Origin of Language (Origins)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 07, 2015, 12:42 (3518 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This is a major example as to why I cannot accept unguided and unplanned evolution.-Dhw: Your idea of “guided” or ”planned” evolution entails God preprogramming the changes to tongue, palate, throat, larynx etc. 3.7 thousand million years in advance, along with the weaverbird's nest. Your alternative is God doing a dabble - and if he exists, there is no reason why he shouldn't have done that, since he would have dabbled in the first place to create the inventive mechanism. But that causes problems for your preconceived notion that he planned humans from the start and always knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, if the mechanism is autonomous, it would have made its own adjustments, as the need arose. We are back to the vexed question of evolutionary innovation.-DAVID: All we know is that it happened rather quickly for all the changes to occur.-I really don't know what experience you or anyone else has had of how much time it OUGHT to take for the palate and throat etc. to change, and the same applies to every innovation. All we do know is that these things happened. Perhaps you would like to think they happened unnaturally quickly so that you can argue for preprogramming or dabbling, but the IM would solve your time problem anyway - if there is a time problem.