism. And then
I just kind of walk through thosepremises and yeah, so I think there
is an actual argument from beauty thatI find quite compelling, I respect,
without just merely placing it within acumulative case. Yeah, Paul, do

(15:31):
you think perhaps that the reason nota lot of work has been done on
this argument is because it seems like, I mean, you would know obviously
the field of philosophy much better thanI would. But I'm speaking here of
just like even the general apologetics community. It seems like we're more focused on
arguments that you enjoy scientific support fortheir premisses, even the historical arguments.

(15:54):
And do you think, right now, those are kind of in vogue,
and the argument from beauty is alittle harder to maybe communicate. Well,
I'm just thinking out loud and wonderingwhat your thoughts are on that. Yeah,
you know that. So my firstpass is that maybe what you mentioned
earlier about science is part of thereason, right that we do live in

(16:14):
this age that view science as thedominant sort of source of authority when it
comes to knowledge, and so itwould make sense that when we're doing and
exploring arguments for God, that wewould begin with the arguments that deal with
the science, cosmological, the designarguments, the teleological, the argument from
fine tuning. So, yeah,that could be part of it. I
think probably another part of it wasthat as you go through like the Enlightenment

(16:37):
and then Hume, right, Humefamously argued that truth is basically subjective in
the eye of the beholder, andI think that human idea has been very
pervasive in culture, and so giventhat, I think people haven't taken it
seriously. But again, when youlook at the evidence and the fact that
beauty saturates the world, I dothink it's a fact that cries out for

(16:59):
explanation. I think it's right forsome serious consideration. And I will say
the last thing that's perhaps interesting isthat for many years beauty has been in
exile within the church in general.You know, if you think about how,
at least in the evangelical world,when we build church buildings, we
do it with utility in mind,not with beauty in mind. We do
it with efficiency in mind and thingslike that. And we just don't have

(17:19):
a place for beauty, right.We maybe allow beauty within our worships,
our auditory beauty, right, butwe don't think about our built space and
things like that. And so Ijust don't think we have a rich theology
of beauty as the church. Andso perhaps this is an opportunity for Christian
philosophers to take a real lead inthis. And so I will say I'm

(17:40):
excited though, I think that thingsare changing and beauty is sort of back
in the discussion within the church,right And in fact, there's this awesome
Templeton project running right now called FaithSeeking Understanding that's not specifically about beauty,
it's about art, but it's youknow, in the neighborhood where we can
start to consider these kinds of questions. Again, I have real hope that
things will change. But yeah,it's a good question. Thank you.

(18:03):
That gave me a lot to thinkabout. I appreciate that. Maybe backing
up just a hair, you know, we're talking about how beauty is more
likely on theism than naturalism, andI can think of reasons why it is.
But what sort of reasons would wehave to say to support the idea
that it's not likely on atheism ornaturalism? Why not? Good? So

(18:26):
let's go to that fact that beautysaturates the world everywhere we learn, everywhere,
everywhere we turn, we see beauty. And then just consider an analogy
with human artistic creativity. Right,so we know for those who are artists
that it takes real work to createworks of art that embody beauty, right,
that are beautiful, and in fact, we can create works of art,

(18:48):
and we could and we can dothem. Like when I try to
create art, it's not beautiful,right, it's hard to do it.
Same, Yeah, it takes skill, It takes a certain you know,
yeah, a certain skill and allthat. If naturalism is true, right,
and the universe is just the resultof sort of unguided blind there's no
there's no divine artists behind it.There's no artist at all, right,

(19:08):
it's just the laws of nature.You would not expect beauty to saturate the
world, right, in the sameby that analogy, in the same way
that that beauty is very hard forhuman artists, right and unguided laws of
nature. You would not expect maybepockets of beauty here and there, but
for it to saturate the world isvery surprising given the fact that there's no

(19:29):
divine artists, there's no mind behindthe universe, right, that that's making
it. And so I think that'spretty compelling that that the analogy from human
art to you know, in thefact that this universe is unguided and produced
by blind forces on naturalism. Mmhmmm, So this idea maybe that randomness.
If you're thinking naturalism, you're thinkingthings are by chance, they're random,

