Thought the first problem is that you don't seem to be reading what I am saying a lot of the time - not helping our communication at all.
Eg?
Are you being deliberately ironic? I gave you an example right after the quoted sentence. The fact that you are requiring an example after I gave you one, is ironically another example.
Right. So we agree your position is pointlessly tautological then?
I don't see it as limited to academic, if I understand that word correctly.
It means you are defining it to be true. It is nothing to do with being limited to academic, its a serious criticism of your position and it needs to be dealt with.
I see speech as an exclusive human attribute, and distinct from the communication of all other life forms. It is not a linear grad but a paradigm breakaway, in that all forms of communications are one block, and speech another: this makes humans a category of their own, and unlike zebras being a different category from birds or bears. And here, the skeletal and brain size differences do not constitute this difference.
Right - and what about other exclusive attributes of other life forms? What conclusions do we draw from them?
While all life forms have unique traits, including indiviuals in a category, and inanimate enitities as well, in both degrees and kinds - speech still remains outside that description. Why/How? - is not correctly determined, and can be subject to a misrep or contrivable to be offset by semantical manouverings if one wishes to indulge in that sort of contrivings.
So it is not based on anything at all - you are just engaging in semantical manouverings?
A technical, scientific definition of speech is outside the evolutionary methodology based on ToE, which hardly deals with this issue.
ToE is not a descriptive thing, it is an explanatory one. What difference does it make what ToE says about speech - ToE is not making claims about speech - you are.
That most here have saught to describe it as an evolutionary graduation makes this clear, with any definition requiring to fit into ToE, or it is seen as non-scientific. IMHO, speech is not adequately defined or categorised under ToE, which also is the case with the seed output's relevence in offspring.
Right - ToE does not define anything, it is an explanatory framework not a descriptive one. However, you have stated that speech is somehow special - to convince anybody of your case (ie debate) you need to describe speech in such a way as it can be shown it is not a gradation but is completely seperated from all other forms of communication. I doubt you can do this, and your insistence on avoiding doing so simply confirms the weakness of your position.
Absolutely. Check the OT calendar, the oldest and most accurate of all: it does not include the creational days, which are not 24-hour days, being pre-luminosity.
I'm not talking about the Bible, I am talking about Creationists. A short-hand for Young Earth Creationists. The people that profess to believe in a six day creation week and a young earth. You might think they are theologically wrong, but that doesn't change that they believe in a six day earth.
Speech is not merely unique to humans, but a unique attribute only possessed by humans.
What's the difference?
Any semantics aside, speech is varied from an elevating thread of communications, which gives the impression of lessening its uniqueness as below it's significance.
OK, so speech is part of some kind of continuum of communication? This includes other forms of animal communication I presume? This seems to be contradictory to what you said earlier.
Human speech is a primal phenomenon in the universe.
Are you sure it is a
primal phenomenon? Do you know what you are saying here?
And it appears to have come suddenly, which becomes an affront to evolutionists.
It doesn't appear to have come suddenly, it appears to have arrived relatively rapidly in the last 6 million years or so. A hell of a lot of evolutionary change can happen in 6 million years. The biggest change humans (and their ancestors) have gone through in this time is their brain size.
While this is not easily provable, in the same ratio as it is not disprovable - indicators say that speech was not, as is seen in most google links, around for upto a 100K years. All the derivitives of speech also appear to allign with its recent emergence. If the latter is seen as valid, then the notion of modern man becomes different from the skelatal imprinted assessments in ToE. So there are threatening potential impacts here for ToE, one reason why it is not seen as a minority opinion sees it, as with myself.
Google is good isn't it. I get things like:
quote:
The evolution of speech can be studied independently of the evolution of language, with the advantage that most aspects of speech acoustics, physiology and neural control are shared with animals, and thus open to empirical investigation.
here
I'd certainly be keen if you have more links for us. I'm not sure what a skeletal imprinted assessment is so I cannot comment, though since ToE is an explanatory framework, I imagine it doesn't do such things nor would it be threatened by a short time period of change. You've heard of Punctuated Equilibrium wherein evolutionary change sometimes happens in short bursts, right?
If speech is recent - it becomes relevent and impacting on what constitutes modern man:
Right, but how is "subsequent" relevant when we should be talking about consequences
skeletal imprints - or speech endowed man? While genesis dates speech as 6000 years, it is alligned with a host of other alligned complimenting factors, including almost immdiately following derivitive picture writings, civilization, modern human populations and history itself.
And yet, such things predate Genesis' timeline.
The reverse is the case between the periods of 100s of 1000s of years and the start of the 6000 point - it is a vaccuum. That there was a definitive quickening of the pace on this planet 6000 years ago is an unexplained phenomenon, but usually side-swept as a mythical meandering - without confronting its veracity.
Not really, culture (including agriculture), allowed human settlements to reach a critical mass point wherein common languages were developed, the written word was developed and knowledge could be stored.
How does this 'went' fit in here - went from where?
