Evolution doesn't explain art

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Claim

Evolution does not explain people's desire to create art or their appreciation of it.

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  1. Because we, humans, are animals with color vision, evolution can explain how color can affect our behavior, such as the fact that yellow on black stands out because it naturally occurs with poisonous animals, such as wasps, or that the color red excites us humans.
  2. Art can be seen as a form of sexual ornamentation, much like a peacock's tail, or the antlers of a deer. While it serves no immediate survival functions, it does serve to attract mates, which is extremely important in long-term survival. Humans are not the only animals that create art to attract mates. Male bower birds create huge nests (the "bowers") and decorate (some species even paint them) them in order to attract females. It is possible that humans create art for the same reason that bower birds do.
  3. In many ways, art is the ability to mimic - movement, sounds, sights. Mimicry is something that can easily be seen as something that would generate an advantage for any species.
  4. Mimicry and other forms of art could be used as a form of defense mechanism. Consider:
    • Drumming - it frightens animals away and is among the earliest forms of long-distance communication
    • Face Painting - looking more fearsome in wars; camouflage
    • Singing - Ability to summon animals for hunt
    • Whistling - Ability to signal and communicate over distance
    • Weaving - Ability to make practical objects, such as baskets and clothing
    • Dancing - Ability to signal vitality to potential mates and convey ideas nonverbally
    • Wood working - Ability to create weapons and tools - great craftsman are viewed as skilled artists
    • Paintings - Ability to create symbols to scare away intruders or to help remember the lessons from the past.
    • Storytelling - Ability to learn, or understand; wisdom
  5. Art functions as a form of social bonding, helping to distinguish ones own culture from others (our culture has civilized, beautiful, art, unlike that ugly garbage produced by that other group), or helping one culture bond or identify with another (Etruscans bought and imitated Greek pottery; Europeans have bought, traded for and imitated Chinese porcelain for centuries).
  6. Art is largely cultural, and thus arguably evolution has no imperative to explain it. Creationism and creationists, on the other hand, have not made any meaningful attempts to explain people's desire to create art or their appreciation of it. "God did it" is not a meaningful explanation, it is an appeal to the supernatural. "God did it" also begs the question, "Okay, how and why did God do it?" which creationists appear to be in no hurry to answer.
  7. Artists and art scholars already have a very good understanding of how and why people appreciate art, such as the way specific colors and color combinations evoke and stimulate specific emotions. Saying that evolution is invalid simply because artists and art scholars can explain why art is meaningful to humans but not biologists is total nonsense.
  8. Appreciation for art can be explained as the byproduct of an advanced mind, with no need for inherent survival value.
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