When I read, the following: “the simple beauty of color is given by a form that dominates the darkness of matter, by the presence of an incorporeal light that is none other than reason and idea[…]that the light that shines out over matter can only be attributed to the reflection of the One from which it emanates. God is therefore identified with the splendor of a sort of luminous current that permeates the entire universe,” I was quite certain I’d never read a better argument for God’s existence. And I cannot help but think the persuasiveness of Plotinus’ rhetoric rests with the fact that it was not intended to be such. This did leave me wondering, however, if a belief in God, or some higher power, is a prerequisite to comprehending beauty.

            I have no evidence for this claim, only one minor observation: the secularization of American society coincided with exponential inclines in consumerism, technological and scientific advancements, and post-modernism--an "aesthetic" movement that seemed to do little more than declare “God is Dead” for thirty-odd years.

            So it was that Plotinus has me wondering what atheists find beautiful, but more importantly, what explanation atheists have for why beauty exists. I toyed with atheism for a while, and am fairly certain these arguments are almost scientifically or mathematically grounded. Beauty is reduced down to Pythagorean terms or to the Golden Rule of Proportions or to psychological reasoning or to discussions of Darwinian principles about “survival of the fittest” and hip ratios. I am not in the mood for such mental acrobatics, and neither am I in the mood to launch into discussions of the existence of God. I have no such time or desire, and whether or not someone else believes in God is simply none of my concern. Nor am I trying to offer up Beauty as sort a sort of “Exhibit A” for God’s existence, because the simple fact of the matter is that there is no proof of God’s existence, which is, I think, the entire point--the point that so many religious types like to go on missing year after year; and the point that atheists like to offer up as their own sort of proof.

Freud does not strike me as the type of guy who found much beauty in the world; neither does Bill Maher for that matter. Are atheists the ones who buy Damien Hirst? Were they the one’s who supported the Young British Artist’s movement. I wonder.