Evolution

Since I didn"t get to present evidence for my argument against evolution from language, I now give more information to back up what I said in the previous round. The historical facts regarding language indicate that humanity"s original ancient languages did not evolve naturally from simpler forms, but were given to us by God. If language had evolved from simple grunts of animals to more complex language, one would logically expect to see languages becoming more complex as time goes on. But rather, it"s a fact that ancient languages are more complex than modern ones; languages are becoming more simplified. Language studies show that the more ancient the language the more complex it is in terms of syntax, tense, gender, mood, case, verb forms, and inflection. This is true of Old Latin 200 B.C.; Greek 800 B.C. and the Sanskrit of the Vedas 1500 B.C. (David C. C. Watson, The Great Brain Robbery, 1976, pp. 83"89) "Yet it is incredible that the first language could have been the most complex." (George Gaylord Simpson, Biology and Man, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969, p. 116) "The evolution of language, at least within the historical period, is a story of progressive simplification." Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, 2nd edition, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1957, p. 10) For example, words in the Hebrew mental lexicon have are organized by morphology, by their root families rather than by simple letter sequences as with modern English. (Frost, 2009; Frost et al., 1997). Case is the function of a word within a sentence. Latin nouns, pronouns and adjectives are marked for case which allows varied word orders without changing the meaning of the sentence. English has very little case and relies on word order to indicate meaning or function of a word within a sentence: Here the boy is seeing, and the goat is the object being seen by the boy. Here the goat is seeing, and the boy is the object being seen by the goat. The spelling and grammar is exactly the same, yet the word order changes the meaning of the sentence. Because the nouns are marked for case in Latin, this change in word order doesn"t change the meaning of the sentence. These case marking seem hard to learn to a non-Latin speaker, but they guard against ambiguity. English is restrictive in terms of how we can reword a sentence. Latin is more flexible. Latin has both natural and grammatical gender while English only has natural gender. The oldest written documents on earth, such as The Legend of Etana and the Kesh Temple Hymn from 2600 B.C.E., and the 2400 B.C.E. Pyramid Texts all draw allusions or direct references to gods, creators, or divine beings, and are all already complete, complex languages. No ancient document has ever been found with a simple language; so language didn"t evolve from simple beginnings; it was complex from the start, and way back then people believed in gods. "The so-called primitive languages can throw no light on language origins, since most of them are actually more complicated in grammar than the tongues spoken by civilized peoples." (Ralph Linton, The Tree of Culture, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957, p. 9) Pro claims the matter of language "has nothing to do with biology," but it has a lot to do with evolution, because if evolution is true, then not only would morphologies evolve, but also cultures, religions, and languages. The fact that language didn"t evolve from the simple to the complex shows evolution didn"t happen. Now having similar DNA doesn"t show that we evolved from animals anymore than cars being similar shows that one came from the other, rather, it all shows the signature of the same creator. If God had made ever living thing from radically different materials, how could eat them? If fish, or fruit, or lamb was made from something so different from us it was alien to us, it would be rejected by our bodies. We couldn"t metabolize it. Pro claims that "The fossil record"also shows gradual changes in organisms over long periods of time," maybe he"d like to give us an example of an organism, and list the gradual changes that occurred until it was a completely different kind of creature. Its amazing though, that evolutionists like my opponent boast that "Humans have 96% of genes in common with chimpanzees," and "90% with cats," and yet look at how radical the differences are between humans, chimps, and cats! If we were related biologically, one would expect that a mere 4% difference between our DNA and a chimps wouldn"t produce such massive differences. The fact that we are so different despite the DNA argues against evolution. In fact, because natural selection only proceeded in small steps, it could never make the quantum leap necessary to get from the chimpanzee brain to the human brian. It is widely recognized that the capacity of the human brain far exceeds any use to which we put it during our present lifetime, whether we live to 70 or even 100 years of age. The Encyclop"dia Britannica states that the human brain "is endowed with considerably more potential than is realizable in the course of one person"s lifetime." (1976, Vol. 12, p. 998) Scientist Carl Sagan states that the human brain could hold information that "would fill some twenty million volumes, as many as in the world"s largest libraries." (Cosmos, 1980, p. 278) Regarding the capacity of the human brain"s "filing system," biochemist Isaac Asimov wrote that it is "perfectly capable of handling any load of learning and memory which the human being is likely to put upon it"and a billion times more than that quantity, too.""The New York Times Magazine, October 9, 1966, p. 146. Why was the human brain endowed with such a capacity if it was not to be used? Why would evolution produce such an excess? "This is, in fact, the only example in existence where a species was provided with an organ that it still has not learned how to use," admitted one scientist. He then asked: "How can this be reconciled with evolution"s most fundamental thesis: Natural selection proceeds in small steps, each of which must confer on its bearer a minimal, but nonetheless measurable, advantage?" He added that the human brain"s development "remains the most inexplicable aspect of evolution." (The Brain: The Last Frontier, pp. 59, 69) Since the evolutionary process would not produce and pass on such excessive never-to-be-used brain capacity, is it not more reasonable to conclude that man, with the capacity for endless learning, was designed to live forever? Evolutionists ignore all the differences between the developing embryos at most stages during development which shows they are not related, but cheery pick a few minor similarities at select points in development to prove that they are. Biology, 2000 edition text book says, "genes that control the earliest stages of development in general remain relatively unchanged. Thus the embryos of different species resemble each other. " (Miller/Levine, p 283) What the authors of such biology textbooks don't tell you is that the earliest stages of embryonic development are very different, contradicting their theory. "The wide variation in morphology among vertebrate embryos is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a phylogenetically-conserved tailbud stage, and suggests that at least some developmental mechanisms are not highly constrained by the zootype. . . .Contrary to the evolutionary hourglass model, variations in the adult body plan are often foreshadowed by modifications of early development. A good example is the aortic arch system in the rat that, even during the pharyngula stage, begins to presage the adult pattern of arteries...These modifications of embryonic development are difficult to reconcile with the idea that most or all vertebrate clades pass through an embryonic stage that is highly resistant to evolutionary change. This idea is implicit in Haeckel's drawings, which have been used to substantiate two distinct claims. First, that differences beteen species typically become more apparent at late stages. Second, that vertebrate embryos are virtually identical at earlier stages. This first claim is clearly true. Our survey, however, does not support the second claim, and instead reveals considerable variability -- and evolutionary lability -- of the tailbud stage, the purported phylotypic stage of vertebrates." http://www.google.com... This is coming from evolutionists, so I hope Pro won't say its a biased source. You can find actual photos here http://www.google.com... Pro denies what I said about the photo on the Shroud. Let him hear actual scientists speak for themselves. The discovery channel is not biased, by the way. The BBC also ran a piece on the shroud. http://www.google.com... If it was a fraud, how did the forger do it? Pro even denied Jesus' existence in order to get away from Jesus' claim that God created us. Humans have been going through changes, but we are still humans. I don't see how Pro can show the small changes will someday stop us from being humans. Small changes in humans just shows there is limited variation possible within human beings. That we're on our way to becoming ET is an unprovable assumption.