Drop the banana argument: humans bred that fruit
Don't useThis Christian argument does not hold up. Drop it.
The argument
In 2006 Ray Comfort called the banana "the atheist's nightmare." Shaped for the human hand. A tab at the top.
A biodegradable wrapper.
Why it fails
The Cavendish banana is a seedless cultivar. Centuries of human selective breeding produced it.
Wild bananas are stubby, packed with hard seeds, and barely edible. So the argument credited God with the work of farmers.
It is a real argument for intelligent design, just not the designer intended. Comfort himself later conceded the point.
It lives on in atheist spaces as a joke format.
Its gentler cousin
"How can you look at the trees and not believe?" is not wrong as testimony. Psalm 19:1-4 and Romans 1:20 describe a real perception of God through what he made.
But testimony is not argument. Offered as an argument, it invites the reply Darwin felt himself.
He wrote to Asa Gray in 1860 about the Ichneumonidae, the wasps whose larvae eat caterpillars alive. Look also at childhood cancers.
Look at the parasites of the eye.
The wider damage
Everyday biological perfection collapses under bad design too. The recurrent laryngeal nerve takes an absurd detour.
The vertebrate eye has a blind spot. And using a refuted argument taxes the credibility of every good argument you make afterwards.
Do not use this one
Drop it. The skeptic's rebuttal is simply correct on the facts.
The wonder itself is legitimate, so say honestly that this is what the world looks like to you. But the argument form belongs to fine-tuning, where the numbers are real and the people arguing are physicists.
What to say
"I'm not going to use the banana one. It's wrong, and I'd rather show you the physics."
How they answer this — at its strongest
The banana was designed, by humans, by breeding, over thousands of years.
The skeptic is simply right here. Humans designed the banana, by breeding it over many years. Artificial selection is nature's own process, run by hand.
And claims that living things are 'perfect' collapse under bad design. The long detour of the recurrent laryngeal nerve. The blind spot in the vertebrate eye. Parasitic life cycles.
Ray Comfort himself later gave up the banana point. 'Look at the trees' shows that the speaker feels wonder. The atheist may share that wonder, and put it down to deep time and selection. It moves no one who does not believe first.
The verdict
Don't use it: the skeptic is right, and using it taxes everything else you say.
Don't use. The skeptical counter is right on the facts. And using refuted arguments taxes the credit of every good argument you make after it.
Redirect instead. The wonder is fine as testimony. Say 'this is what the world looks like to me', honestly. But the argument itself belongs to fine-tuning, where the numbers are real and the people across the table are physicists.