With very mixed feelings (laughter, disbelief, horror) i’m trying to follow the discussion between evolutionists and creationists in the USA (and apparantly, also in The Netherlands, lately).
Does anybody of you have e-links or e-referrences to linguists, no matter how pseudo or fake, who try to explain language from a creationst or ID point of view (young earth creationist, Intelligent Design, and non-christian creationsist).
I didn’t get a chance to read all of it, but it sounds like what you are lokking for.
If language is designed, it seems reasonable to propose that a natural linguistic complexity would result. The alternative would be an evolutionary development of simple animal sounds to complex human language. Chomsky claims that human language complexity is "remarkable."5 The child’s acquisition of language abilities and our overall use of language support a designed complexity. Even primitive tribes speak complex languages which in most cases are more grammatically complicated than civilized languages.6 Thus the evidence of language complexity in human beings supports the language design model.
I have to admit I’ve never thought about this topic before, but there are interesting parallels (babelism vs linguistic evolution etc.)
The creationism.org site was down when I tried it, but googling the topic gets thousands of hits. Apparently it’s a hot topic and I would also like to hear creationist explanations of language change ( they really have to admit that languages change, I hope.)
There was a similiar debate in Geology in the 1830’s. There was a group believing in slow, constant change (correct) and a group of Chaosists, who believed in chataclismic changes rarely. Perhaps this view will be adopted by people agaainst language change, although I don’t see a reason to argue it. The creationist view is that of the Tower of Babel, right? I know that one, supposedly all the peoples of the earth decided to cooperate and build a ziggazat (not sure of word) to heaven, and this displeased God, why, i dont know, but he scattered all of them and twisted their tongues so they spoke different languages. That is the Catholic story, anyway. It’d be great if people could still cooperate as well…
[move] Tower of Babel [/move]
sry, wanted to try out some html
BABBLING BELOW:
What’s everyone’s view on this subject, I’d say I’d be langauge change, a "changer" if it was an orginization. Some one make up a creation name, just not "creationist"...
Apparently it’s a hot topic and I would also like to hear creationist explanations of language change ( they really have to admit that languages change, I hope.)
I don’t think that a creationist thinks that languages do not change, the tower of Babel incident being a special case of language change.
The basic question of a creationist would be, "Do the principles and processes outlined in Evolutionary theory have the capacity to explain the complexity of language and the development of the necessary hardware in the human brain?"
As for the tower of Babel, God’s motivation was to scatter human beings over the face of the earth, which he had commanded Noah to see to earlier. The unity of language and human culture had lead to a stagnation of thought and an obsession, in a very literal way, to build a tower high enough to get to heaven, as a symbol of the unity of humanity.
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. Gen. 4:11
7: Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. Gen. 7:11
This would not have been done in violation of the rules of language, that is, in a way that created any languages that would not be acceptable to the human language faculty. As an example, phonological processes, that generally take a generation or more, could have been accelerated in each individual, thus the minor variations in each person’s idiolect would become magnified, not to mention if similar acceleration of syntax and semantics were possible.
I offer this in the same vein, not as an explanation!
My point being, that whether or not the story of Babel is true, the main thrust of the creationist argument is about the complexity of human language, and how evolutionists try to explain its appearance.
But for those interesting in the Tower of Babel incident:
[url=http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/10_tower.html]Proto-Semitic Language Roots Project
The Tower of Babel[/url]
The Genesis account identifies the land of "Shinar" as the location of the Tower of Babel. This is the land of "Sumer" where many ancient documents of the Sumerians have been discovered. Within these documents are stories paralleling many of the Genesis accounts including creation, Noah and the flood as well as the confounding of the languages.
Sitran:
<<<I am fascinated that you are interested in this topic!<<<
Ah, there are many reasons, a.o.:
- I’m very much interested in fringe stuff, and erm, how can i say, the +/- pathology of pseudo linguists (and other pseudo-scientists). See a.o. http://www.skeptic.com/
- For more than a year i have been discussing with a guy who took the bible quite literally, but who was very creative with his fringe theories (to get an idea, see: http://www.decipherment.com).
Just a few examples, not all of which are to found back on his website: he defends the idea that Ancient Egyptian is an older phase of Ancient Hebrew, that Ancient Egyptian/Hebrew is the God given Original and Ideal Language, and that the Egyptian hieroglyphs have not been deciphered yet, and neither has Old Persian, Sumerian, and any other language (he probably means script) in cuneiform.
His seriously meant referrences to Berlitz, Theresa Mitsopoulou, M. Ruhlen and many others were very helpful too…
- At the same moment i discovered Eco’s La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea, which starts with the problems of Genesis 10 (many languages) and 11 (unity of language, Tower of Babel).
