The Origin (or Evolution??) of Art/Artistic Impulses

According to a New York Times piece entitled "The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start", some researchers suggest human artistic impulses "arose accidentally, as a byproduct of large brains that evolved to solve problems and were easily bored." Another argues that "the creative drive has all the earmarks of being an adaptation on its own. The making of art consumes enormous amounts of time and resources ..., an extravagance you wouldn’t expect of an evolutionary afterthought. Art also gives us pleasure, she said, and activities that feel good tend to be those that evolution deems too important to leave to chance." This latter expert goes on to suggest that "the tightly choreographed rituals that bond mother and child look a lot like the techniques and constructs at the heart of much of our art."

"Perhaps the most radical element of Ms. Dissanayake’s evolutionary framework is her idea about how art got its start. She suggests that many of the basic phonemes of art, the stylistic conventions and tonal patterns, the mental clay, staples and pauses with which even the loftiest creative works are constructed, can be traced back to the most primal of collusions — the intimate interplay between mother and child."

Hence, art for some is either accident, an adaptation, and/or finds it's origin in a human relationship between mother and child!

Here again, the evolutionist framework either does away with the meaning and significance of art on the one hand, or confuses and substitutes similarities with/for origin and potential influences (or developmental means) on the other hand.

This is another example of the superiority of the Christian framework which provides a rational argument and grounds for both the origin and significance of art!

In denying God while trying to explain everything else, evolutionists deny both reason and truth.