(19:52):
and that is not conclusive to thingslike symmetry or order, or beauty
or design or tell us the lawsof entropy, for instance, things are
winding down. Why would there bebeauty if by the laws of entropy things
would be winding down? Why doeseverything look beautiful? And there's beauty beyond
the aspects of reproduction, there's lookingat the stars, and they're beautiful.
Why would that be beautiful if ifthe evolutionary explanation is simply for me to

(20:18):
reproduce my genes, it doesn't helpme with looking up the stars for that
to be beautiful. So here wouldbe another question, this sense of transcendence.
You might say, awe when youlook at things like the stars,
mountains, landscapes, even on amicro scale, the intricacies of the cell
and all of those things with DNAor whatever, there's this wonder and awe

(20:42):
and of the beauty or a childor an animal or something like that.
Is that what you mean by transcendence, the sense of awe where it's like
like a wow factor or is itmore of like where did this come from?
How was this happening? I thinkthat wonder is connected, right,
if wonders this kind of a motionof self transcendent awe. I think that

(21:04):
experiences of beauty do evoke wonder.But I think it I think the claim
if I understand it, when wetalk about the fact that it's transcendent,
it's slightly stronger than that. Andit's the idea that that our experience,
the human experience of beauty is suggestiveof something eternal. It's suggestive of something
beyond this world. Like historically,you know, if you look from Plato

(21:27):
and Homer all the way to youknow, through a Dante and Aquinas all
the way to contemporary thinkers, theistand non theist. Uh, there's this
idea that there's something unique in theexperience of beauty that that is evocative of
the divine. Right now, theatheists will just say, well, that's
you know, that's just the universeis a sham, right, That's and
I would and I would just wantto say, well, that's kind of

(21:48):
a surprising feature then, right,that that there's this feature of beauty is
transcendent. If there's nothing that's actuallytranscendent from the mundane, if there's no
God, no, no, nothingbeyond this world. So yeah, I
think it's it's this is maybe partlyback to Chad's question, like why is
the argument from beauty that not hadas much traction, right, Because there's
because what this requires is a kindof look at the phenomenology the what it's

(22:11):
like to experience beauty, right,and that is subjective. That's why I
did mention at the beginning. There'san objective part and a subjective part,
and to claim this evocative nature ofthe transcendent is to make a claim about
our experience of it, and peoplemight not be attuned to that experience of
it, but I think that's thestrong claim, at least historically, and

(22:32):
in writing this chapter inviting the readerto think of their own experiences and encounters
with beauty, I think there issomething of that quality. I find it
in my own journey, and Ifind it the phenomenology there. So yeah,
that's that might be one of thethings that's a little harder, And
that's why I think the saturated factis something that's more objective, right,
that's pointing to So you have likethese two pieces of evidence. The saturated

(22:55):
the fact that universe is saturated withbeauty is about the objective part, the
fact that the universe has this transcendentqualities about that subjective component. So they're
going to have maybe different evidential strengthdepending on the person's awareness of their own
kind of states mental states. Yeah, yeah, Well back to this idea

(23:15):
of there being a direct argument orsomething, remember as a kid just laying
out, maybe he was ten yearsold or something, laying out on the
garden and looking up and you couldsee the milky way. And it was
with my friend and there was noChristian talk amongst us, but I remember
him saying, how can anyone notbelieve in God? Right? And it

(23:37):
was just a direct observation from him. He was a philosopher, he was
a ten year old kid, butthat's what came out of his mouth when
he looked up. So it wasalmost like that scripture saying, you know,
the heavens declare the glory of God. Why do we insist that there
must be a syllogism involved for usto accept it? The same way where
if a miracle was performed in frontof us, wouldn't have to say okay,

(24:00):
which premise is this, We'll belike, okay, you bow down,
Yes, Lord, you walked onwater. I'm unworthy. It's a
direct response to the miracle of creation. Maybe, and then I'm The final
thing that I'm just observing through ourconversation is this idea of the beauty of
the Christian story, like the Crossbeing the God of the universe sacrificing himself

