That is, if we took your claims seriously. Linguist Noel Rude writes to say,
—
Human language is geared to purpose, to consciousness, to agency. The majority of verbs, as I may have noted before already, have “valence” for the semantic roles of Agent and/or Dative–Agent being defined as “the animate instigator of an event” and Dative (we’re talking semantic roles here–not noun cases) as “a participant whose consciousness is relevant to the proposition”–both of which are illusions to the hard core materialist elite. And so how then is the materialist to talk? What verbs can he use when blabbering about evolution? Aside from be, remain, rust, coagulate, etc., most verbs suggest consciousness and agency.
Let’s consider ambitransitive verbs. Not all languages have them, but English loves them. English “break,” for example, can be either transitive or intransitive:
1) He broke the window.
vs.
2) The window broke.
The same can be said of “sink”:
3) They sank the boat.
vs.
4) The boat sank.
Now note the following:
5) The boat was sunk to collect the insurance.
vs.
6) The boat sank to collect the insurance.
Though the passive (“was sunk”) in 5) suppresses the agent, it is still hovering and eager “to collect the insurance.” Not so with the intransitive “sank” in 6), which implies that the boat–not a boat sinker–had intention and is guilty.
“Evolve” is also ambitransitive.
17 A solution was evolved to solve the problem.
8) A solution evolved to solve the problem.
In 7) “was evolved” is passive and the intention “to solve the problem” is supplied by the suppressed agent. 8) illustrates what Darwinists are up against. When something evolves to serve some function, the normal sense is that that something is intentional.
Should we explain to the Darwinists that human language is anti-science?
—
We could explain that to Darwinists, Dr. Rude, but remember that Darwinism is now fully committed to the idea that human consciousness is itself an illusion. They would agree with the criticism but it would make no difference as long as they can exercise power. They’ve made that clear enough over the years.
Another friend writes to remind us of Jerry Fodor’s careful distinction in What Darwin Got Wrong (2010) between “selection” (which does not imply purpose) and “selection for” (which does). Much popular Darwinism depends on confusing the distinction.
See also: Yer average planet watch: Earth Resides in an “Oddball” Solar System “Oddball” is a Duckspeak Urban Dictionary term for the fine-tuning of Earth for life.
and
The illusion of consciousness sees through itself.