"Before the word," the "essay: concepts" article written this month by Gary F. Marcus, (_Nature_ v. 431, 14 Oct. 2004, p. 745) carries the introduction: "Language evolution: evolutionary vestiges may provide clues to the ultimate origins of human language." This certainly sounds relevant, but it is more annoying and pathetic than interesting or challenging. Marcus is "in the Department of Psychology, New York University" NY, USA. Does he have a PhD or other advanced degree? I don't know, it doesn't say. It seems to me even a PhD in psychology wouldn't qualify someone to expound much on an imaginary process that wouldn't even have left anything we could positively identify as evidence. In sum, the article is mere speculation that certain basic functions of our minds/brains could be clues as to how language is supposed to have evolved.
He does at least admit that "parallels alone are not enough to establish shared lineage between two systems -- they could instead represent convergent (independent) evolution." Not surprisingly he doesn't even consider that similarities may have nothing to do with evolution. He suggests looking for "panda's thumb" equivalents in the way our brains work. Apparently he isn't aware that creationists have already explained why the panda's "modified sesamoid bone" isn't evidence that it gradually evolved from an ordinary wrist bone.
In his opinion, "According to an optimal design, if the capacity for understanding language were evolved from scratch, it would be possible to reliably retrieve individual bits of syntactic structure on the basis of their location in a hierarchical structure, independently of their content -- as in most digital computers."
This may qualify as one of the stupidest (I'm sorry, I just can't put it any gentler) supposedly intellectual things I've ever read. First of all, nobody on earth has every designed an optimal human brain, so how does he know what's optimal in this case?
Secondly, if our brains don't function optimally, that may logically be due to degeneration from an optimal design just as well as random changes producing a working system -- and adding empirical observations, the first is far more likely, as we see such degeneration all the time but never see dynamic organized complexity arise by chance.
Thirdly, if language were indeed comparable to digital computer operations, then the parallel would be to a designed object and so would not be an argument that it had "evolved from scratch" -- but you can bet your booties evolutionists would argue the "hierarchical" structure would be evidence for evolution.
Finally (yet going back to the first point) an "optimal" system for language might well sacrifice things such as "reliable retrieval" of every bit of syntactic structure in order to maximize ability to deal with really important things, semantics and content. After all, computers have not evolved the ability to understand language -- in fact, we're just now getting them to do some translating that isn't horrible, even with our best intellects working on the task. There are translation sites on the Web, such as Babelfish, but these ordinary translation programs are really not very good at all. Marcus lamely allows that "content-dependence may have its advantages," but he fails to consider that a design (or filtered product of chance) that slavishly optimizes retrieval of syntactic information might be a dead-end as far as producing a system capable of a rich, useful language in the real world.
It's not really worth going over the rest of his speculations in detail, they're so obviously thin: "might...might...might...may...might...If...might...may have...could...may be able..." Oh, that last is in this interesting conclusion: "At the same time, by highlighting how new mechanisms can be built on top of old, we may be able to make better sense of the mystery of how, within a relatively short period of time, with just a relatively small amount of genetic change, humans evolved the amazing gift of speech."
Huh, "mechanisms"? Just chance conglomerations that happen to work, right? "Built"? He means, "happened to come together." The part about "mystery" is certainly appropriate, for evolutionists are certainly in the dark when it comes to figuring out how the most complex object in the known universe, the human brain, came to be. And they insist that "science" can only look for the answer out in the dark, away from the light of the Truth and the obvious appearance of intelligent design. And once again, if evolution produced it, is it truly "amazing"? And it certainly isn\'t a "gift" because a gift implies a giver, and even if God "created through evolution," do we need to give Him credit for something that came about in a way that could happen without Him?
"Neuron protection agency" by Harry T. Orr (p. 747) and "Inclusion body formation reduces levels of mutant huntingtin and the risk of neuronal death" by Arraste _et al._ (p. 805) may have some good examples of complex design, but I bring them up because they illustrate one small but important thing, and that is that "experts" and scientists can look at good data, see a clear correlation, and yet end up with a conclusion that is the exact opposite of the truth. In this case, the experts had noticed that certain disorders of nerves "are characterized by an abnormal accumulation of macromolecules inside cells" and these accumulations are the "inclusion bodies" referred to in the report. When scientists were able to study genes and find mutations associated with these diseases, "it became clear that, in the inherited forms of each of these diseases, inclusion bodies contain the protein encoded by the gene containing the disease-causing mutation." This review article by Orr that I'm quoting from keeps referring to "debate" about the significance of these observations, the preview "this issue" item (p. xi) simply states that "inclusion bodies...are thought to cause the neuronal death that follows." It seems a logical conclusion. But as the title of the research paper indicates, in this study "inclusion bodies did not cause neuronal death but...improved survival, suggesting that they are a coping response."
Huh, "mechanisms"? Just chance conglomerations that happen to work, right? "Built"? He means, "happened to come together." The part about "mystery" is certainly appropriate, for evolutionists are certainly in the dark when it comes to figuring out how the most complex object in the known universe, the human brain, came to be. And they insist that "science" can only look for the answer out in the dark, away from the light of the Truth and the obvious appearance of intelligent design. And once again, if evolution produced it, is it truly "amazing"? And it certainly isn't a "gift" because a gift implies a giver, and even if God "created through evolution," do we need to give Him credit for something that came about in a way that could happen without Him?
Until Next Time,
David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.
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