Language and its relation with the Origins of Morality and Religion

Introduction

When I got accepted to study at Princeton Theological Seminary I knew I was going to be facing many new challenges. This can be the first line of any story, of any student who got accepted to study into any institution, but there is something in my story that makes it different. I was beginning a journey not only into theological studies, but into what is a different language than the one that I have learn as a child, English. I never realized how important a good language communication is until I came to Princeton Theological Seminary.

If it is very difficult to understand what others are saying, it is even more difficult to make people understand what I mean with my words. Frustration came, and I felt left out (not to say stupid) from conversations because of my inability to make an argument to respond to any conversation, and for the looks of my classmates who don"t understand what I am saying, or they end up understanding something different of what I mean.

I think I feel like my one and half year old nephew when he is trying to say something, and no one understands him, like crying. Maybe crying is one of the ways he uses for communicating what he is feeling. Non verbal communication and manipulation of meanings is very important in the life of my baby nephew; it is very important for me now. I have come to know that language is more than a capacity, but a need. I keep wondering how and when was it that us, human beings, begin to use language as a tool of communication. When it became a need? This work is going to be about some theories about the origin of language, based primarily in Steven Mithen"s book The Singing Neanderthals (2006) and the importance of language for understanding the evolution of rational knowledge, the evolution of morality and religion.

Language as uniquely human

The term language could have many meanings; it could either be the way that human beings verbally communicate, or it could refer to animals ways of communicating. We will talk in this work about the verbal communication of humans, understanding also that nonverbal communication also plays an important roll in it.

There are studies that show how some animals can learn some vocabulary. Among them are the chimpanzees, which are the most gifted among all the apes when they are learning a language. Even though some of them can learn more than 200 words and also some rules of syntax, none of them can use them to create a complicated sentence.[1] The distinction between human verbal communication and animals" communication is our capacity to play and create with the words and syntax that we have learned. We most note that the learning of some words and symbolism by these apes is something that happens in laboratories, where humans are being part of the process, not in the wild without the intervention of humans. By that I mean that is not a natural process. Van Huysteen when commenting on Darwin"s position about human language says:

"Darwin does agree that the language faculty has justly been considered on the chief distinctions between humans and the lower animals. Animals of various kinds, however, do communicate by expressing cries of many kinds. Articulate language certainly is peculiar to humans, although even humans, in common with the lower animals, use inarticulate cries to express meaning, aided by gestures and the movement of the muscles of the face. For Darwin language undoubtedly has as its origin the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and the instinctive cries of humans themselves. And as the human voice was used more and more, also in interaction with the superior development of the human brain…"[2]

Language and Rationality

Rationality is deeply connected to human communications (even though some humans seem to prove this wrong). Wuketits comes to the conclusion that "human language is different from animal communication in its recursive structure; that is, we can have a reflexive understanding of our own communication systems."[3] What he is saying here is that when we are having a verbal communication with another human being not only we are hearing constructions of verbal sentences but we are analyzing the meanings (or interpreting the symbols) of what is being said.