Language & Self-Consciousness - The Great Leap Forward
-
David,
Watched the video. Made sure to watch it really carefully and even took notes during it to discuss some highlights.
All in all, I thought it was an incredibly poorly made video. The first 26 minutes was essentially one baseless assertion after another with no evidence to back up the statements. Several times, the video would show complex animals doing their thing, while the narrator said "life is too complex to be due to random chance." And that's it. In these 26 minutes (Part 1), there was precious little in the way of evidence.
Similarly, the last 12 minutes (Part 3) or so were also relatively pointless, though less so. This part mainly discussed a couple of the hoaxes perpetrated by a few paleontologists, as if to imply that that fact was damning of the science as a whole. One prevalent theme throughout the video was the implication that not having all the answers somehow rendered the science as a whole invalid. See this a lot in this type of media and literature. It's really unfortunate. Absence of evidence is not evidence for absence, as the saying goes.
At any rate, the middle part of the video (Part 2) did bring up some points that are often used in more sophisticated creationist presentations. Unfortunately, the video just briefly glossed over them and did not discuss them in detail at all. I understand that is partly a function of the length of the video, but really, this should have been the bulk of the presentation.
Still, I'd like to discuss a few of the points brought up, and why they are common misconceptions
- The video mentioned "irreducibile complexity." It didn't really explain it but the concept has been around for some time, most recently through the work of biochemist Michael Behe (he wrote a book on it called Darwin's Black Box). His basic idea is this many functions in organisms are the result of an interlocking of several parts, the absence of any of which would result in the destruction of the entire function. The point being that it would be unlikely for many coincidences to happen at once to give rise to some overall function, without knowing in advance what the function would even be.
While this sounds convincing, Behe's claims have been debunked. He talks about various structure-function types that he calls irreducibly complex. One is the evolution of the flagellum. It's been effectively shown the flagellum is not irreducibly complex (good article on it here http//www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html). There are rebuttals for the other examples he gives too.
-
The video briefly asks the question of whether a random genetic mutation has ever lead to an increase of information in a genome. It even uses the oft-used Richard Dawkins clip of him being "stumped" by the question. I'm no fan of Dawkins generally (incredibly arrogant militant atheist) but this clip of him is peculiar. Either out of context, or bad editing, or something else. I say that because he's been answering this question for years now just fine. And the literature is replete with examples of genetic mutations resulting in increases of genomic information. It is true that it's incredibly rare for a 'single mutation' to result in an increase but single mutations aren't really what evolution is all about. Cascades of mutations occur, sometimes many years apart, which do result in information increases. Very brief primer on some examples http//www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html
-
Finally, the video talks about a lack of intermediate transitional forms in the fossil record. If we believe small gradations occur over time between organisms, we should expect to see half-formed organs, fish-amphibian hybrids, etc. And we don't see them in the fossil record, the creationists claim.
Two responses to this
a) It's true that there aren't as many transitional forms as we would expect found in the fossil record. But there are reasonable explanations for why this is the case http//www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html#gaps
b) With that said, there are transitional forms found in the record. See here for many, many examples http//www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html -
Peace Brother CavemanDoctor
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I will check out those links.
-
Very interesting topic thanks for some insightful posts CavemanDoctor. I tend to lean towards believing Adam was the first 'modern man' being taught language by God and not the traditional thought of being first specie of man.
What I struggle to tie into all of this is the concept of 'hell' and 'heaven.' Why is it of paramount importance for the modern man to acknowledge God, do good deeds, acknowledge 'next life' in order to move forward to heaven whatever that maybe. Why not just good deeds to move forward?? Did we choose to be a self conscious being by the story of adam(mankind) disobeying God??
peace
-
Interesting you bring up Alan Watts, I just read it the other day and found it a superb read, particularly this excerpt
But of course in Oriental cultures, they don't think of God as an autocrat. God is the fundamental energy of the world which performs all this world without having to think about it. Just in the same way that you open and close your hand without being able to say in words how you do it. You do it. You say 'I can open and close my hand.' But how? You don't know. That only means, though, that you don't know in words. You do know in fact, because you do it. So in the same way, you know how to beat your heart, because you do it, but you can't explain it in words. You know how to shine the sun, because you do it, but you can't explain it in words, unless you're a very fancy physicist, and he's just finding out - what a physicist is doing is translating what he's been doing all along into a code called mathematics. Then he says he knows how it's done. He means he can put it into the code - and that's what the academic world is. It's translating what happened into certain codes called words, numbers, algorhythms, etc., and that helps us repair things when they go wrong.
