Counters to Conservapedia (Part 6): Beauty

Time for another tidbit from Conservapedia's Counterexamples to Evolution post:

Evolution cannot explain artistic beauty, such as the brilliant autumn foliage and staggering array of beautiful marine fish, both of which originated before any human to view them; this lacks any plausible evolutionary explanation.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  We define beauty as something that produces an appealing sensation in our minds.  That which we define a beautiful, may produce no result in another species.  Remember, to a fly, a pile of dung is more beautiful than brown sand and clear water.

Beauty results from the wiring of our brains to interpret our surroundings.  Beauty itself does not exist outside of the mind.  Things were not beautiful and then we evolved to recognize it.  Instead, we describe things as beautiful due to our brain's perceptions.  

The beautiful tail advertises this male's fitness.

With respect to the “staggering array of beautiful marine fish” and birds (which they forgot), the dazzling colors we see are advertisements to their potential mates.  Those colors and patterns make the species unique, so that they don’t mate with the wrong species.  The colors also display the fitness of the individual- bright colors require more energy and means that you are more healthy.  Think about the peacock and his tail.  The bright colors and multitude of eyespot show his fitness.  In studies, birds with bigger tails gained more mates, produced more healthy offspring.

I recently posted this TED Talk on the Darwinian of beauty (Sadly, the speaker, Denis Dutton, died yesterday).