(24:26):
for siner SU's rebelled in order tosave them, you know, even when
they hate him. Well, that'sthe most beautiful story there is you know,
you know it brings tears to youreyes. And because it's beautiful.
When we think of beautiful being linkedtruth and design, like, oh,
this was meant to be because God, you know, the good and the

(24:48):
true and the beautiful all coming togetherat the cross is like it's magnificent.
So so, Paul, I justhave I have a question that just popped
in there. So I was curiousif would it be accurate to say that
the recognition of beauty is is somethingplanning a would call properly basic, that

(25:08):
that you know that you necessarily don'tneed an argument for it in the absence
of a defeater. Yeah, Soin the discussion here on beauty, I
would actually make four distinctions and thiswill maybe get to your question. Also,
I hope we want to distinguish onthe subjective Scott side, are our
judgments of beauty and our experience ofbeauty. Right, These are two distinct

(25:30):
topics. You know, we canjudge things beautiful and we can debate about
that, and we also have experiencesof beauty. And then on the objective
side, I would want to distinguishbeautiful things from beauty itself, right,
And this is where like even backto Brian and thinking about the Christian story,
like there's just you know, theChristian story ties this all together so
nicely. One theologian, yes hewrites on beauty, talks about how our

(25:52):
experiences of beauty are kind of theologicalamnesis, which is like this word for
memory, Like they're just evocative ofthe divine and we're kind of remembering beauty
itself, like we're experiencing beauty itself. And C. S. Lewis often
talked about, you know, it'snot the beauty in the thing that we
long it's the beauty through the thingthat we long for, which is God
himself. So back to those firsttwo distinctions though, Chad, Yeah,

(26:14):
I do think that that in thesame way that we have rational seemings,
we have aesthetic seemings, right,that are that are grounded without you know,
need to infer from different propositions.Yeah, yeah, yeah, Because
when Brian was talking about you know, he and his friend laying there in
the garden and looking up there,I mean that seemed to be you know,
that's what made me ask that question, was wondering that so yeah,

(26:38):
good, Yeah, I think there'sa connection between planegas. In fact,
if you go to you know,Planaga's discussion of this, it's like he
does use examples like you look ata flower and you just you know,
like like Brian's you know, andyou see you trace like from there to
God, right, and it's thebeauty of the flower, right, It's
the beauty of the cosmos. Calvinbeautifully famously said he says, the heaven

(27:00):
and the earth are a dazzling theaterof God's glory. He says, everywhere
you turn the mind's eye, yousee the glory of God, right,
And that's just the beauty of Godmade manifest everywhere that we turn. So
yeah, I'd be very it'd beinteresting to explore that more. But that
also sounds right too. Yeah,yeah, excellent. So, Paul,
you also talk about love as afeature of the universe, and you share

(27:22):
it in the form of an argument, and if you if you don't mind,
I kind of wanted to frame ourdiscussion around that argument because I think
once we unpack it, it kindof gets to a lot of what you
point out there. And so theargument goes like this, the existence of
love is not surprising given theism.The existence of love is very surprising given

(27:42):
naturalism. Therefore, by the likelihoodprinciple, the existence of love strongly supports
theism over naturalism. So my firstquestion before we start digging into it is
can you just unpack that likelihood principlefor our listeners mentioned in the argument,
just so that they can follow it. I think the most basic way to

(28:03):
explain it is that when you havesome observations that are you know that some
yeah, empirical observations that are piecesof evidence, the hypothesis that best explains
or fits with those those empirical observations, by this likelihood principle is most likely
true or provides strong I should say, provide strong support for that hypothesis.

(28:25):
So we're looking for the best fitbetween observational empirical evidence and hypothesis. And
that's what's so it's a kind ofprobabilistic or inductive type of reasoning, right,
So it's not air tight, Noneof these are air tight, but
it's say, what's the most plausibleexplanation for the evidence before us? Okay,
yeah, that's helpful. I justdidn't want anybody to be hung up

(28:48):
on that. Yeah, that's allit is. So, as you point
out in your work, there arevarious ways to understand love. And I'm
not going to lie thinking about thisquestion. I had Chris Catan and Will
Ferrell in my head, you know, going what is love? So but
that is my question, how howdo we properly understand what is love?

