It’s difficult to know what’s going on at the Discovery Institute these days. It seems that most of the recent posts at their creationist blog are about videos they’ve made. Maybe they finally figured out that when they explain their “theory” of intelligent design in essays, no one is impressed, so they’re making a bunch of videos with gee-whiz visual effects and hoping to make an impression that way.
Whether this is a whole new strategy is difficult to determine, but another example of it is at their website today. Instead of ignoring such things, as we’ve been doing, we thought we’d mention it — at least this once. Their newest post is titled When It Comes to a Humpback Breaching, “The Language Fails”. It has no author’s byline. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:
The Northwest premiere of the new Illustra Media documentary Living Waters: Intelligent Design in the Oceans of the Earth is coming up August 7 in Seattle. Don’t forget to register for this one.
That’s the most thrilling news we’ve heard since we learned about Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Hey — we’ve heard about Illustra Media before. David Coppedge is (or was) a member of the Illustra Media board. The last time we wrote about him and his litigation was The David Coppedge Case: It’s Over. It’s funny how the same names keep showing up. It’s almost as if events were — gasp! — designed to be this way.
Anyway, then the Discoveroids tell us:
Want a little taste of what’s in store? Click on the image above [which is in the original Discoveroid post] to watch a brief excerpt from the segment on whales. As Discovery Institute’s Paul Nelson comments, “The language fails” in trying to describe the awesome beauty of a humpback breaching, the length of a city bus and leaping from the water into the air.
Wanna see a humpback breaching? (In the ocean, not the bell tower of Notre Dame Cathedral, you dunderhead!) Then visit the Discoveroid website. One last excerpt:
You can tell imaginative stories about how such a thing might have evolved without guidance or intent, but then you see the exultant, majestic result and you think: That is art. A whale is art.
Oooooooooooooh, it’s art — that means it was created by an artist! And that means — yes! — it’s the work of the intelligent designer — blessed be he!
We think the Discoveroids have finally figured out how to promote their “science.” These videos are so much more effective than essays by Casey.
Copyright © 2015. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Don’t forget to register for this one.
Yes, they always want to add you to their donations begging and mailing list, and perhaps be rather choosy as to who they allow through the door. Don’t know if they’re charging for this or maybe it’s a “suggested donation” at the door, but either way they’ll try to lighten your wallet.
The whale is art.
And one then is tempted to allude to Joyce Kilmer’s Trees, and say that no human artist has ever approached the whale in its artistry. So the analogy with art needing an artist breaks down.
That individual, that particular whale is art.
That does not deny that that particular whale was the product of natural processes of reproduction.
For every artist cannot rely on artistry alone, but must take account of the medium in which the artistry is being expressed. Artists must deal with the natural world.
And saying that it is art does not explain how the whale got to be.
Just as saying that the Mona Lisa is art does not explain the smile.
And saying that the sculptures on Mount Rushmore are art does not, according to ID, differentiate them from the weeds and flies growing there.
What is not art?
Yes, the whale is art, just as its parasites and diseases and festering wounds are also art. Are we to expect to see a video extolling the art of the Plasmodium and Anopheles?
Is that the “evidence” Klinghoffer was talking about?
The Northwest premiere of the new Illustra Media documentary Living Waters: Intelligent Design in the Oceans of the Earth
The phrase “Living Waters” is a quote from the New Testament, so nothing religious about that, pure science here. You will also recognize “Living Waters” as the name of Ray Comfort’s ministry. So the Discovery Institute’s Bible thumping is not even original.
IIRC the original passage is Jesus quoting the OT “living waters will pour from your heart”, the problem being, the quote is inaccurate, it’s not in the OT. So either Jesus had the Biblical knowledge of a modern creationist (make $%!* up) or somebody changed the OT. This is one of a class of problems called non-prophesies where Jesus or NT authors quote passages from the OT… that aren’t in the OT.
Whale evolution is actually very well documented in the fossil record. Discoveroid “thinking” is also well established — in the intellectual fossil record, and comfortably fits into medieval theology.
@waldteufel: Yep. Here’s a nice link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans
ID proponents always say that their designer makes “prefect” designs with nothing unnecessary. What is their explanation for the redundant, and unattached, vestigial leg and pelvic bones that exist in some species of cetaceans?
“That is art. A whale is art.”
Is a sunset art?
RSG says: Yep. Here’s a nice link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans
Hey there! Enough of your imaginative story-telling!
Is that the DI using the classic creationist “everything is so beautiful, god must have made it” assertion? Not even close to pretending to care about science any more.
I want them to tell me if the designer created just one whale kind, or each species including humpback, or some predecessor with legs … or each and every whale that ever existed. See I can ask impossible questions, too, Collin.