[I give the original title; i read the book in Duch, no idea about the English title]
<<< Now, please, let’s not get into a debate over Biblical literalism.<<<
I’m sorry, Tim, just a referrence to Eco
Now of course, if one states that the world is only 6 or 8 or 10.000 years old, and that language X (most often Hebrew) is the Original Language, then we have a slight problem, and then the whole field of historical linguistics is put in question.
Hence my curiosity for the alternative (not exclusively biblical) explanations.
Sitran:
<<<I don’t think that a creationist thinks that languages do not change, the tower of Babel incident being a special case of language change.<<<
There seem to be many versions of creationism and/or ID. But so far, biblical literalism and creationism seems to go hand in hand in varying degrees.
Sure, there are Young Earthers, Old Earthers, Gappists and the compromisers, the theistic evolutionists, among others I am sure that I have not heard of yet.
I guess there is always the fringe of the fringe that go even beyond the texts and claim things like Hebrew being the Perfect and Ideal language.
Sitran:
<<<I don’t think that a creationist thinks that languages do not change, the tower of Babel incident being a special case of language change.<<<
Alot of pseudo-linguistics has been passed off as evidence for one thing or another, it is quite regretable that they go out on such an unsupported limb. It casts doubt on other arguments that indeed make sense.
frank:
There seem to be many versions of creationism and/or ID. But so far, biblical literalism and creationism seems to go hand in hand in varying degrees.
The problems of biblical literalism are many. Even believing that the Bible is the inspired word of God, there are still parts of it that are not to be taken literally.
"And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and throw it away; For it is better one part of thee should perish than thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and throw it away; for it is better one of thy limbs should perish than thy whole body be cast into hell."
Surely, Jesus, is not commanding self-mutilation.
Some things are not so obvious as this. How do we understand the Creation Story, as historical fact, as metaphor or allegory, as story-telling with a moral, as a poetic description?
Does it really matter? The basic question isn’t whether God created the universe, but how the universe operates. Can it exist without an Unmoved Mover, and how has it functioned since its beginning? Does evolution explain the facts, as we know them, adequately, or is Evolutionary Theory a patchwork of speculation and fossils strung together to make sense out of an atheistic materialist viewpoint?
For Evolutionary Theories to work properly, there can be no interference by any intelligence, be it God, the devil, or little green men from Mars.
The idea of God, ie Intelligent Design, is far too messy for evolution. The evolutionist would have to decide first what was done by fiat and what has grown out of natural processes. Very messy, indeed!
For the creationist, "God made it that way!" is not an answer to a scientific inquiry.
Thanks, for the links, frank! I will check out the fringies you mention.
I, too, am interested in fringy pseudo-sciences, like evolutionary science and psychiatry.
For Evolutionary Theories to work properly, there can be no interference by any intelligence, be it God, the devil, or little green men from Mars.
Well, Creation doesn’t necessarily imply interference post factum. From a purely logical point of view, I personally don’t see why Creation and Evolution should be mutually exclusive. E.g. why can’t the (supposed) laws of evolution be created by a (supposed) creator and designed in a particular way to have a specific result?
<<<Well, Creation doesn’t necessarily imply interference post factum. From a purely logical point of view, I personally don’t see why Creation and Evolution should be mutually exclusive.<<<
Logic and religion, it’s really becoming a tricky topic…
<<<E.g. why can’t the (supposed) laws of evolution be created by a (supposed) creator and designed in a particular way to have a specific result?<<<
<<<Why not. Even if you take Evolution for granted, that doesn’t disprove Creation, is what I was trying to say. Obviously, it doesn’t prove it either.<<<
You can’t disprove that gnomes, dragons, fairies, and that bunch of pink elephants etc. don’t exist.
<<<Nor does the fact of Creation, if you believe in it, prove or disprove the scientific theory of Evolution.<<<
The key word indeed is ‘belief’, at least what creationism is concerned, and then it doesn’t matter how many rational arguments one wants to provide…
Most advocates of evolutionism subscribe to a set of naturalistic and mechanistic—-if not humanistic—-philosophical presuppositions, attaching a "fundamentalist" bias to their perspective.
The question of origins is largely a matter of history—-not the domain of applied science. Contrary to the unilateral denials of many evolutionists, one’s worldview does indeed play heavily on one’s interpretation of scientific data, a phenomenon that is magnified in matters concerning origins, where neither repeatability, nor observation, nor measurement—-the three immutable elements of the scientific method—-may be employed.
