I agree with the above posters with regards to getting out of auto mode and whilst I am not addressing your original point I think this maybe useful.
The way I look at it is your camera is intelligent but it doesn't understand what you want from your picture or what it is actually taking a picture of, basically it attempts to focus and chooses a shutter speed, ISO and aperture based on the available light. So you could end up with a landscape with a shallow depth of field or a portrait with a massive depth of field which is probably not what you want.
For example if you shoot in AV you control the aperture so you are deciding on the depth of field, you can also select focus points so you can control the focus.
It seems complicated to begin with but you will get the hang of it with a bit of practice