You can tell imaginative stories about how, like, man, a whale is art, but not without sounding like a pot-smoking 1960s hippie. And somehow I doubt that this is company creationists want to keep.
Let’s imagine this same theme, but with a different animal, shall we? Here goes:
“You can tell imaginative stories about how such a thing might have evolved without guidance or intent, but then you see the exultant, majestic result and you think: That is art. A dung beetle is art.
Big whales are impressive, certainly, but I don’t find them beautiful. Some of them seem quite grotesque to me.
I prefer sea-lions.
Can we get a schism going here, or a heresy trial?
Whales! Birds of Paradise! Waterfalls! Sunsets!
But also chiggers, typhus ticks, guinea worms and mosquitoes.
All things dull and ugly
All creatures short and squat
All things rude and nasty
The Lord God made the lot
Each little snake that poisons
Each little wasp that stings
He made their brutish venom
He made their horrid wings
All things sick and cancerous
All evil great and small
All things foul and dangerous
The Lord God made them all
Each nasty little hornet
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spiky urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did
All things scabbed and ulcerous
All pox both great and small
Putrid, foul and gangrenous
The Lord God made them all, Amen
Monty Python
Perfectly good theology, too.
@Mark Germano. I happen to think Dung Beetles are pretty cool. Imagine a world without them? Up to our eyes in it! All hail the mighty yet humble Dung Beetle. @ Dave Luckett. Truer words never spoken. Leave it to the Python to put things in proper perspective!
Eric Lipps: “…but not without sounding like a pot-smoking 1960s hippie.”
Now, I’m not speaking for myself, mind you, but I suspect you may be stepping on a few toes here, Eric.
That comment should have a smiley face after it (if that’s not obvious).
Some more things that the IDiot-creationists must believe are artistic and awesomely beautiful. After all, the same designer-creator-guider-god is responsible for everything.
poop
the act of pooping
snot
ear wax
toe nail fungus
cancer and all other diseases
pain
hunger
thirst
loneliness
hemorrhoids
miscarriages
earthquakes that kill
storms that kill
floods that kill
fires that kill
asteroids that kill
all disorders/syndromes
murder
sin
evil
death
Oh wait, they believe that their chosen designer-creator-guider-god is only responsible for the ‘good’ (artistic, awesomely beautiful) stuff and that all of the ‘bad’ (ugly, icky, harmful, deadly) stuff is Satan’s fault (with the assistance of a bunch of demons and such). Hmm, didn’t ‘God’ create Satan (and demons), and everything else, according to the bible?
Yeah, well, it’s always convenient to have a scapegoat, especially an imaginary one, to shift the blame from an allegedly perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, designer-creator-guider ‘God’, that is also imaginary.
The “Anonymous” comment above is mine. Something weird is going on with my Google log in.
I decided to write this for posting on the Bible.and.Science.Forum blog but wanted to share it here because this was the third time I’d seen this misunderstanding of the passage.
[I’ve seen this claim concerning John 7:38 several times in the past year online. Not sure how it got started but it is fascinating to see such a basic textbook concept treated as some sort of “problem” and “error” when it is, at most, a “punctuation anachronism fallacy” that leads to misunderstanding. Not only did Jesus not “misquote the OT”, what he did is not such a rare rabbinical practice. Sadly, “Creation science” is not the only pseudo-scholarship multiplied on the Internet. (That’s NOT to say that all such trends are as deliberately dishonest as some of the mega-ministry websites, but some are just as impassioned and nearly as manic and careless. Some are so determined to find something to discredit in any way possible that they appear not to care whether any of the copy-and-pastes they’ve gathered from other websites with similar objectives are at all credible themselves. “Creation science” is not unique among pseudo-scholarly movements online and it’s difficult for the general public to evaluate what they are reading.)]
Non-majors often make this kind of mistake in misunderstanding quotation and paraphrase in the ancient world, but the blame could easily be placed upon several popular Bible translations as they try to be “helpful” to the reader but provide too much help in the process and go BEYOND what the text actually says. And in an undergrad Greek New Testament class where students are also following along in their own favorite English Bible translation as a “cheat sheet”, I could immediately tell which ones had worked from a New American Standard Bible (NASB)–because they thought Jesus was quoting from the Old Testament–while some of the students using the NIV as their cheat sheet would realize that it is a “conflated paraphrase”, a combining the thoughts of two or more scripture passages as a summary statement.