(29:10):
And I know you go into somedepth in your chapter on this. So
yeah, I mean you're right becausethat argument that you just read it doesn't
it's not going to work if wedon't have a clear if if we just
use the popular definition of love asa kind of r that's it's a very
weak argument, right. It wouldnot make sense to me if that's all
love was. And so that argumentcomes at the end of the chapter when

(29:33):
we did all this Spade work onwhat is the nature of love? And
so once we get that in view, I think it becomes quite a compelling
argument. Right. So what Idid and maybe I'll begin and then we
can pause and we'll keep going.Is I identified like five features of our
experience of love that you know thatwe want to give an account of love
that that captures all five Right,So I'm wanting to be very practical and

(29:57):
empirically based, and so intuity orI should say, and looking into my
own experience of love and those aroundme, we notice five things, right,
That love is multidirected. Right,That we love watching basketball games,
we love people, we love youknow, all these different things. Could
be a food, right, welove key lime pie living in South Florida
here, that's the thing. Soit's multidirected, right. It's complex,

(30:21):
right, Like C. S.Lewis famously has a book entitled Four Loves,
and he notes how there's like fourdifferent Greek words for love, and
each of them picks out a differentaspect of love. So it's multidirected.
It's complex. Number three, it'sdeep and enduring, right, that we
have this this sense that love issomething of deep value. That's actually the
fifth one. It's incredible, it'svaluable, but it's deep. It's not

(30:41):
surface level, right, it's somethingthat is stable and it should last.
Right. And then it's active.And then the fourth it's active and passive,
right, And it's something that wecan fail at by acting poorly,
and it's something that we can excelat in you know, like serving the
beloved. But it's all also passivein a sense that we just love our

(31:02):
kids from the moment they're born,or even the phenomena of love at first
sight. Right, So there's aninteresting feature, active and passive. And
then that fifth one was valuable,so multidirected, complex, deep and enduring,
active and passive and valuable. Sowe have these five features of love.
And then the question was, andthis is what was so fun about
this chapter for me, is,as you might expect for anything, there's

(31:25):
a huge mountain of philosophical literature,and there's all these contemporary views on love,
right, and so it was funto kind of dig into those and
ask to do any of these contemporaryviews capture these five features? And it's
fun to read as well? Yeah, it was. It was fun to
explore. And my conclusion was thatnone of the contemporary ones did. But
we found in this thirteenth century celibatemonk Aquinas, I think, real wisdom

(31:48):
about love. And so that's kindof where I took that chapter. So
I'll stop there. I can gointo those the contemporary versions if you'd like,
but that's kind of where I began. Yeah, yeah, that's great,
and if you yeah, if yougo ahead and start unpacking those different
versions and why you think Aquinas gotit right, That would be great good.
So, okay, if those areinterested in this, I will say

(32:09):
that Eleanor Stump, who's a philosopher, in her book Wandering in Darkness,
which is a book on the problemof evil and suffering, she has a
wonderful chapter where she summarizes all ofthese contemporary views really well. So there's
four contemporary views that I canvass.All of these contemporary accounts begin with the
question why do you love me?Right? So they're looking for reasons for

(32:31):
love, and they're going to givethe various answers. So here they are.
The first one is what's called thevolitional view, and this is from
Harry Frankfort. But the idea iswhy do you love me? Well,
for no reason, I just do. Right. That's called the volitional view.
And again, there's good things aboutall of these, right, there
is a sense in which that's right, right, why do I love my

(32:52):
kids? I just do? Youknow that I did from the minute they
were born. But it also failsto capture in its counterintuitive in other ways,
like it doesn't capture the active andthe deep and abiding, you know,
nature of love. Right, Sothat's the volitional view. The next
view is called the quality view.Why do you love me? Well,
because you have characteristics X, Yand z. You know, maybe it

(33:14):
could be thinking of my wife.You know, she's good with people,
and she's beautiful, and she's funloving, you know, and so you
have these qualities and that's why Ilove you. And again that captures something
that's right about love and the valueof love. But notice there's problems,
counterintuitive problems with this as well,Right, like, if that's why you
love someone, well, what aboutother people that have those same values,

(33:36):
right, or maybe have them too, or have those values to even a
greater degree, maybe you should youshould love them even more, and things
like that. So that doesn't seemright. It doesn't capture like that deep
and enduring kind of particularity of love. The third contemporary view is called the
relational view. And that's just theidea that I love you because I have
this history and this valuable relationship withyou. So why do you love me?