The emphasis the quran places on human language is fairly significant given that it is such a concise book. We have a clue here, I will get to its significance eventually
And when your Lord said to the angels, I am going to place in the earth a khalif, they said What! wilt Thou place in it such as shall make mischief in it and shed blood, and we celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness? He said Surely I know what you do not know.
My reasoning is fairly simple. The touch of the creator is infinitely subtle yet perfect. Imagine you have a room full of skittles randomly arranged, and a bowling ball, you can only hit a single skittle but you must knock them all down with one throw. If you throw the ball perfectly, you can knock down every single skittle in the room by making them tip into each other. And this is exactly what we are, the big bang being the throw.
Given that things had a beginning and we aren't in paradise already, it is reasonable to believe that God's omnipotence is not a "I wish this exists right now - pop" kinda thing, just as you cannot magic all the skittles to the floor - you must throw the ball first. This doesn't take anything away from omnipotence at all - if the creator wishes for a certain something to be somewhere at a certain time he can easily do so given his dominion over time & physical law. It's like the skittles game, except you know the mathematics behind the situation, making everything effortless. The irony of this is that people believe that God's dominion works like some kind of magic yet they fail to realise that God is timeless, inherently free of desire. The only reason you want magic is to satisfy desire!
Yet the creator must know all. How could things exist if the creator did not know how to create them! And here is where we get to the root of the problem. Remember that energy cannot be created or destroyed? At the beginning of the universe there existed exactly the same amount of energy as there is now. Yet at the beginning, everything was one - the universe was like a blank hard drive.
As time unfolds in this universe, we note a few things. First, entropy increases over time. At the beginning there was only 1 location anything could be in. Then perhaps there could have been 2 locations, 4 locations, etc, the details are irrelevant. Nowadays there are an astonishing number of possible states the universe can occupy. With each instance of time, the universe picks a single state out of all the possible states it can be in, based on the states it occupied in the past. So for example, we are in a human shape now because in the past, there was a set of possibilities corresponding to all the possible creatures that could arise, and over time, the universe kept selecting the states that allowed us to come to being. It is a process of creating, filtering and refining. And now we see how God "learns", despite knowing all there is.
Now this process of systematic elimination of unbalanced states is what I believe is what the quran refers to here -
And We did not create the heaven and the earth and what is between them for sport.
Had We wished to make a diversion, We would have made it from before Ourselves by no means would We do (it).
Nay! We cast the truth against the falsehood, so that it breaks its head, and lo! it vanishes; and woe to you for what you describe;Now we see why 230 is interesting - perhaps our creator knew all the possible futures that could come from humanity and decided it was in the best interests of all to proceed. So what role does language play? In truth, all names are imaginary, so language creates the illusion of separation as has been said. But this also confers upon us a supreme advantage, language is the fastest way in time of distinguishing truth from falsehood. It is also intimately connected to things like entropy - we can work against the flow of time very easily. It takes many years for a wall to be eroded but it takes a human all of 2 hours to repaint it.
Language is merely the manipulation of information. And funnily enough, the universe IS information. So be careful, words are just sticks and stones in a different form.
-
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe...Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me,
Jai Guru Deva OM.
Nothing's gonna change my world...Melikes your posting of the song, Brother!
-
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe...Inspiring! An insight flashed into my mind upon reading; to speak one must use energy, which is a given. However the actual information content in its most concise form takes up a certain minimum amount of energy from the universe. So say you write a paragraph which takes up 200 bits of information, that is 200 bits that could have been anywhere in the universe but it so happens to be taken up by your speech.
Now most problems in life are like finding the perfectly shaped lego block to complete the puzzle, a striking example is mathematics whereby the solution to a problem can take up a very small amount of data. So for example you take all the information you have which is the metaphorical puzzle minus one piece, and the solution is a single perfectly shaped piece that connects every other part of the puzzle together.
However unlike real puzzle pieces, words are recyclable! So a single puzzle piece can go around as many times as needed, to whoever wishes to recieve it. The quran is a perfect example, one puzzle piece that some 1.5 billion people use (or try to, anyway). This makes words rather sacred, because they are not destroyed by the passage of time. They carry power, the quran being an example, another such as the phrase "I have a dream", etc.
Language is a tool for mankind to create their own universe (or space, or life, whatever fits you).
Superb description! Anyway, the thing is that truthful statements must be inherently sacred. For one, they may be reused indefinitely and they are TIMELESS. For two, every truthful word automatically demolishes an entire set of possible falsehoods (just as 2118!). There are an infinite amount of ways to get an exam wrong, but there is exactly ONE way to do it correctly! You cannot reasonably after having seen truth then say anything else!