Many entire books have been written on the treatment of the Old Testament in the New Testament. And because the NT often quotes from the Greek LXX rather than the Hebrew Masoretic Text, things get interesting quickly. Rather than getting bogged down in all of that I’ll focus just on this one example, as it is also illustrates the fact that ancient Greek of the first century lacked conventions which we take for granted. Here we go:
In high school English class, we learn that English sentence can quote a speaker/writer in either of two ways:
1) Direct discourse involves quoting the exact words of the speaker/writer by using quotation marks:
Yesterday John said, “Tomorrow I will drive into town.”
It is called direct discourse because we are given the exact words as John said them and matching pairs of double quotation marks separate John’s exact words from the rest of the sentence.
2) Indirect discourse can involve all sorts of “summary statements” or paraphrasing of what John said. All of the following are possible:
Yesterday John said that he would drive into town the next day.
Yesterday John said that he would drive into town today.
John said that he would be driving into town today.
That last statement of the three “loses” some information found in the other three. We can’t tell WHEN John made the original statement. But that is the nature of paraphrase and indirect discourse. There is more leeway as to how much of the original information is shared. ALL THREE of the statements are true in what they reveal.
So, how does one know whether the statement one is reading is direct or indirect discourse? In English the quotation marks are dead giveaways. When we see quotation marks in the middle of a sentence, we know that we are reading the exact words of the speaker/writer. And if we don’t see quote marks but we DO see the word “that”, we know that it is indirect discourse and that we are reading a paraphrase. (However, the “that” is often omitted but assumed to be implied.)
And there’s one other complication: If the speaker/writer being quoted also quotes someone/something else, we see single quotation marks inside of double quotation marks. So in John 7:38 in the NASB translation, we read:
[Jesus said] “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'” (NASB)
…..so Jesus said everything shown between the double quotes and “the Scripture said” everything between the single quotation marks: ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’
Couldn’t be simpler! Right? Wrong. Ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament didn’t contain double quotation marks and single quotation marks. (Indeed, as standardized punctuation, they are relatively recent inventions.) And that is why the NIV translators chose to follow the Greek NT text more closely and avoided “over-interpreting” what Jesus said. Despite the NASB being famous for “literal translation” and the NIV being known for “dynamic equivalence”, the NIV could be considered more faithful to the Greek text by leaving it to the reader to determine what Jesus meant in using the Old Testament [i.e., Scripture]. The NIV doesn’t use the single quotation marks because it doesn’t make any decision as to whether Jesus was using direct or indirect discourse.
[Jesus said:] “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (NIV)
The traditional KJV, being based on a “modernization” of the 1611 KJV, never uses quotation marks. Not only are quote marks a more modern invention (in standard use), they are actually an editorial decision which many scholars believed best left to the reader. Thus:
He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (KJV)
This is a good example of several popular English Bible translations trying to “help” the modern day reader and going too far. The New American Standard Bible uses single quote marks within the double quote marks to give the impression that Jesus is quoting a particular passage from the Old Testament. But he isn’t. And that is why many Bible translations leave out the single quote marks, because it is NOT a quotation from the Old Testament.
Jesus was doing what rabbis did all the time: condensing thoughts from multiple Tanakh texts–just as we do likewise when summarizing and paraphrasing: “The Constitution says American citizens have a right to bear arms and worship or not worship as they see fit.” Would anyone complain that the Constitution contains no such sequence of words? No, because English speakers understand that “says” doesn’t necessarily require that a direct quotation follows. Plus, Americans are sufficiently familiar with the Bill of Rights that they recognize the statement as referring to two of the best known Amendments to the Constitution.
So what was Jesus saying in Jesus 7:38? Much has been written on this verse because there are many Old Testament passages summarized by the statement and Christians have traditionally considered them prophecies fulfilled by Jesus:
“Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
For example:
Isaiah 44:3
For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.
So one theme is that various OT prophecies spoke of water being poured out on a dry land as a blessing to later generations–and that God’s Spirit would be poured onto those future descendents of Israel.
Isaiah 58:11
The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
So, likewise, the future descendents will themselves be springs of water that continually bless.
So Jesus is speaking of these scripture themes when he says:
“Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
Indeed, Jesus is telling his audience: “When you believe in me, you become the living fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies. You become foundations of water pouring out on a dry land as a blessing to others.”
He is identifying those “future descendents” prophesied by Isaiah. Jesus is telling his followers that THEY are those “never failing springs” that Isaiah saw in the future.
Not only the learned rabbis in Jesus’ audience understood this but also all observant Jews who obeyed the Torah’s commands to continually refer to the scriptures in their daily lives so that their children would be familiar with them understood the scriptural allusions. They wore phylacteries on their arms and wrote scriptures on their doorposts. Jesus and most any rabbi of his day could paraphrase multiple scriptures in a single statement and observant Jews would easily tie the concepts together. Most would not say, “That doesn’t sound familiar. I don’t recall that passage.” Anybody who finds this kind of “deliberate conflation” strange should remember my example:
“The Constitution says American citizens have a right to bear arms and worship or not worship as they see fit.”
