My readers are the smartest and most talented people on the internet. As such you likely have no trouble remembering in perfect detail a post I wrote last week about language evolution. For those of you just joining us though here's a quick summary: Scientists wanted to see if there were similarities between genetic evolution and the evolution of language. They found that there was; but language tended to evolve faster so long term genetic trends were lost. You'd get no record of the out of Africa migration in language, for example.
Now, you might notice how neither my summary, nor my original article make any reference to the Tower of Babel. That's the Biblical explanation for language diversity, positing all the different linguistic groups arose suddenly as punishment. And I didn't discuss it because this new paper in no way provides any evidence for that nonsense idea.
But Dr Tomkins, of the Institute for Creation Research, begs to differ. He wrote a piece trying to link this research with the Babel account,
The Bible teaches that shortly after the Flood, mankind disobeyed God's commandment to replenish and fill the earth. Instead, they stayed in one place and attempted to re-establish the same pre-Flood pagan culture . . . Therefore, God confused their language and brought an end to their centralized rebellious ambitions . . . This ultimately led to the diversity among nations and people groups that we see today-a multiple-origins model based on the Bible that fits perfectly with the scientific data.
However, if you go through and read Dr Tomkins article you'll find that - much like my post - it makes very few links between this research and Babel. Instead, he spends most of his time pointing out how this research doesn't support the out of Africa model.
[T]here was no clear pattern of dispersal coming out of Africa according to popular evolutionary dogma that insists a small group of people first evolved in Africa and then later spread across the world.
In other words, Dr Tomkins post is a classic example of the fallacious argument from ignorance: you're idea (out of Africa) can"t explain this, therefore mine (Babel) is right. Before you laugh too hard at this, let me remind you this is a multi-million dollar organisation we're talking about here. And the height of it's rhetoric is basically "I know you are but what am I."
Clearly I'm trying way to hard with this whole "science" thing. Play it again Dr Tomkins:
Newly published research combining genetic, language, and demographic data challenges the idea of a single lineage of languages and human populations evolving out of Africa
Now to be fair to the chap, he does briefly try and link this research with Babel; noting that:
[T]he data supports the idea that multiple people groups have independent origins-a condition one would predict if the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel happened as described in the Bible
Except there's nothing in the study that supports that inference. In fact, it outright contradicts it in multiple places. Perhaps why so little time is spent trying to use this study to support the Babel idea; because if one looks in too much detail you find awkward phrases like
The analyzed languages did not evolve independently
Or the family tree of the languages studied; which clearly shows them having a single origin rather than the multiple, independent origins Dr Tomkins argues for:
On Mondays I discuss some psuedoscience. I originally started doing so as an excuse to talk about some cool topics I don't often get a chance to; like cool old temples. Since then I've become increasing curious about the psychology behind these ideas. Are the being deceptive, are they incompetent or simply misinformed? Regardless of the underlying cause, this article is so wrong no option reflects well on the ICR.
And of course, since they're wrong you know I'm right.
One last thing...
My excellent readers will recall another post from last week about a newly discovered jaw. This is causing something of a stir amongst these creationists; with articles trickling out. Hopefully by next Monday there will be enough to justify me writing about them.
The traditional YEC response to these sorts of discoveries is to claim it's simply an ape or simply a man. I'm taking bets as to what the consensus is this time. Post your suggestions in the comments! Personally, I suspect they'll go for the ape option on account of how similar it is to Australopiths. However, they have claimed Australopiths were people before so it's anyone's game.
