Cross Post: Brains Conquer Beauty?

While reading in the library today, I happened upon a copy of "Sacred History Magazine" that was on the table I was sitting at. As I was flipping through the pages, I came across an advertisement that caugt my attention. The title read, "Brains Conquer Beatuy." Apparently some scientists have discovered a way to make fake diamonds that "look even better than the vast majority of mined diamonds." They go on to state that "only experienced diamond appraisers...are able to make the distinction between a flawless natural diamond and the scientifically perfect" model from the lab.

I have seen real diamonds before. They are a beautiful stone. Held to light they are dazzling and contain colors that can shock even a creative imagination. yet I wonder if the claim of "perfection from the laboratory" is not bordering on some deeper concept.

It would seem important to remember that these lab diamonds , however wonderfully cut and clear, are still, at best, good imitations. I am not raising an indictment of the product or ones like it, which seem to be visually pleasing, but the fact that it is still a lab diamond makes it very different from a real diamond. Functionally, in sight and quality, for what it is, the lab diamond may be superb. Yet there is something tragic in the claim to have "cracked the code" of beauty. It reduces something beautiful to a mere function, in this case the appearance. Value then is found in the quality of the imitation.

My girlfriend, Melissa, is very, very beautiful. If cloning does eventually come about, and scientists in a lab somewhere begin advertising that 'brains have conquered beauty; we now have the ability to produce copies of Melissa at a low cost that is just as radiant as the original, but that does not ever get ill or grow tired.' How profoundly hideous! The good news here, folks, is that it is impossible to do this, because no lab could reproduce the subtlety or mystery or complexity, or any of the numberless qualities that work into what makes the brilliance of Melissa.

With the lab replicas of diamonds, scientists have an easier job that this. They do not have to make up for the mystery of the human soul. But they still have the tall, and in my opinion impossible, order of replicating the mystery of what makes a diamond truly beautiful. If it were really about the appearance alone, then there would not be so much mythos surrounding them. Can the lab re-create the awe and wonder that the seemingly chaotic pressures and forces in the earth could arrange something that is at the same time so delicate and yet so immensely strong? Can they copy the wonder that God would make room in his plan for something so seemingly gratuitous as this? The lab attempts to give the spledour of reality to an imitation. i ask, however, if it is better to merely experience, even if for a fleeting moment, something real, or to have possession and permanence of merely a dream?