(33:58):
Because we're married? You know,we've been married for a long time
or something like that. Now,if I say that to my wife,
that probably wouldn't be super satisfying.You know, we've been married twenty nine
years, that's why I love you. But there is something right about that,
right that we do have particular historiesand those things matter to love.
So they're getting it aspects, butthey're not covering everything. And then finally,

(34:19):
the fourth view, which is probablythe most popular view, and especially
for the man of the women onthe streets who doesn't do philosophy and annoying
things. Why do you love mebecause you make me feel good or the
love I have for you makes mefeel good. This is the emotional right,
right, This is your dominant viewabout what love is. And again
that gets something right right. Loveis passive in the sense that we're moved

(34:39):
by it, but it also missesa whole lot of things, including the
act of nature of love and allthat. So I kind of walk through
these and give reasons why while eachof these captures some aspect, they don't
capture all five aspects. And thenI look to Aquinas's view, and for
love is a complex thing, there'sno single answer to the question why do
you love me? In fact thatit requires two answers. So for Quinas,

(35:02):
love is two things. It's desirefor the beloved and desire for the
well being of the beloved. Sowhy do you love me? Because it's
good right to desire your flourishing oryour well being, and because it's you,
because I desire union with you.So this is basically the answer that
Aquinas gives and kind of walk throughhow given this sort of more complicated view

(35:23):
of love, it captures all fiveof those features in a really beautiful way.
Yeah, and so and then andthen I look into my own life
and see that kind of love presentin my family and with my wife and
my kids and others and people inmy life. And my guess is that
and my hope is that readers willrecognize that too, And that's the love

(35:44):
that's in play. When we goback to that argument that you read earlier,
Chad, I think that that's whereit becomes really surprising that that kind
of deep, h enduring, valuablekind of love is surprising on naturalism.
Yeah. Yeah, that's super helpful. So would it be correct what I'd
be correct in saying then that thoseother views of love all have something going

(36:07):
for them, but Aquinases is theonly one that is able to encompass all
the positive that positives that come fromthe other views. That's what I'm that's
what I want to claim. Yeah, I think it does the best job
of capturing all those features of lovethat we noticed. Yeah, those five
features, right, and it doesn'thave these counterintuitive, you know, kind

(36:27):
of views or answers. Yeah,now why would you say that? And
I know you've hinted at it,but I just wanted you to go into
more detail as to why that viewof love fits better on a theistic view.
Oh good, Yeah, okay,so this is really fun. Right?
Why why is this kind of lovenot surprising given theism? For two

(36:49):
reasons at least, right, Numberone, it's the very essence of deity
of God to be loving. Right. We even have scripture passages that say
God is love. And that's notthe is of identity, it's the is
of essential predication. Right, thatGod is essentially by nature love or loving,
I would want to put it.And so notice, notice then what

(37:10):
that means is that a fundamental featureof reality given theism, is this kind
of deep love, right. It'sit's not accidental, it's not a byproduct
of some long process. It's afundamental feature of reality, and it's a
fundamental feature of deity. The secondthing is, you know, we asked
this question, why did God createin creating the world, And I think

(37:30):
the best answer is that God createdin love. Right, He didn't need
to create anything. But it's justpart of this diffusive nature of divine goodness,
of which love is a part.Right that it that it's that it
wants to spread joy and delight andlove right naturally, it's just part of
what love does. And so notonly is love at the center and fundamental

(37:52):
to reality, but it's also centralto the reason why we exist right on
theism, and so it's not surprising, given who God is and the fact
that God is the creator of theuniverse, that we would see this kind
of love right in human relationships.But on naturalism it's very surprising because love
is what we would say is lateand local. Right, we only are

