I was watching a documentary—I believe it was on Animal Planet. Dr. Richard Dawkins and a large team of evolutionary biologist were dissecting giraffes and showing the audience the different anatomical features that were evidence of evolution. They extended the large laryngeal nerve that traversed the entire neck up and down, rather inefficiently, as clear evidence that the giraffe could not have been created since a better idea would be to run a shorter, less circuitous, nerve from the brain to the endpoint at the larynx just a few inches away.

It was interesting but also a bit ludicrous since, almost as if playing a childish game, the team was not allowed to use a particular word, even if appropriate, fearing it might give credence to the “unspeakable” alternative theory of animal origins. Understand that I don’t disagree with the mechanics of evolution, but the Dawkins’ team was taking more than a scientific stance on this point—perhaps even a religious one —complete with threats of excommunication for those that trespassed and spoke the forbidden word: design.   I thought about the flawed giraffe and the argument that this animal with elongated neck and laryngeal nerve could not have been created, under any mechanism, intelligently; clearly not.  After all, what Mook would waste yards of nerve fabric when all that’s needed is a few inches?

There is a famous sculpture called Pietà chiseled out of a solid block of pure Carrara marble depicting the crucified Christ in the arms of the Virgin Mary. It is an astounding work by the great genius of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni.

Or is it?

The relative sizes of the subjects are totally out of proportion: whereas Jesus is shown to be a man of about six feet in height, Mary is a disproportionate nine foot woman. Since this is obviously a flawed design, could this have been created by anyone as intelligent as Michelangelo?

Unless of course Pietà is not a work of engineering.

Unless of course Pietà is a work of art.

Then why does it have to be anything but what the artist wants? Isn’t it His prerogative how the work is colored, cut or shaped? The prophet Isaiah is clear on this:

Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’  Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’?

Perhaps Dr. Dawkins is looking at the giraffe too scientifically; perhaps he should look at it aesthetically with a team of artists. Either way, only an idiot would suggest that the Pietà, as flawed as it might be, would have come about by a blind collision of molecules.