Evolved from a common ancestor.
The notion of random jitterbugging particles, followed by a definitive selection, is unevidenced, aside from being a contradiction.
I never made any claims for random jitterbugging particles followed by definitive selection.
Yes, something is happening here, which is varied from a host of life forms possessing communication traits or other unique attributes. Speech altered the universe.
So how did speech alter the universe where other unique traits didn't? Or do all unique traits change the universe.
In ToE, the focus is on an offspring derived from a distant factor, while the seed does evidence all transmissions, including a program which can continue solely with the host parentage.
A distant factor? The ToE discusses parents and the offspring that come out of them. Evolutionary biology discusses the development of the offspring from two parent cells to blastocyst to child to adult. How close do you want?
ToE is starting on the 50th floor of the empire state building, and saying life began here of itself, then graduated in a complex fashion - in contradiction of the first 50 floors.
How does a sequence of events that start later, contradict a sequence of events that came before. Are you suggesting that cause and effect contradict one another?
But if there is an equal complexity in the initial 50 floors, it is more condusive to be the source of all the floors. One cannot select random and complex phenomenons selectively.
Nobody is saying otherwise.
Speech is marked by derivitive factors not associated by other forms of communications.
Such as?
True, my analogy was limited to what constitutes unique only, not its consequences here.
Indeed - which is why you missed my point that if everything is unique, being unique is common. If lots of things are unique, uniqueness is common.
Its not normal, in the sense of impact, from all other forms of uniqueness. That speech is singled out, says it is other than a normal bead on a chain of many beads. The ratio is humans are different from all other life forms, evidentially, and constitute a category of their own. This is a validated premise, and its watering down is a misrep.
The only person to single out speech - is you. That doesn't say anything interesting, unless you can explain why speech should be singled out. That is what I have been asking you to do, and you have directly refused to do. Obviously humans constitute a category of their own, they are in the homo category, the sapiens species. There are other homos (now extinct), there are other great apes, primates, mammals, vertebrates and animals.
You can name any animal, and it can be shown that they are different from all other life forms. Name an animal who is the sole species in its genus and we'll find ourselves in the same position as we do with humans. We already know this, we've known it for a long time. Is that the conclusion of your position? It's not remarkable if it is.
Yes and no. if we have only one red marble in the universe, it can still be seen as only one other form of uniqueness, or it can be seen as part and parcel of unique things. What distinquishes the unique factor of speech is its transcendency and impact: while there are many types of grunts type communications, for example, their status is the same as bird calls and the communication of all other life forms. Its correct definition in scientific terms is not one I will indulge in.
Actually - speech in itself has no impact. Language has impact. Grammar and context and a structure which can be used to communicate complex ideas has impact. Speaking nonsense has no impact at all.
Not irrelevent, but I would call all other communications as one representing a separate issue. Speech is more than communication, appears better said.
Speech is more than communication? If I grant that as true, it would only be true in light of language. Without language speech would be gibberish and pointless. At best, basic ideas might be able to be conveyed - but even that would langauge of a sort.
No, I would not be confident in doing an off the cuff defining here. I don't know if anyone has or is able to, probably the reason it is not at hand anyplace, and because it has been, IMO, eronously placed as another degree of communication, as opposed the epochial phenomenon it represents. Science is one of its effects, as is my pc too. I very much doubt if the aspect of highlighting speech was a result of mere observation by Genesis.
So basically what you are saying is that
Fnorgle is a unique and special faculty of humans and fnorgling demonstrates Genesis' accuracy.
Or you might as well be. You came here with a claim. X is unique to humans. Yet you won't tell us what 'X' is. When pushed you give us contradictory or obfuscatory information about 'X' and then, when really pushed you simply refuse to give concrete evidence about 'X'. I guess I'll give you one more chance to reply with substance otherwise I'll have to simply dismiss your claims as baseless (since you adamantly provide us with a base!)
So far your position is:
Speech is unique to humans. It has had more impact than any other unique trait (on what?). I'm not going to disclose what speech is, but it is more than communication. Speech exists on a continuum but is discretely seperated from other entities on that continuum. Speech appears quickly (how do we know it does if we don't know what it is?), and resulted in civilization. You don't mean large brain size, you don't mean language (presumably), you don't mean making noises with the voice, you don't mean pronouncing syllables.
One last chance Joseph. A well rounded argument - I'm generous to my opponents (to a fault), but I have limited time and don't fancy spending hours chasing my tail. Please address the principle concern here "What is Speech" since it is integral to your argument that it gets defined by you. If you don't put forward a definition then I ask you to withdraw from the debate, concede the point for the time being and leave it there. Otherwise, I'll urge moderators to take a look in - there are certain requirements to debate you realize.
No - I don't believe a cosmic Jewish zombie can make me live forever if I eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that I accept him as my master, so he can then remove an evil force from my soul that is present in all of humanity because a dirt/rib woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree about 6,000 years ago just after the universe was created. Why should I?
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