(38:15):
aware that love takes place at leastwithin the human species. We could be
confident, right, which appears verylate in evolutionary history and very locally as
far as we know. Right,unless there's some intelligent, you know,
beings in some other part of theuniverse, it's just in one place.
So it's not fundamental to reality,and it's quite late, and especially when

(38:36):
you look at like the Darwinian orthe Freudian accounts of love. They're quite
superficial, right, they don't evenget at this sort of deep and enduring,
enduring kind of love at all,right, like the usual evolutionary accounts
of love. In fact, itwas so disappointing. My wife and I
are reading this book on emotional attachmentbecause we're kind of working on our marriage
a little bit, and it actuallyI have it right here because we're going

(38:57):
to read it right after we gettalking. It's called Holy Tight. It's
by some psychologists your guide to themost successful approach to building loving relationships.
And so we just started reading itthe other day and so we're on the
chapter what is Love, and soit's like, oh, cool, I
want to see what love is.And I was so disappointed because here it
is. You're ready, this isthe answer. Oh boy. I was
disappointed, But I have it righthere. We now know that love is,

(39:20):
in actuality, the pinnacle of evolution, the most compelling survival mechanism of
the human species. I'm like,oh, what a miss, right,
I mean, that's one in theidea is that it's the most the pinnacle
of evolution for the human species.Because it's like this kind of emotional bonding
that helps us to survive. I'mlike, that might be at best what
love does, but that's not whatlove is, right. And I was

(39:45):
so bummed out when I read that, because I'm so excited to see a
psychologist tell me what love is andwe better pray for your marriage. That
book was dangerous as a philosopher.My wife was laughing, I'm like,
I'm already have like my Spidey sensesgoing off here. Well, it's interesting
you went there, because I wasgoing to run this by you. I

(40:07):
was in a conversation once with aatheist and he was claiming that all of
the emotions and feelings that he hadwere merely the product of the chemical reactions
in his brain. And I triedto use the example of you know,
because he's married and has kids,and he's a very good father and loves
his wife. I said, youknow, I said, I find that

(40:30):
something easy to claim, but I'mnot sure it's possible to live that way.
I said, So, for example, when you go home and you
plan a romantic weekend for your wife, for you look in her eyes and
you tell her you love her,I mean, would you be willing to
say to her and honestly, that'sjust chemical reactions in my brain or do
you really know deep down that it'ssomething more than that. And he insisted

(40:53):
that that was all there was toit. And so I know you've spoken
to this a little bit, butand you can you speak to why the
claim that love is just this evolutionaryfeature that allows us to propagate our DNA
and survive just just fails you?Could you talk about why you find that

(41:14):
unconvincing? Yeah, not compelling?Yeah, I mean I think that there's
something right about that, right,the idea and even this book, like,
yeah, I'm kind of I wasbumped by that answer. But she
is right that emotional bonding is likeone of those great passive goods of love,
like it would be C. S. Lewis's of the four loves that
be like the more sexual love.Maybe not just the sexual, but like

(41:36):
this emotional bonding and attachment stuff thatthat is a feature of love. And
so in one sense that's fine,but that's certainly not all it is.
And what's so interesting on the evolutionarystory, right, Remember, one of
the five five features of love thatwe notice is it's something of value,
and I would want to argue it'ssomething that's objectively valuable. Right, it's
not just subjectively valuable. But noticeall Darwinian evolutionary accounts of love give you

(42:00):
is something that's subjectively valuable. Asit turns out, it's conducive for your
survival or the human species survival.But it didn't have to be, right,
So it doesn't even capture one ofthe five things. And actually it
doesn't capture a lot of those things, right, but it certainly doesn't capture
the objectively valuable thing. Right.It's a feature of love, and I

(42:20):
would want to claim that, no, this is an objective value in the
same way that honesty is a virtue. Love is whether or not there are
humans. Love is something like Imagineit this way. We can see that
it's subjectively valuable. Right, imaginethe world a world just like this one,
but remove all loving relationships. Wewould say that there's something of incredible
value that has been removed from thatworld. Right, So we can see
that it's an objectively valuable feature ofthis world. And you don't get that

