Yes, this is true:

I have often been intrigued about beauty. We talk about beauty being "in the eye of the beholder" but how true is that statement? The question needs to be asked- Is the object really beautiful (objectively beautiful) or is it merely an object and the beauty is in my head? Is beauty something I have been conditioned to confer on it or attribute to it or is there intrinsic beauty that resonates within me -Does it have actual beauty instilled in its very nature? Or then again- is it both objectively beautiful (in itself) and reflectively beautiful (in my head)?

One of the ways of ascertaining objectivity is repeatability, its universality. While beauty has an element of preference (in certain Pacific Island cultures big is beautiful, while in others the slim look is in vogue) there is also its universality. Whatever the personal preferences involved, beauty is a universal fact of human existence.

If an object of beauty is recognized by many over a long period of time one can be more confident of it being objectively beautiful. So essentially, we may assume that beauty is intrinsic, not just something humanly and arbitrarily in the eye of the beholder. This stands even clearer when the object is not manmade, for instance- a beautiful mountain lake scene.

Please bear with me a little longer. There is a point to all this!

Let's summarize what we have covered.

Beauty is a human thing, or to be more precise it is a mind thing, a capacity of the intellect. One needs to ask the question what do we mean by beautiful? Whatever else you may say about it, one thing is sure- it is personal. By that I don't mean it is a matter of personal taste or preference but I mean that only persons are capable of appreciating beauty. I mean the appreciation of beauty is a capacity of the intellect.

It is also has objectivity, universality- so it is not necessarily dependent on our humanity. A beautiful lake scene does not rely on us to be beautiful, even if we aren't there it remains beautiful.

This poses a difficulty and another question: How can it be intrinsically (in itself) beautiful without us, if we are'nt even there, if we have already decided that beauty is a quality of intellect both to fashion and create or to appreciate and apprehend? Many people have commented on not just the beauty of material things but of immaterial things. Like beauty in mathematics. Einstein once said "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility"

Beauty, like mathematics (see the piece "Mathematics and God" http://struth-his-or-yours.blogspot.com/2008/11/mathematics-and-god.html ) reflect the work of intellect or mind, and yet maths just like beauty do not depend on the human mind, maths was if you like discovered but not invented, and yet it- like beauty- is a necessary corollary of mind. That is- without mind there is no maths or beauty.

As Arthur Peacocke in his book "Paths From Science Towards God"- "...why should the world possess this embedded rationality amenable to the most comprehensive analysis of which the human mind is capable and to formulation in terms of often the most abstract of human concepts? The simplest explanation, and so the best in this global context, is that at the source of the existence of all being, the Ultimate Reality, must posess something akin to, but far surpassing, human rationality -must be supremely and unsurpassedly rational." (Emphasis in bold mine)

Given the truth of all the above the most reasonable conclusion is that even "natural beauty" has had the benefit of a master craftsmans intellect to fashion it.

Many are constantly admiring the beautiful design in the universe, whoever heard of design without a designer?

In exactly the same way, beauty is both instilled in the object by a supreme intellect and we as recipients of that cosmic designer have had the capacity to fashion and comprehend beauty in order that beauty resonate within us.

The appreciation of beauty is not a requirement of evolution.

The intrigue is in the fact that not only is a thing beautiful but we are able to perceive the beauty. It seemed an intuitive thing to know the wonder in this.
Yes this is true, we recognize a thing of beauty because primarily a Creative, beautiful God first made it beautiful, instilled beauty into it and correspondingly gave us an eye to perceive or recognize that beauty. This is what recognition truly means. God is cognizant of beauty; he knows- is conscious- of it and instils it in something/someone and we re-know it, seeing it after him.

What I hadn’t reckoned on is the narrow view I had taken of this phenomenon.

Not just beauty but all knowable facts are available for us to search out only because God has made the universe intelligible, he has firstly put an interpretation on them, and then gave us certain capacities to know this after him.

From this it follows, that every fact known presupposes the existence of God, because the intelligibility of the universe is a cogent witness to an already interpreted reality.

For example, it is a known fact that H2O is the chemical name for a molecule of water so named because for every two atoms of Hydrogen there is one atom of Oxygen.

Every molecule of water has two atoms of hdrogen and one atom of oxygen. The formula H2O remains true, no mattter what race of people or what gender anlalyzes it. Can one really say, "Its not fair to oxygen that there are two atoms of hydrogen in water; so to be fair, there should be two atoms of oxygen as well? You can give two atoms of oxygen if you want to -but if you drink it, it will bleach your insides, because that would make it hydrogen peroxide and not water. (From Glimpsing the Face of God, Alister McGrath and The Grand Weaver, Ravi Zacharias.)

If it is possible to see that in physics- matter and the naming of the matter are directly connected and not arbitrary at all, because of a prior instilled intelligibility, then is it such a great wonder to acknowledge the universals and absolutes inherent in morality and metaphysics?

The language of love is universal and absolute, good and evil are not merely human constructs conveniently at the disposal of whatever moral code happens to be in vogue.