A nice little discussion on this point at Lost Borders --

"Darwin wrote that he "sometimes felt much difficulty in understanding" why species have some traits that seem unnecessary for their survival. Unimportant organs were an example of such traits. Even more difficult to understand than unnecessary organs was beauty, superfluous beauty. Some naturalists in Darwin's time questioned the adequacy of natural selection to explain the origin of the species because it did not seem able to account for beauty. Darwin wrote, "They believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety." Darwin considered their argument that beauty had its own reason, a separate reason from the preservation of life, to be a serious problem for his own argument that natural selection accounts for the origin of the species. The stakes in this dispute were high. They still are. In his words, "This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory."

Darwin argued that unnecessary organs and traits that are merely beautiful were once necessary for the survival of progenitors and had been inherited by the descendent species even though they were no longer necessary for survival. He argued that natural selection would have eliminated these traits if they caused harm to the descendent species, but would not necessarily have eliminated them if they caused no harm.

A final conclusion about such things seems beyond the reach of science.

Much remains at stake here. Beauty remains potentially fatal to Darwin's argument. If beauty is superfluous to survival, and yet exists, then perhaps God not natural selection was, after all, responsible for the origin of the species."

Well, hardly fatal. There are other beauties than organic beauties to contend with....

yours,

Peter T.