Second Challenge to all free willers and determinsit: Is human language a living creature

Hello, sir. i accept this debate. It sounds very interesting. Here we go. I am semi atheistic, so I might bring a bit of bias into it, but I hope that the spectators can let this slide, because, to be honest, the claim is so ridiculous that I would win even if I was a full fledged Christian. I won't simply say "no". I won't say the second thing either. I won't use the "don't want it to be true" argument either. I won't just say it's "Communication". I don't know why you think I'd use those arguments, I'm much more mature than that. I'll put up a good fight, to be sure. Here we go. It's true. Most human violence and greed and hate has its origin in human speech. However, this does not mean that human speech is a sentient being. It does not hate man, it is produced by man. It can not exist independently of man. We do not blame each other without reason. Human speech is not at fault. People who produce evil human speech are at fault. We can't say that Hitler didn't mean to write Mein Kampf, because he did, with full intent. The words in Mein Kampf didn't just spring into his head and try to possess him. Human speech is not the cause of all war. If every person on the planet chose not to speak for some absurd reason, I'm sure there would still be war. I'd say the thing that causes war is not human speech, but, rather, a difference in the cultures of the opposing parties. Besides, human speech, like many things, can be good or evil. There can be a speech given by Hitler, but there can also be some wit from Winston Churchill. There can be words from Satan or a lovely sonnet from Shakespeare, a suicide rant from Osama Bin Laden or some humorous wisdom from Jerry Seinfeld. Human speech can be used for good or evil, and when used for evil, it can produce devastation, and when used for good, it can enlighten many, many people. There are not two languages, there are, according, to the article below, roughly 1,909. http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu... The way in which you tell the development of languages, while true to the bible, is deeply flawed. There is no singular language. The first tribe of cavemen in Africa, a few million years ago, developed a means of communication, then that tribe split off into several others, and the ways in which people said things twisted all around, until you got old languages like Ancient Greek, Latin, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and so on. Then, those languages developed, gradually, into the ones we know and love today. There probably was, at one point, a single language, spoken by the cavemen when their population was only thirty, but that was so long ago that it would be extremely hard to figure out. http://mentalfloss.com... The Tower of Babel story, while philosophically engaging, is not an actual account of the development of language, but, rather, an allegory for the development of languages. If there was, at one point, a singular language, then why haven't we found any artifacts with that language? Why even care? In the modern era, with rapidly developing technology, the many different languages we have do not affect us, because we can translate most foreign sentences in a split second. Languages aren't all that bad. It's a type of code in which one word is substituted for another, and once you memorize a set of words, then everything is fine. We are not all speaking the same language but hearing different things. This is a biological impossibility. The next few paragraphs you bring up, the one about having the word of God as your native speech, sounds like some sort of pipe dream, and I can't figure it out, but I'll try to. You don't speak the word of God, because, as you write, you're using English, which you've already established is one of those splitoff languages from the Babel incident. I have to bring up, there is no language that God uses, except perhaps for Ancient Hebrew, because that's what the bible was written in. If he did have some weird language, then when I get up to Heaven, I'm gonna have a heck of a time understanding him. People pray in whatever language they want to, it doesn't mean that God hates them. Still, you haven't mentioned anything about how human speech is a living being. OK, so anyway... Your next paragraph is something or another about some conspiracy theory. Already, I can tell you're a grade A kook. If Google really did develop a program that excluded man, I'm sure that there would have been something in the news about it. At the moment, the only language thing Google produces is Google Translate, and that's not artificial intelligence, it's just a simple little translator with the words programmed in. Computers do use Binary, and ASCII, and stuff like that, but those are pretty easy to decode. Say Google's program did produce a sentient program that used its own language. As with all languages, it would just be a code, where every term is replaced with another term, so some cryptographers could crack it pretty easily. This sounds nuts and there's nothing in the news about it. Human speech is not a living creature, it is a sound wave produced by the human vocal cord, and it is not plotting against us. That's like saying that cats are going to take over the world. It just doesn't make any sense. Human speech isn't even something you can hold. How in hell is it supposed to become an all powerful dictator? Now, I'll go about what I assume are your "points": 1. Diseases and cancers are nothing like human speech, because diseases and cancers are noticeable, tangible things. Cancers are caused when one cell multiplies too much, diseases are caused by small bacterias or viruses. they become drug resistant because, over time, they learn to evolve so that they can avoid being killed by the drug. This is why new flu vaccines are introduced every year, to guard against a potentially deadly new strain. Again, the bacterias and viruses cannot be compared to hum an speech, because human speech is not a living organism, simply something produced by living organisms. 2. Technology "bugs" are created from a fault in computer programming, and electricity is created from a tiny flow of electrons through a conductive material. 3. People can lie, or say the truth. They don't always lie. I'm getting sick of this, so I'm going to run through the last few as quick as possible. 4. Nobody needs saving from speech, speech is man's greatest ally as well as its greatest enemy, and many things have been produced using human speech besides the bible. 5. God may be real, and he may not be. But you shouldn't have to believe in him. He should prove himself to you. 6. People usually only talk to who they know. They don't approach strangers on the street and talk about stuff. 7. Makes no sense. Then a few religious quotes, and so on and so on. I get it pretty well now. Just a nut being nutty. I mean, coming into this debate, I expected something more powerful, like maybe talking about how speech can manipulate people or whatnot. But you just want to talk about religion all the time. I don't even thing human speech is portrayed as a living creature in the bible, so bringing this into a biblical context is sorta dumb. I'm sure it could be debated without all the religious stuff. I mean, if the bible is an absolute truth, how can anyone debate about it? Overall, just a wacky piece of junk from a crazy guy. What you are witnessing here, folks, is literally a man's slow descent into insanity. that's what happens to people if they take religion literally. Oh, well...