I will now summarize my arguments why the existence of the tower of Babel and it resulting in the origin of subsequent languages is a better explanation than science.
The Bible claims all the subsequent languages of the world originated from a single source at the tower of Babel.
Gen 11:1-9 (ESV)
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
6 And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
According to Wikipedia, the dating of the tower of Babel is prior to the first written languages. So, this is consistent with the Biblical account.
otseng wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:06 am As for the oldest languages in the world based on the first written account:Egyptian – 2690 BC
Sumerian – 2600 BC
Canaanite – 2400 BC
Chinese – 1200 BChttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l … n_accounts
“Some scholars use internal and external evidence to offer 3500–3000 BC as a likely range for the date of the tower,”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_ … r_of_Babel
Further, regarding the timing, if homo sapiens came about 300,000 years ago, why would languages independently arise less than 5000 years ago?
But, the most damaging regarding the “science” of the origin of languages is there does not exist any viable naturalistic explanation for the origin of languages.
otseng wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 1:42 am “The evolution of the faculty of language largely remains an enigma.”
https://chomsky.info/20140826/We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; (2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; (3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; (4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language’s origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses.
What we find also are elements in cultures around the world that share commonalities. If languages and cultures dispersed globally from the tower of Babel, then this would easily explain commonalities in cultures. The other alternative is cultures around the world just coincidentally sharing common similarities, with each independently coming up with shared details. However, as more commonalities are identified, the chance of all of them being just random coincidence becomes exponentially more improbable.
I’ve pointed out similarities exist of a great flood across cultures:
otseng wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 12:22 am “Flood stories pervade hundreds of cultures and there are striking similarities to many of the accounts. It seems that at least some of these stories could be based upon actual events.”
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blo … d-stories/“A good deal of similarity exists between several of the flood myths, leading scholars to believe that these have evolved from or influenced each other.”
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Great_Flood“There are many sources of flood myths in ancient Chinese literature. Some appear to refer to a worldwide deluge.”
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/en … lood#China
Another “coincidence” among cultures is similarities in constellations:
otseng wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 1:19 am “The extant record indicates that astrological interpretations of celestial patterns date to ancient Mesopotamia.”
https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/en … ient-world“Norris has worked with Indigenous Australians and learned many of their sky stories, including those of different groups who identify the Pleiades as seven girls being chased by the constellation Orion, who is a hunter in these tales. This storyline is extremely similar to the one in ancient Greek legends about these constellations.”
https://www.livescience.com/pleiades-co … story.html“A significant number of Native American tales, told by peoples spread across the North American continent north of the Rio Grande, have a very similar setup for the Big Dipper — including the bear, hunters and steering bird, he added. Given that a great deal of other evidence shows that humans migrated over an ancient land bridge in the Bering Strait between modern-day Russia and Alaska thousands of years ago, Schaefer thought it was much more likely that these Big Dipper stories share a common origin.”
https://www.livescience.com/pleiades-co … story.html“The Chinese system developed independently from the Greco-Roman system since at least the 5th century BC, although there may have been earlier mutual influence, suggested by parallels to ancient Babylonian astronomy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_constellations“But around the world and throughout history, we find remarkably similar constellations defined by disparate cultures, as well as strikingly similar narratives describing the relationships between them.”
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-cultures- … tions.html“Human cultures can see the world through very different lenses, but the way we sort stars in the night sky is surprisingly universal.
Even when separated by vast differences in time and space, many of the same constellations stand out time and time again in human history, albeit with different names and stories behind them.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-so … t-cultures
Another similarity across cultures are structures that are ziggurat-like.
otseng wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 11:32 am No one yet has excavated any ruins of the tower of Babel, so we don’t have any physical evidence of what it looked like. But, pretty much consensus view is that it was a tall ziggurat.“The biblical account of the Tower of Babel has been associated by modern scholars to the massive construction undertakings of the ziggurats of Mesopotamia”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat
Marten van Valckenborch the Elder – The Tower of Babel
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File … roject.jpg
And most likely the Egyptian pyramids were influenced by the ziggurats.
“The design of Egyptian pyramids, especially the stepped designs of the oldest pyramids (Pyramid of Zoser at Saqqara, 2600 BCE), may have been an evolution from the ziggurats built in Mesopotamia.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat
otseng wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:25 pm It would be quite strange that Egyptians, who is one of the closest neighbors of the ziggurat builders of Mesopotamia, would not know about ziggurats, whereas other civilizations would. I believe at a minimum, the Egyptians were influenced by ziggurats. (“That’s a pretty impressive monument you got there, but we are going to build a bigger and badder one than that.”)
Another interesting artifact that is found common around the world is the Acheulean biface (or hand axe).
otseng wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 9:43 pm
“Although everpresent in stone age culture, the exact purpose and use of this tool remains a mystery.”
http://world-history-education-resource … -hand.html“There is a tool that has been around for over million years, that archaeologists keep finding in caves, ditches, wells, and prehistoric settlements. They’re older and more ubiquitous than wheels, than pottery, than pretty much anything else. They’re everywhere, but nobody can agree what they’re for.”
https://jon-farrow.com/2017/02/20/a-mil … d-mystery/“No academic consensus describes their use.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_axe
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1065141#p1065141