(42:45):
on evolution it's merely a byproduct.Well, it's either a byproduct or it's
conducive itself, and I think probablythe general claim is it's conducive to our
survival. That's not something that's objectivelyvaluable though, Right, humans didn't have
to exist and maybe love would neverhave been and so that to me is
a real shortcoming. And I wouldalso so that's one thing. The second

(43:07):
thing I would say is it justdoesn't capture the phenomenology of love, those
five features of love. Right.It might at best get a sexual hookup,
but that's not that's like the beingof another, but not the well
being of another. Like why doesthis the person you talked about, why
does he desire more than just sex? Right? He cares for his kids,
Right, That's that's a non sexuallove, right. And I think

(43:28):
goes deeper and well beyond the kindof survival value. Although I think that
this attachment stuff can answer some ofthat, but just not as well.
I think it's the view that thatquantit holds. Yeah, that's really helpful.
One of the last things I wantedto ask you is just how could
how would this look in a conversationwith somebody that perhaps we are sharing the

(43:50):
gospel or maybe trying to offer validityfor the Christian faith, would it look
like trying to show how this viewof love is superior to this naturalistic view
that I think you just sketched outreally well, Or would it be would
another way be better? What doyou think? Yeah? I mean I
definitely think you could go that route, right. I think that a quick

(44:12):
way to get in the conversation isjust too I mean, if we're going
to go like Michael Rus you know, who's a great philosopher, and he's
usually a darwinting and explain offers adarwitting and explanation of these things, Ruce
would say things like what I justsaid about evolution, there's nothing objective about
about love. It's it's just,you know, a feature of our world
given that's conducing for our survival.And that alone might be an interesting discussion

(44:36):
point because it's it gives a provocativeclaim about how love is late and local
and sort of surprising on naturalism.But it also is going to allow the
opportunity to go deeper into well whatis love and to ask those kinds of
questions. And I think that weall know every every you know, like
if you think about it, andthis is what I love about Stump back

(44:57):
to I mentioned her book Wandering inDarkness. She argues that, you know,
humans are the highest good for humansare these relational goods? Right?
We tend to think like a lotof times in culture, the idea is,
well, the highest good is pleasureor or money or fame. These
are like non relational goods. Buton the Christian story, the highest goods
for humans are our relational goods.Union with God, union with others,

(45:20):
right right, relationship with self.These are the highest goods. And Quinas
gets it exactly or I'm sorry,Augustine gets it exactly right when he says
in the Confessions, our hearts arerestless until they find rest in you.
Right. So, notice the deepestsubjective desire or long enough the human heart
is for God. Not that we'reaware of it all the time, but
that deep subjective longing of the humanheart for God corresponds to the great objective

(45:45):
good, which is union with God, the thing that we've been made for
that will actually make us happy capitalh happy. Right, And so I
think any discussion around these things isjust great entree. And and yeah,
I don't know if I can't,I can't mechanize it, because you know,
we're persons and everybody's different, butI would just say, yeah,
start the discussion somewhere and with thisidea that the greatest good that humans have

(46:07):
been made for is relationship with God, permanent, loving union with God,
and not just that this is ourhighest objective good, it's actually the deepest
subjective longing on the human heart.There's with the beauty of the gospel.
You know, hand and glove,right perfect fit between deep longing of the
heart and the way the world actuallyis. And we can take that knowledge

(46:28):
into any discussion. And you coulddo the same thing with beauty too,
right, But I think that's that'show I would approach it. Excellent,
thank you, that was really good. I think that might be a good
place to end, Paul. It'sbeen a really fascinating discussion. It's been
a beautiful discussion and I've loved it, and we're beautiful guys and loving ks.
Nice. We've pointed folks to yourwork and your website, your books

(46:51):
and the intro, and we'll dothat in the show notes, so listeners
be reminded of that. Thanks Paul. Maybe there's other chapters we've missed in
other books, and we'll we'll bringyou up again and and you join us
again. But it's been a reallygreat conversation. I really appreciate it.
Thanks so much for your time andfor your great work. Yeah, thanks
Brian, Chad. It's great tobe with you guys again. Thanks for
listening to the podcast. If youhave a question you'd like us to address,

(47:14):
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(47:36):
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(47:58):
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