No, the Constitution does not “say” that word for word–but it certainly says that in terms of the ideas found therein. Indeed, this kind of “paraphrastic conflation” is very familiar to all of us but only sounds strange when we observe it in other cultures.
Not really. This is something we see whenever people try to critique the practices of another culture. We think what we have observed in another culture is strange and erroneous–even though we do the exact same thing in our own culture. Does it really seem likely that someone like Jesus who went toe-to-toe against “the scribes and Pharisees” (the Ph.D. scholars who had memorized entire Tanakh texts) would muck up a scripture quotation? Or was he likely to be less skilled at it than a English Bible reader in the year 2015? Did Jesus have a reputation for misquoting the scriptures?
There is indeed an apt comparison to be made with Young Earth Creationists: They honestly believe that they are able to find errors in biology, paleontology, geology, and physics that the world’s Ph.D.s in those fields somehow failed to figure out. Likewise, modern day readers of ancient texts should think twice before assuming that they’ve found page after page of countless major errors in ancient texts which centuries of scholars somehow missed. (Yes, there are plenty of Bible critics who think that they’ve found long lists of errors–just as Young Earth Creationists think they’ve compiled long list of errors in peer-reviewed scholarship. When ideologies and emotions are at risk, caution and rigor are the first casualties of conflict.)
Failure to recognize a conflated paraphrase in the scriptures despite the same concept’s frequency in our own culture and language is a foible common to us all. This reminder of a common type of blindness to our own culture’s peculiarities that we find so easily in the cultures of others was well illustrated in a cartoon my department chairman kept on his office door. An American businessman stationed in India is intrigued by his Brahmin assistant’s elaborately constructed turban. After asking the Brahmin to demonstrate how he tediously layers his turban about his head, the American watches the man carefully tuck, pull, measure, and balance the high-grade fabric into the final result. As he finishes, the American says, “I’m impressed! Wow, that’s a lot of work. And it does look impressive. But on the other hand, it is such a great waste of time for something so non-essential that would only make one uncomfortable on a hot day. But enough of that for now. I’m going to be late for my meeting if I don’t hurry up. Help me find my damned tie and cuff-links.”
So, as I like to describe it, “It’s a tu quoque to you too.”
The Tooters have been flogging their dead whale story for years, totally ignoring the evidence that accumulates yearly. Such a stupid argument, even for the Tooters.
Anonymous: “Oh wait, they believe that their chosen designer-creator-guider-god is only responsible for the ‘good’ (artistic, awesomely beautiful) stuff and that all of the ‘bad’ (ugly, icky, harmful, deadly) stuff is Satan’s fault…”
If this post were about AiG, ICR or WND, I’d agree 100%. But this is about the DI. They’d have no problem admitting that the designer they claim to have caught red-handed designs the icky stuff too – if anyone ever asks them instead of assuming that they are just like AiG et al. Anyone who has read my posts over the last 15+ years will know that that is not a defense of the DI’s antics. Remember that one of them (Behe) admitted at Dover that the designer (the one he claims to have caught) could possibly no longer exist. Ken Ham would not be caught dead admitting that. Does that mean that Behe (and by default all Discoveroids, since none have criticized him) think that God is dead? Probably not. Only that they know they have not caught God, but that their fans and most critics are so easily fooled that they can make an occasional astonishing admission like that.
Do most Discoveroids personally believe that the real designer, as opposed to the possibly deceased one they claim to have caught, is God? Maybe, but so do ~1/2 of their “Darwinist” critics. The difference is that the latter is not trying to scam anyone.
The tuts can continue to put lipstick on their pig.
However, at the end of the day, its still a pig.
Which brings up the futility of debating a creationist.
it can be likened to trying to teach a pig to read.
Its a waste of time.
And it annoys the pig.
Better to just laugh at how ugly the pig is.
The reference to art is another hint at the religious underpinnings of ID. Art for whom? Do any other animals appreciate and admire the “art” of the breaching whale? Is the designer hanging around and appreciating his/hers/its artwork? No, the human narrator is observing the breaching whale as art, so if whales were intentionally designed as an esthetic pleasing objects, they were placed in the oceans as such for man’s pleasure only. (never mind that man slaughtered them to near extinction, in total disregard for the art of their breaching)
The idea that we are the ultimate purpose of the design of the universe, the earth, and all life on the earth is a completely religious philosophy. We know from the history of the movement that ID is solely a means of advancing theology, however these sorts of observations within the “science” of ID provide even further evidence. If there was a “Q and A” session at the end of the screening of this film, it would be a good question to ask. “Art for whom?”
