Human evolution; our complex speech mechanism (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 17, 2019, 18:52 (1798 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The physical changes advanced with each homo stage including humans, but really functional language appeared 50,000 years ago perv theory. Form appeared before true function. That is what it proves. Design first.

dhw: What do you mean by “really functional language” and “true function”? Do you honestly think that communication between pre-sapiens and between early sapiens didn’t function? Nobody can possibly know how simple/complex early language was unless they were standing around with a tape recorder. Language must have evolved from simple beginnings to its current complexities as homos and humans built on the linguistic inventions of their predecessors in response to the need for a wider range of communication. But there would certainly have been long periods of linguistic stasis in times when societies themselves were static.

"Really functional language" and "true function" are meant to describe our speech ability starting 50,000 years ago. After your quibbling, the rest of your statement recognizes the progression of language after being give the anatomic mechanisms by phenotypic evolution. You cannot deny that, much as you would like to.

DAVID: your view is very different than mine in which I see Him as purely purposeful, who does not need spectacle

dhw; What do you mean by “purely purposeful”? How can you have a purpose without a definition of what that purpose is? You are playing with words. And you haven’t explained why you think your God is incapable of creating an autonomous mechanism.

You are twisting interpretations as usual. You know full well, I view God as much more serious than you do. Of course I've said, God is capable of inventing an autonomous mechanism. My objection to your proposal again returns to our individual concepts of who God is and what He controls from His desires.

DAVID: What is evolution but the development of all the forms that evolution has produced? If God is in change, the history of what He did is clear. And humans are certainly specially designed, compared to everything else.

dhw: Yes, evolution is the history of all the forms, and if God exists, that history is clear. But you keep telling us that EVERYTHING is specially designed – even the weaverbird’s nest – and THAT is the problem with your hypothesis, because you will insist that he specially designed EVERY form, and did so only in order to specially design humans.

DAVID: And just why can't it be proposed that He designed everything, while in charge of evolution?

dhw: Of course it can be proposed. It simply doesn’t make sense that he should specially design the whale’s flipper and the weaverbird’s nest when the only thing he wanted to design was H. sapiens.

Again a huge hole in your reasoning. Accepting that God is in charge of design within the process of evolution, what you say He should not do, is exactly what He had to do to eventually create humans by evolving them from previous forms. Obviously, we concptualize God very differently. Thus your problem with my view