Language allows us as humans to be ENERGY EFFICIENT. Nature itself is not energy efficient in this particular sense - it's more of a case of throw everything you got and pick up what's left, then throw it again! Over 4 billion years, this inevitably created so many perfectly energy efficient life forms. However because of the miniscule amount of energy words consume, they are VERY powerful - it's like having a 1 coin that can potentially get you a hundred houses. Words essentially perform the same function as a transistor - they amplify energy expenditure in a controlled manner. Of course this means that speaking falsehood will result in a lot of human energy going into destructive efforts, just as truth results in that energy going into good works.
-
Peace all,
The more I think about it, the more I realize human language is a key component to the puzzle of our existence insofar as it arose concurrently with a consciousness of self.
231 "And He taught Adam the names of all things, then He displayed them to the angels and said Inform Me of the names of these if you are truthful."
This verse is often taken to mean that God gave humanity the gift of knowledge. And while I certainly think that is part of it, I actually think the verse may be referring more to the gift of language. Metaphorically, language is the ability to "name things."
Language and self-consciousness are two sides of the same coin. The coin is the soul.
It was as if...gasp, a soul had been suddenly inculcated into Homo sapiens sapiens, changing it from an advanced primate into a full-fledged human being. The Creator introduced the soul, a Divine spark, into the advanced primate, simultaneously giving rise to language and a concept of consciousness of self.
Thanks Caveman,
A beautifully written prose.. I agree to it almost 100% as I've been thinking along the same path as you do...
The ability to "Refer" towards a concept whether it is an abstract thing or non-abstract things is what really makes Human species different to others..
Naming is a way to put label towards a 'thing' for easy referencing in order to COMMUNICATE.
And names of things is the first thing homo sapiens parent teaches to their children.As thus Homo Sapiens / Bani Adam were designed by their Creator to be a social being in the first place..
Where they share and manipulate thoughts among each others..I don't really believed that "Adam" was living outside of this planet.
Or he was created out of "thin air" from "clay", his physical appearances was the result of million years of species evolutions which created from earthly substance (read raw material from this planet we called earth). Although now we have a more proper name for it instead of "clay" it should be "cells". Apparently the so-called 'djinns' are not made out of 'cells' yet from 'smokeless fire' (read plasma) and 'angel' from 'light' (read photon particles).He was the first initial cells structured primate species being enlightened with gift of speeches and also the ability to 'grasp' advanced conceptualization and awareness.
Which marks the birth of a new species we called now as "Homo Sapiens".
There could be others 'hominid' species living around his time, but he was the first to be 'enlightened' in such manner.The 'perfecting of homo sapiens / bani Adam' apparently did not stop there.. it is still an ongoing process up until now.
Where new generation are better than their previous one.. more enlightened in "Creator's light and knowledge".
And for those who stray out of the Creator's intention are left to demise and extinct.. just like what eventually happens to other hominids...
The survival of the nicest...Salam / Peace
-
Credits to our late John Lennon for Across The Universe... (and all praises to The One in the first place )
Superb description! Anyway, the thing is that truthful statements must be inherently sacred. For one, they may be reused indefinitely and they are TIMELESS. For two, every truthful word automatically demolishes an entire set of possible falsehoods (just as 2118!). There are an infinite amount of ways to get an exam wrong, but there is exactly ONE way to do it correctly! You cannot reasonably after having seen truth then say anything else!
Language allows us as humans to be ENERGY EFFICIENT. Nature itself is not energy efficient in this particular sense - it's more of a case of throw everything you got and pick up what's left, then throw it again! Over 4 billion years, this inevitably created so many perfectly energy efficient life forms. However because of the miniscule amount of energy words consume, they are VERY powerful - it's like having a ?1 coin that can potentially get you a hundred houses. Words essentially perform the same function as a transistor - they amplify energy expenditure in a controlled manner. Of course this means that speaking falsehood will result in a lot of human energy going into destructive efforts, just as truth results in that energy going into good works.
Very interesting view, OPF-- I found it not only inspiring but the timing is also perfect for my own situation atm. I'm tuning my language back in (to whatever life i want/able to create). Day in, day out. It's just that i was seeking for the bright blue sky while i was caving in the dark dungeons. And it has successfully gotten me nowhere. So basically now i'm on my way to integrating "language", "imagination", and "act" all together. Wonderful clues all around. An exciting year ahead.