If you see a picture, you know there has to be an artist

[Albino_Raptor]

Today I got hit with a line I didn't hear in a while. "How can you not believe in intelligent creation? If you behold a picture, you know there had to be an artist designing it. It is the same with our earth, our life."

No. If you want to go with an artwork comparsion, it is more like this: You take a bowling ball. A long and broad, wooden pole. Various tubes of oil paint. Various canvases. Plant the wooden pole into the earth. Place the bowling ball on top of the pole. Freely distribute the tubes of paint and canvases all over the floor surrounding the wooden pole. Then leave. After quite a while, the wooden pole will wither and mold away and at some point, the bowling ball will tumble, and fall down. Now in 99.^9% of cases, nothing interesting will happen. Either the bowling ball won't hit any of the paint tubes. Or the tubes it hits have dried out long before the pole withered into collapse. Or the bowling ball hits still functioning tubes, but the paint just sprays into useless, random directions. Or the paint hits one of the canvases standing around, but the result is nothing to write home about. Yet there is one tiny chance - so dwindingly small that you will need X00.000.000.000 x X00.000.000.000 x Y amount of trials - that the bowling ball induced chain reaction of perfect circumstances will create a random masterpiece, fit to be displayed in the Louvre.

And you see, there was no artist involved in creating said masterpiece. No care. No interest. No steered creativity. No thought process. No passion or desire. All you needed was a perfect coincidence born out of more attempts most human minds can comprehend. The right components in the right place. And an incredibly long amount of time.

[elliebean]

You just described Deism, haha!

But seriously, I think it's funny when people point to what (in their analogy) amounts to humans mimicking what they see in nature, as proof that a cosmic superhuman must have used a similar process (in imitation of what, who knows?).

"Of course Bob Ross is god; how else did everything get here?"

[hvargas]

A designer who is perfect will be incapable of designing an imperfection. Further, it will not know what an imperfection is. One who knows  " ALL " and  " ALL POWERFULL " , at the recognitions of some flaws in its design will had corrected it. There are too many wrongs with this picture vs. the rights. The odds are against a design model but to the beleivers, thats the best that they can hold themselves to. They don't see the flaws in their beleives.

[pinkocommie]

Perfection is a subjective concept.  One person's shattered cup is another person's thousands of pieces of perfect glass.  Arguing about perfection seems like a waste of time.

[Tank]

Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. Buy a copy and hit your interlocutor around the head with it until they agree you are right. Don't bother getting them to read it, they won't understand it, or want to understand it for that matter

[Sophus]

Sure there's an artist. But the artist doesn't have to be a being. Mother nature can make some beautiful patterns but her "art" is the product of natural processes, not done deliberately like Andy Goldsworthy. I suppose gravity is an artist too!

All in all, two sentences isn't about to shatter over a century of work in the field of Biology.  

[Albino_Raptor]

My short version answer is "Well, if I ever come across a rock where god signed the earth "Made by me", I will be convinced", but I do find the long version more thought stirring.  

Until then I am simply just living on a random blue marble flying through an alarmingly vast space.
And you know what? I'm completely okay with that. I like it here.

[philosoraptor]

Sounds like another version of the teleological argument.  Which has been proven false, time and time again.  Of course if you're arguing with someone who believes in it, they're probably not going to understand when you poke holes in their argument, anyway.

[i_am_i]

But life and the universe isn't a picture. My coffee cup isn't Socrates. The jar of peanuts that sits on my desk isn't a motor yacht.

[Ellainix]

Pokemon is an example of intelligent design. Real life is not.

[philosoraptor]

Pokemon is an example of intelligent design. Real life is not.

I think that is probably debatable.  

On the flip side, the existence of Twilight has to guarantee there is no such thing as intelligent design.

[Ellainix]

If half the creatures from Pokemon existed, Evolution would surely be refuted.

[theTwiz]

If half the creatures from Pokemon existed, Evolution would surely be refuted.

Counterpoint:

[Ellainix]

That's a metamorphosis, not evolution.

[Squid]

Today I got hit with a line I didn't hear in a while. "How can you not believe in intelligent creation? If you behold a picture, you know there had to be an artist designing it. It is the same with our earth, our life."

A simple retort: "Faulty comparison thus your argument is invalid.  Thanks for playing."