I like this. Not the final knockdown argument that demolishes Dawkins et al. Too subtle for such intellectual dogmatism. And why demolish straw anyway?
No. This is affirmation, hopefulness, trustful optimism that this glorious, beautiful, perplexingly addictive world around us, is more than the collisions of infinite variations of chance. I like the thought that beautiful music skillfully played is a crucial clue to why life matters, and matters to more than ourselves.
For today let's pause
At my first groping after the First Cause,
Which led me to acknowledge (groping still)
That if what once was called primeval slime
(in current jargon pre-biotic soup)
Evolved in course of eons to a group
Playing Beethoven, it needed more than time
And chance, it needed a creative will
To foster that emergence, and express
Amoeba as A Minor.
Martyn Skinner, Old Rectory, (Michael Russell Publishing), 1984, Quoted in This Sunrise of Wonder, Michael Mayne, (London: DLT, 2008), p. 110
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