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.