Rat Research Hints at God's Creation

OrthodoxNet.com ^ | 2/23/2005 | Chris Banescu

[ezfindit]

Earlier this year, researchers in Spain made a remarkable scientific discovery. Rats are capable of discerning the rhythms of the human language and can tell the difference between different languages. According to the Reuters story, the "study suggests that animals, especially mammals, evolved some of the skills underlying the use and development of language long before language itself ever evolved." There is only a slight catch with the researchers' evolutionary explanation, it does not make any sense. Rather than support evolution, these findings actually reinforce the Creation model of the world. The research seems to indicate yet another weakness of the evolutionary model and adds more weight to a growing body of scientific evidence that disproves many aspects of evolution.

Neuroscientists at the University of Barcelona used Dutch and Japanese in conducting their studies on 64 male rats. They chose Dutch and Japanese because these languages are "very different from one another in use of words, rhythm and structure." According to the story the rats "were trained to respond to either Dutch or Japanese using food as a reward." The findings were indeed remarkable. "Rats rewarded for responding to Japanese did not respond to Dutch and rats trained to recognize Dutch did not respond the spoken Japanese. The rats could not tell apart Japanese or Dutch played backwards," according to the Reuters account.

Full article available at OrthodoxNet.com.

[ezfindit]

More good stuff coming from this writer. This scientific research really points to some great information that God's account of Creation in the Bible is correct and true.

[blowfish]

Really, I missed the biblical passage that says 'on the 13th day, god decided that rats should understand human speech, as long as they were from the same country. Even though countries didn't exist yet'

[ezfindit]

Orthodox Ping! More good stuff to share...

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Rat Research...

Was this conducted at DU?

[snarks_when_bored]

Is there anything that animals can do that isn't a miracle?

Sheesh.

[Torties]

Will someone ask the rat who really speaks ENGLISH? THe United States or England.

[lupie]

Interesting article ping

[bahblahbah]

"In other words, rats are predisposed by their DNA to discern human verbal communications, and not just in general, but by individual speaker and specific language."

I think they can discern many different animal communications(verbal and nonverbal). The rats may have less variance between the noises they make and there brains are smaller so evolutionary would be more susceptible to recognizing just an individual speaker with a specific language.

[Strategerist]

ROFL.

So if Rats and humans were created at the same time, why bother giving some language skills if they can't talk?

[NYer]

these findings actually reinforce the Creation model of the world.

Catholic Ping - Come home for Easter and experience God’s merciful love. Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[Unam Sanctam]

The Democrats have got religion?

[ArGee]

As amazing as these scientific experiments are, the incorrect conclusions the researches seem to draw are even more astounding. Common sense should dictate that it's scientifically impossible for rats to have evolved language discrimination skills before language ever existed.

Actually, I'd find both sets of conclusions astounding. From my perspective, unless someone can come up with value in rats responding to the commands of a single human being (as opposed to reacting to threats from any human being) then I'd have a hard time calling the capability anything but a happenstance commonality between rat and human brains.

Shalom.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

As amazing as these scientific experiments are, the incorrect conclusions the researches seem to draw are even more astounding. Common sense should dictate that it's scientifically impossible for rats to have evolved language discrimination skills before language ever existed.

Since genes can control multiple regions of development, common sense dictates that this is very possible.

Only Creationism and ID posit that characteristics of organisms pop into existing without pre-cursors.

[krakath]

I thought something along those lines too, at first glance.

[tfecw]

This is junk, drival, and stupidity rolled into a nice neat package.

Pavlov figured this out 80 some years ago.

[encm(ss)]

Next thing you know they'll try to tell you that human babies can recognize their mothers voice.

[SedVictaCatoni]

More important, "results showed that rats could discriminate natural sentences when uttered by a single speaker and not when uttered by different ones, nor could they distinguish the languages when spoken by different people," the researchers observed. In other words, rats are predisposed by their DNA to discern human verbal communications, and not just in general, but by individual speaker and specific language. And yet, these diminutive mammals were supposed to have "evolved" these abilities millions of years before human beings appeared and started using language as a means of communication. A miracle indeed!

Um... I think that the evolutionary implications of this are that the ability to form and manipulate language evolved from simpler abilities to recognize and distinguish between different rhythms in the noises which other animals make. It isn't limited to telling the difference between Dutch and Japanese, and so it's not surprising that such an ability would have predated Dutch or Japanese. The whole "ha-ha, it's in rat DNA to interpret human languages" conclusion is such a jump that one is a little embarrassed for the author.

[general_re]

Wow. Hey, guess what? My dog doesn't sit when someone says "Reposez!", because she doesn't understand French. I would hazard a guess that French dogs don't respond to "Sit!" either. Obviously, this is evidence of special creation, right?

Man, things are getting kind of sad on the creationist side when trained rats are taken as some sort of evidence for creationism...

[Eddeche]

Why would you post fake science news from someplace called OrthodoxNet.com ?

[hflynn]

According to the story the rats "were trained to respond to either Dutch or Japanese using food as a reward."

They understand English and Italian also. All you have to do is say cheese or mozzarella.