I don't care whether you blame God or not. I happen to be almost certain that there is no God so I can't really waste a awful lot of time on that one.

As a biologist who studied evolution quite a lot (though I don't keep up with the detail as much as I should), I like the idea that beauty in nature is the synergy of form and function. By form, I don't just mean physical shape. I mean all the attributes of morphology, anatomy, physiology and biochemistry from the macro level right down to the level of organelles and cell chemistry. And also those things that are slightly harder to get a handle on, such as the mental processes in animals that inform behaviour. I don't care much for philosophical ramblings, but I suppose we are talking about things that we have, so far, got only rudimentary information about such as altruism and, er, free will. In any attribute of a living thing I'm looking for some selective advantage. That butterfly may send you into paroxysms of poetic delight (and why not), but, the last I heard, there isn't too much evolutionary advantage for an individual butterfly in looking pretty to a certain kind of receptive human eye (I might come back to that). In other words I'm looking for a a good reason for having every attribute. We can see a lot of apparent waste in evolution, though the struggle for existence requires that "waste" (even though it makes God look like a prize shit, something that, thankfully, keeps theologists off the streets as they twist around looking for excuses for him). There has to be economy in evolution that ends in every trait of every organism having the potential at least to impart evolutionary advantage. Changes in the environment can make advantages into liabilities, which is integral to the process. So, if you posit free will as a genuine attribute, look for evolutionary advantage in it! Over to you...

As for that butterfly's subjective beauty, well it has pretty colours and an agreeable shape for very good reasons relating to increasing its chances of mating and passing on its genes. We see its beauty contributing to our own sense of wellbeing in a slightly different way (those poetic raptures again). There's something to build on there, not just something for our own aesthetic delight. Real appreciation of the natural world means increasing real knowledge of it. The more we know, the more fiercely we'll try to protect it. The more we protect it, the more likely we are to survive as a species. This needs work and a true understanding of evolution, not prayers. The greatest destroyers of the environment in Victorian England forced their employees to chapel on Sundays.