@Holding The Line In Florida,
I have nothing against dung beetles. I just wanted everyone to have the visual of a dung beetle doing what it does best, and as it finishes a ball of dung, a narrator breathlessly exclaims, “It’s magnificent!”
Kind of a nice metaphor for the DI, actually. Just replace dung beetle with Casey Luskin, ball of dung with blog post, and narrator with David Klinghoffer.
I intended no offense with the metaphor above. To any dung beetles, I mean.
@Third Prof:
“Or was he likely to be less skilled at it than a English Bible reader in the year 2015? Did Jesus have a reputation for misquoting the scriptures?”
Those are unanswerable questions, based on an assumption without evidence. It’s at this point that you quit the scientific method and insert your personal interpretations.
Assuming that Jesus is historical (like I do indeed, because it explains a lot that otherwise can’t be explained) and that Jesus was from rural Nazareth it’s impossible to say how well educated Jesus was compared to the pharisees from Jerusalem, who had immediate access to all the sources they needed, something Jesus probably had not.
The problem is way, way easier, so it seems to me. So what if Jesus quoted the OT inaccurately? What conclusion must we draw? From a secular point inaccurate quotes are nothing special. It’s only human. From a religious point of view I don’t see either why it should be a big deal. It’s only a problem for fundies and literalists. According to the liberal view such an inaccuracy is nothing but an explanation, illustration and addition, to be expected from someone who claims to fulfil the OT law.
Like I already wrote I also relject the Bible’s infallibility regarding religious matters, but the reasons why go way, way beyond the scope of this nice blog.
Frank J said:
“If this post were about AiG, ICR or WND, I’d agree 100%. But this is about the DI. They’d have no problem admitting that the designer they claim to have caught red-handed designs the icky stuff too – if anyone ever asks them instead of assuming that they are just like AiG et al.”
Frank, I think that what I said does apply (more than well enough) to the DI (the people within it and their supporters, both vocally and financially), although Behe’s claims about Malaria could be considered as one exception. My application to IDiot-creationists of what I said may not be 100% accurate when considering the thoughts and claims of every single IDiot-creationist, but it may not apply to every single member or supporter of AiG or ICR or WND either.
I’ve seen many IDiot-creationists give credit to and praise (i.e. glorify) their imaginary designer-creator-assembler-guider-artist (i.e. ‘God’) for the design-creation-assembly-guidance of various ‘artistic’, ‘beautiful’, ‘wonderful’, ‘awesome’, ‘amazing’, ‘miraculous’, etc., things, such as sunsets, butterflies, breaching whales, rainbows, flowers, human intellect, love, good morals, life, vision, good health, etc., but I don’t recall ever seeing any of them writing anything along the lines of:
Barf demonstrates the artistic, creative power of Intelligent Design!
The awesome beauty of snot, toe nail fungus, and brain worms are artistic expressions of Intelligent Design!
Diseases, hunger, thirst, pain, retardation, miscarriages, blindness, bad morals, hate, sin, and death are wonderful, inspiring, miraculous examples of art that could only have come about via Intelligent Design! Praise the Designer!
Poop and pooping are miracles!
Earthquakes, storms, floods, fires, and asteroids that kill, especially in massive numbers, are wonderfully miraculous demonstrations of the Designer’s awesome, artistic talent, perfect morals, and omnibenevolent love!
The design-creation-assembly-guidance of Satan and Demons is some of the Designer’s most artistic work!
When I see those sorts of claims by IDiot-creationists as often as I see them attribute the ‘awesome’, ‘wonderful’, ‘miraculous’, ‘inspiring’, ‘artistic beauty’ of sunsets, whales breaching, flowers, butterflies, etc., to their imaginary designer-creator-assembler-guider-artist (i.e. ‘God’) I may start to accept that they also attribute all of the ugly, icky, harmful, deadly stuff to their imaginary designer-creator-assembler-guider-artist (i.e ‘God).
But we do see the ID crowd claiming credit for the flagellum of bacteria. (As well as the vertebrate adaptive immune system defense against bacteria!) And for sure, the whole mechanism of predation – the eyesight, flight and so on – of predatory birds is a matter of wonder. (As long as one does not, while reflecting on the beauty of the falcon’s flight, dwell on it being a design for killing.)
The whale is designed for killing, too. How many organisms does a humpback kill in a few minutes of feeding? Millions? Billions? Trillions?