Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

It never dies: Apes can’t talk yet they can explain language?

Denyse O'Leary
December 7, 2011
Intelligent Design, language, News
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Chimps, we are told at New Scientist, the fount of all things believable if you also read and believe the National Enquirer, are “hard-wired to evolve language”

They can’t talk, but chimps may have some of what it takes to evolve language. That is the suggestion of a study which found chimps link sounds and levels of brightness, something akin to synaesthesia in people. Such an association could help explain how our early ancestors took the first vital step from ape-like grunts to a proper vocabulary.

– Catherine de Lange, “Chimp brains may be hard-wired to evolve language,” (New Scientist 05 December 2011)

Could we just stop at “They can’t talk”?

See also: And you thought that the human evolution folk were fresh out of ideas? Now chimps flinging poop help explain our origins,

Also: A scientist looks at Project Nim

Comments
There are more cases of serpents and asses speaking then apes. Yet only a few. Language is entirely for thinking beings where thoughts are so complex and constantly so that a special operation of segregating sounds is needed to communicate. It must be memorized and of coarse segregated populations came to different agreements on these sounds meanings .Robert Byers
December 8, 2011
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Here's a few bible quotes for Naturalist Christians. Matthew 15:7-9 "You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: 'This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me. 'But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.' " Jesus got the above scripture from Isaiah 29 which goes on to say I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish." Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, "Who sees us? Who will know?" You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, "He did not make me"? Can the pot say of the potter, "He knows nothing"? Isaiah 29:14-16Mytheos
December 8, 2011
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If you want to explain language you would be better off researching serpents or asses.Mytheos
December 8, 2011
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The reason primates can't talk is for the same reason they can't sing. They don't think. They don't have need for diversity of sounds segregation because of no need for association with the segregated sounds. No need for words which to us are diversity of segregated sounds to give the complexity of thought. In fact one could say they right now have the ability for speech but simply have no need because they are dumb animals with few thoughts. No more then a cat. Language is for thinking people made in the image of a thinking being. Language reveals our great thinking hearts.Robert Byers
December 7, 2011
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OT: Is Evolution a Threat to Christianity? - William Lane Craig http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4gMZKb5R28bornagain77
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