Photo credits

The Embalse de Riano in northern Spain. The picture was taken by .... me!

Monday, December 17

The God Delusion

Imagine an art student who studies a painting in great detail. He examines the brush strokes and analyzes the different types of brush that must have been used. He forensically deduces the order in which the brush strokes were applied. He describes in great detail the different layers of paint and how long each layer must have been left to dry before the next layer was applied. He examines the chemistry of the paint and works out what raw materials were used to make them. The student recognises that the way in which all of these factors interact and come together gives rise to a painting that has great artistic merit. But because in his study he did not meet the artist himself, the student concludes that there was, in fact, no artist. There was no artist in the raw materials, or in the chemistry, or in the layers of paint, or in the brushes, or in he indentations left by the brushes in the paint. And so he writes a book to mock those who believe there is an artist and claim to know him, and he calls his book “The Artist Delusion”.

Of course, those that do know the artist know that in his mind he saw the image in an instant, but took years of hard work at the easel to bring the painting into being.

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