Sunday, December 09, 2007

Have You Ever Seen a Painting Which Had No Painter?

This particular argument from Intelligent Design activists (re-packaged creationists) really chaps my hide. It's actually the use of a simple Logical Fallacy called "Argument from Personal Incredulity". The common examples creationists use are:
  • They hold up an image of daVinci's Mona Lisa, and say-- there must be a painter

  • They hold up an image of Mount Rushmore, and say -- there must be a sculptor
This is because, to a simple mind, imagining long periods of time like those that formed complex life though genetic mutation, and the millions of years it took for life forms to become perfected through natural selection -- are just too hard to imagine. This, of course, does not mean that it didn't happen that way.

Okay, so here are some questions I'd ask a creationist if they were to try these arguments on me.
  1. Okay, if you can't have a painting without a painter, wouldn't you agree that a painter can't make a painting without paints -- or brushes? Show me the evidence of God's workshop. Show me the tools and materials that God used to create all of this life. Show me God's "paintbrushes".

  2. So, anything that's sufficiently complex, like "man" for example, is too complex to arise from random chance. So man has a creator. Surely there's no creation more complex or amazing than God, right? So tell me, who's God's creator?
Any takers?

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