Human evolution; our complex speech mechanism (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 16, 2019, 08:31 (2016 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I rely on you to inform me about McCrone’s findings and arguments. If all the changes were present in habilis and erectus, does he think they communicated without using their voices to make sounds, and how does he know that they were not able to make some of the sounds that are now used in modern speech? Is there a tape recording?

I notice you have skipped over this point. Please tell us how McCrone knows that pre-sapiens did not use his larynx and epiglottis to make sounds now made by H. sapiens.

DAVID: I said McCrone did describe them talking at five, six words per minute, remember?

And how does he know that? Anyway, the argument now is that the mechanisms for modern language were already in place and were already being used before H. sapiens. There is therefore no gulf between pre-sapiens and sapiens, but simply an onward development of sounds as pre-sapiens and sapiens built on the linguistic achievements of their predecessors. Please explain what you think this proves.

DAVID: And I've written such a mechanism must contain God's guidelines, and you have refused to accept that limitation which means your mechanism allows that God is not entirely in control.

dhw: The only “guidelines” you can offer are a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for epiglottises and larynxes and every other evolutionary change in life’s history, or your God performing ad hoc operations on individual organisms. Yes, in my theistic hypothesis, my autonomous mechanism means God deliberately creates a free-for-all while still having the option to dabble if he feels like it. How do you know your God does not want some unpredictability to add to the interest?

DAVID: As usual I think your concept humanizes God. I view Him as knowing exactly what He wants.

If he exists, I also view him as knowing exactly what he wants, and it ain’t the same as your version of exactly what he wants. And there is no point in talking about purpose if you are not prepared to tell us what that purpose is. AnD why do you think your God is incapable of creating an autonomous mechanism, as opposed to a mechanism that preprogrammes every undabbled change in the history of evolution?

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.

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.