["Followup-To:" header set to talk.origins.]
On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:58:31 +0000 (UTC),
Bennett Standeven <berry@pop.networkusa.net> wrote:
> "Uncle Davey" <noway@jose.com> wrote in message news:<buttes$csv$0@pita.alt.net>...
>> "Ineedmoney" <mail@atmycomputer.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
>> news:butqab$a2v$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
>> >
>> > "Uncle Davey" <noway@jose.com> wrote in message
>> > news:butoq1$4hq$0@pita.alt.net...
>> > >
>> > > "Cheezits" <cheezits32@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> > > news:Xns947A4B5CBF133cheezitsnetzeronet@129.250.170.83...
>> > > > laurieappieton@aol.com (LaurieAppIeton) won't even try to defend this
>> > > > nonsense, but let's have some fun with it anyway:
>> > > > > 1) no natural process which resulted in information forming
>> > > > > automatically in matter, has ever been observed;
>> > > >
>> > > > No act of divine creation has ever been observed.
>> > >
>> > > Oh yes it has, Sue. When God confounded the languages at Babel, humanity
>> was
>> > > able to observe it. That's why we were scattered all over the earth, and
>> we
>> > > speak languages whose families cannot possibly have a common ancestor.
>> >
>> > Any evidence of that outside the Bible, shmuck?
>> >
>> > Ed
>> >
>>
>> Sure.
>>
>> All the evidence of a lack of common ancestor between the various language
>> families lies in the fact that in the nearly two hundred years of sensible
>> study of philology that we have had, no-one has been able to posit one.
>>
>> Or even give a reasonable envisaging of one.
>>
>> So, if you would like to say that it's wrong, then kindly show me what the
>> common ancestor language could have looked like between, say, Finno-Ugric
>> and Indo-European, and kindly leave my genitalia out of this discussion if
>> you want to continue to be treated with respect. There are many more
>> elevated uses of Yiddish phraseology.
>>
>
> Look up Nostratic; it is a putative common ancestor of Finno-Ugric and
> Indo-European. Of course, the "fossil record" for languages only goes
> back 6000 years, so anything prior to that is guesswork.
As far as I know, this is hardly accepted by most linguists, and really the
whole thing is besides the point. Uncle Davey seems to have created this
odd bit of illogic where we need to find a common ancestor between all
languages, otherwise the theory of biological evolution is not true. First
of all, linguistics does not require that we actually be able to tie any of
the major language groups together with common ancestors (though that would
be cool), and language evolution shows some similarity to biological
evolution, is a seperate process relying upon different mechanisms.
IN other words, Uncle Davey is just spouting nonsense.
--
Aaron Clausen
tao_of_cow/\alberni.net (replace /\ with @)
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