We haven’t really talked about music around here lately, and I thought today might be great time to include music and all art in our discussion of the rationalism of Christianity.  Believe it or not, the topics are related in some very cool ways.

Have you ever seen music as a way to defend your faith?  Remarkably, the existence of music in our world does, in my mind, speak to the validity of the Christian faith as a reasonable worldview.  When we take a look at music, we are immediately struck with the tremendous unlikelihood of its existence given a Darwinian, atheistic worldview.

If Darwinian evolution is true, why does music exist at all?  What biological purpose does it serve?  One might argue that music serves some biological need that we simply are not aware of.  Perhaps the sounds of music serve to improve our ability to procreate or some other healthful need, but if that is the case, why haven’t other species developed music themselves?  In no other species in nature do we see purposeful music that is intended to do more than communicate messages.

If the evolutionists are right, and no God exists, it seems entirely improbable to me that things like music or visual art would exist at all.  To an evolutionist like Richard Dawkins, art and music are simply accidental by-products of our existence.  But you know how powerfully music moves your life.  Are you really prepared to accept this claim?

The Christian worldview, on the other hand, does a lot to explain the existence of music.  If an intelligent designer with an interest in beauty created the world, it is not unreasonable that He would give us the opportunity to create in our own right in the area of music.  The very first narrative in Genesis recounts the creation of the world in musical terms, as if God sung the universe into existence.  Music is an integral part of the Christian faith, and its very existence seems to speak toward God as its origin.