You do make some interesting points. There might be an absolute authority of this sort if we could just ask God whether or not a given theory conformed to real

You do make some interesting points. There might be an absolute authority of this sort if we could just ask God whether or not a given theory conformed to reality, but in practice there is no absolute authority for judging work in science -- and you certainly find plenty of disagreement between scientists once you go beyond textbook material. Yes, you certainly do, even in the text book material. In fact, we have much better theories than Newton's Three Laws of Motion, but they are still taught because they are close enough for almost all practical applications and much simpler than appeals to relatively. But, even if reality does not always yield its secrets easily we know it has them. It is not at all clear to me that there is an objective to literary criticism. Being wrong about the kinds of subjects that the humanities touches on (e.g. relations between human beings) can also have real negative consequences, if you are not a robot. We have been talking about literary criticism. Some areas of the traditional humanities are clearly of great practical value at least in some cases. I did considerable research into certain areas of history as military intelligence analyst at one time and it was of tremendous value. Similarly, the study of languages is of obvious utility, and I have already provided an overview of why I see utility in art. I do not see how a knowledge of literary criticism would help someone relate to human beings in general though and I do not yet understand any value to it other than to those who make their living at it. I know you said that it has value to those who value it. And there is certainly some truth to that, but that is circular and does not explain why. * but the notion that critical and aesthetic judgments are "meaningless" is one that's been thoroughly discredited over the past 50 years.* Could you provide a reference or explanation? I am not at all trying to argue that they are meaningless, but that is far from obviously true. gain, if you believe that, then you believe that there is something which has intrinsic value -- utility. Actually I am saying that things which have utility have value because of that utility. That is not precisely the same thing, though I will admit at that point I am splitting hairs. I do take it as obvious (and you do not seem to disagree) that something which has utility clearly has value, but I do not see any intrinsic reason why anything without utility must have value. Again, I personally believe from a Christian standpoint that there are such things, but it is not obvious to me. In any case, it's not clear to me why someone looking at things from an atheistic viewpoint would choose utility as his yardstick for value. I'm certainly not trying to say that they would. What I am saying is that there is no obvious reason that they would value other things, while it is obvious they would value utility.