You said, if we observe nature and I gave you examples, now you are talking about computers and man made stuff. Yes, we know things are made by humans, how do you know a nuclear power plant is made by humans, tho?
''Machines, even the machines of nature that we use to make our machines, have makers. We see nothing else. Machines have makers.'' What do you mean we see nothing else? We know humans are capable of creating stuff but a plant, tree or a rock are not man made and there is nothing that indicates they were made by a ''maker''.
''But there is tremendous intelligence in the way it all works.'' There is some and there is some that's not very intelligent, look at humans, they have so many flaws, look at the earth, so many things can kill you.
''and nothing that we know of that shows the opposite (like a car appearing out in the desert out of thin air)'' We can see mountains forming without an intelligent being, rocks, plants, trees, etc etc, plenty of things form without any intervention.
So we agree that if we know that certain machines are man-made, then we know that they are man-made. We can only guess that a nuclear power plant is made by humans. I mean, just because they look and act like humans doesn't mean that they are humans.
We see nothing other than machines having makers. The question is who the makers are.
Yet with all the flaws in humans, the population is continuing to grow tremendously. In other words, the flaws have been overcome to a great extent. The idea of intelligence with flaws is a complex one.
How do you know that "We can see mountains forming without an intelligent being, rocks, plants, trees, etc etc, plenty of things form without any intervention?" The subatomics in all material acts in machine ways. Machines have makers. If there doesn't happen to be any intervention or observation of the maker, but rather, the machines act automatically according to preset cause and effect, this only shows that the intelligence behind them is extremely great, making our description of God extremely inadequate.
The point is, we have no example where we can show even one machine that we know for a fact has no maker. The closest that we might be able to come, is to suggest that we don't know if a machine has a maker or not. But we can show millions of machines in which we can identify the maker. The longer history goes on, the more machines we will be able to show that for a fact have makers. But we still won't be able to show any machines that we know for a fact don't have a maker. I would suggest that we have passed the point long ago that the simple odds of the many machines that we know have makers, against the fact that we don't even know of one machine that doesn't have a maker, shows that all machines have makers.
While the machine/maker odds haven't approached the C&E odds, we still have tremendous machine/maker odds.
So, show us a machine of nature that we know for a fact doesn't have a maker.
''We see nothing other than machines having makers. The question is who the makers are.'' No, again, we don't. We only see humans making stuff. ''The point is, we have no example where we can show even one machine that we know for a fact has no maker'' And you can't show one that's made by something other than animals.
Your argument goes like this: Humans make stuff therefore all the other stuff that's not made by humans must have a maker too but there is no relation there, it's just an assumption, nothing indicates that the other stuff requires a maker
''So, show us a machine of nature that we know for a fact doesn't have a maker.'' Show us one that you know for a fact is not made by animals.
The question is: How do you determine whether something is designed or not