The picture and the quote above come from the Mitchell Park Conservatory in Milwaukee. Ben, Gillian and I went there on a field trip. Gillian got the picture of the flower in the dome that had the rain forest environment. After we visited in all the domes for a while the Conservatory had a class for the kids. As I sat in the classroom I noticed the above quote printed on one of the windows and my only thought upon reading it was “what an unsatisfying answer.” This is the best that naturalism can come up with? The answer is only utility, never beauty. But consider Sherlock Holmes’ refection on the matter:

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be build up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers. – Sherlock Holmes in The Naval Treaty