Intelligent Design - Would Dawkins Argue for Design If It Would Save His Life?

On the lighter side…

Modern Medicine faces a crisis! Millions of dollars of medical equipment is at risk of being misplaced, improperly maintained, and possibly lost forever. Patients’ lives are at stake.

The FDA has approved the AbioCor fully implantable artificial heart for dying heart failure patients who are too old or too sick for a heart transplant. Incredibly, once implanted, these artificial hearts may be “lost”. According to many Darwinists, biological sciences supposedly have no ability to distinguish between a natural vs. intelligent cause, so some years down the road, society is at risk that neither X-ray, open heart surgery, inspection, or direct visual comparisons will be able to distinguish an artificial heart derived via intelligent causes from a real human heart (which biologists claim is the result of the purposeless forces of natural selection acting upon random mutations).

Imagine the scenario where:

• the original surgeon who implanted the artificial heart is no longer living
• the patient is unconscious
• the patient’s medical records are missing or destroyed
  

Without intelligent design theory, how would a medical team determine the patient has an artificial heart and therefore needs routine maintenance, such as, battery, valve, or unit replacement? The biologist supposedly has no detection techniques to discriminate between natural law, random chance, and intelligence as causal factors or originating the heart so how can they discriminate between a human heart and an artificial heart?

• Complexity won’t help, biologists already tell us the eye and brain are naturally evolved structures, so the observed complexity of the artificial heart won’t make the case for detecting the design of the artificial heart
• Function won’t do it, biologists already tell us the flagellum is naturally evolved and its mega-rpm propeller far exceeds the beats per minute of any heart
• Form won’t do it, we can’t assume that metal, plastic, or even a battery is the product of intelligent cause, for that’s simply a ‘god-in-the-gaps’ approach we are told. Give research more time and funding, they simply haven’t yet found the natural law that is responsible for making ni-cad batteries!
• Here’s the clincher (we might think). Information was found in the hearts ROM chip with instructions to increase the heart beat during certain physiological conditions. But wait, information is no empirical marker of intelligence, for monkeys with typewriters, or sticks in an ocean wave, both leave informational patterns on the medium of paper and sand.
  

Alas, the medical team couldn’t tell a real heart from an artificial heart. Therefore, the battery wasn’t changed, the artificial heart wasn’t replaced every five years, etc. The hypothetical patient dies. Could this be the necessary result of applying evolutionary assumptions to medicine?

Of course the biological community is not this badly misinformed about the difference between the causal factors of natural law, random chance, and design.

Imagine our hypothetical patient is the brilliant, Neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins. Also imagine:

• that he knows he’s had an artificial heart transplant
• the original surgeon has died
• and his medical records are lost
  

Much to his chagrin, it’s time for a battery replacement and no one in the medical community believes Dawkins when he claims he has an artificial heart. He knows, however, if he doesn’t get the new battery, he dies.

What would Dawkins do?

• Would he appeal to our common sense, believing that we can simply tell from the intrinsic properties of the artificial heart that it’s not a product of natural law or random chance? (Can’t you foolish people see this was designed, now replace the battery!)
• Would he attempt to locate some portion of the artificial heart that is irreducible complex and then begin to argue Dr. Behe’s case that irreducible complexity is a result of intelligent design?
• Would he focus on the informational content of the ROM chip and argue that complex specified information is the result of intelligent design, not natural law or chance?
  

Clearly, we don’t know what Dawkins would do in this hypothetical case, but we can be pretty sure he would do something since he now sees design (literally within him) and is motivated to argue its existence. We can be pretty sure he would argue for design and probably make a convincing case for it too… and why not? After all, he would have a lot of good information and scientific arguments to draw from, and his life would depend on it!

Lee Penick