It is not a logical question.

The painting is assembled and rearranged from pigment and wood pulp neither of which the artist created. The statue is revealed by uncovering it from it's surrounding stone by the artist who did not create the rock. The table is put together from carefully shaped pieces of wood. The carpenter did not create the tree. and so on...

In all cases the process of 'creating' actually means 'arranging' and is entirely predictable by science. "God created it" literally means it came into existence from nothing and is not related to the previous statements.

If they claimed that God bioengineered life on earth and geoengineered the solar system from existing materials the argument would hold however. But that would mean admitting that the solar system is older than both the Earth and Humanity and that just wouldn't do...

@James Prices answer. 'Creativity' isn't in the question or answer. It is purely about the speculation that if something exists it must have been made by someone/something. If a chair exists, somebody must have created it regardless of how creative or artistic the chair is. My point is that the definition of 'create' changes . For a chair and carpenter, 'create' means it was put together from existing materials. For the Earth and God, 'create' means magically popping out of thin air. A series of statements based on the first definition cannot conclude with a statement based on the second definition.

[edited to add the previous paragraph. We can't add comments until higher rep and I didn't want to pollute the answer list with a second post as this is a Q&A format, not a discussion thread]

I think there is a popular misconception that complexity implies design. Any engineer will tell you that the hallmark of good design is simplicity. Complexity, especially unnecessary complexity (e.g. vestigial organs) implies a process other than design (or that the designer is incompetent).

(echoing the above really)

Take man out of the centre of the universe and this question kind of disappears.

Ask them if they have ever spent time making a beautiful, toasted club sandwich, full of mayonnaise and mustard and brightly coloured things, and then dropped it on the floor. If they say yes, then concur that man indeed designed the sandwich, but who designed the mess? If man, then why is he so angry about it?

Our hypothetical creationist speaker is really making two different arguments. They're both fallacious, but in different ways. (And the imprecision of his language, itself, leads to the fallacy of equivocation, so it's an unholy Trinity.)

Argument 'A' is a deductive syllogism:

1. Complex, beautiful, intricately constructed entities must be intelligently designed.
2. Life is complex, beautiful, intricately constructed.
3. Life must have been intelligently designed.

But premise #1 is the very question under debate. If the theory of evolution is valid, then premise #1 is false. In order to demonstrate that premise #1 is true, we must first demonstrate that the theory of evolution is invalid. Therefore, we cannot use premise #1 to prove that evolution is invalid - this would be begging the question.

Argument 'B' is inductive:

1. Every time we see a complex, beautiful, intricately constructed entity in the process of creation, it results from intelligent design.
2. From this, we move to the general principle that all complex, beautiful, intricate constructions are intelligently designed.
3. See A2 and A3 above.

This is an inductive argument, and there's a strong philosophical case against all inductive arguments. We could stand on that point alone, but in the practical cut-and-thrust of a debate, this will embarrass us very quickly. (Especially since in a debate with a creationist, we're going to be appealing to scientific evidence, which is virtually all based on induction.) So we'd better come up with a more compelling response.

Putting aside the question of origins, living organisms are already very different, in many ways, from non-living entities. Even a microscopic plant can grow, metabolize, and reproduce. Even the most advanced robot can't. Since life is so different in these ways from non-living things, it is clearly unreasonable to generalize from non-living things to life.

I'd probably go for the variations on the 'turtles all the way down' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down argument, i.e. if god created the earth, who created god, and who created the creator of the creator...and from that ..if god doesn't need a creator, why should the earth. Might at least get them thinking.

i am no theist but there seems to be a logical flaw in stratofish's answer. it fails to ask what is creativity is while using creativity as a method of explaining the lack of existence of god. creativity is not based in the arranging of materials itself, these are tools to be used. the use of materials is the expression of creativity not creativity itself!!!(a discussion on the nature of creativity is an interesting discussion in of itself). this would give a theist an out, as they can claim god as a "better" artist, a true creator

ps can you explain further "In all cases the process of 'creating' actually means 'arranging' and is entirely predictable by science"

pps i am an atheist

A quick answer? Philosophers have been noodling on this one for millennia. Good luck.

The quickest answer that I can come up with is something like the following:

Short Answer: I would first point out that perhaps the appearance of design is superficial and if you look deeper, there are many things that would be very difficult to explain if life was indeed designed. You might like to ask them why a designer would design something like the appendix, whose only design function appears to be to rarely become inflamed and burst unless intercepted and surgically removed in time.

Slightly Longer Answer: If the above thought catches their interest I'd go on to point out that the major assumption here is that because a lot of things in the natural world have the surface appearance of design, they must therefore be designed. They'll hopefully agree that appearances can often be decieving, and in this case they are. The superficial appearance of design comes from a process called Natural Selection - a theory that has been observed, tested with a very high degree of success through after years of research and study going all the way back to the 19th century. They may wish to reject all those years of rigorous research, but they should at least accept that it is possible to explain the trivial appearance of design in ways that do not involve actual design.

Even Longer Answer: If they are receptive to this quick answer, you may wish to go into more detail about how Natural Selection produces the superficial appearance of design. Then perhaps you could go back to the original point and explain why in many ways they do not appear designed. It's true that through natural selection advantageous traits are passed on while others become filtered out, but the process is by no means perfect and happens across a long period of time, and a lot of 'junk' gets created or left behind, too.

If everything needed to be created, then what or who created God?

The problem theists have is they say that a complex universe must have a creator, but then don't apply the same logic to a omiscient, omnipotent god-thing.

To say that the universe couldn't possibly just occur naturally, but that god could do so, is contradictory.

A much more interesting question is: why is there something rather than nothing at all?

It's a bit flip, but the shortest answer is "You are wrong."

Or... "Your assumption that everything needs a creator is begging the question."

If they don't understand "begging the question" (and most people don't in the way it is intended as a logical fallacy) then how about:

"Your assumption that everything needs a creator is a mistaken premised based upon your faith based insistence that 'everything needs a creator' - your answer is inherent in your question and is totally circular. When you are ready to discuss this with real logic, then I can play nice too."

I do not claim to be the best ambassador for these arguments.

Disarm the false analogy:

We know painters exist so paintings are “goals”; we don't know if Creators exist so life is only an “outcome”.

I'm going to echo fran's response because it's much what I was thinking, but frame it as "the quick answer" in a putative conversation.

Q: "A Painting is designed and made by a person and so is building, everything needs to be created, so how do you explain life without a creator?"

A as Q: Who created the creator?

A: No one, the creator was always there.

Q: Then why couldn't life, the universe, and everything have always been there instead?

They are trapped in circular logic, and you need to make that apparent, and IMO the best way to do that is to turn the question back on them.