Only God could have created Jazz

We attended the Yellowjackets concert at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center last night. Incredible what four guys can create with their fingers and breath. I have been reading a book, the Evolution of Language, by W. Tecumseh Fitch. He shows how hard human speech is to explain from a purely Darwinist view of slow progression.

Some argue that certain human traits, such as advanced cognitive abilities and complex language, are too unique and sophisticated to have evolved gradually from simpler primate traits. They suggest that the gap between human and non-human primate intelligence is too wide to be explained solely by natural selection.

Speech falls squarely at the center of this argument. Sixty years ago, Noam Chomsky pointed out that infants learn to talk merely by interacting with those around them for a few years. Since conversation contains too little information to provide rules for this incredibly complex skill, humans must be born with the unique ability to learn to speak. Chomsky asserted that language is a uniquely human phenomenon, and he doubted evolution played a role in its origin.

Christine Kenneally stated it nicely. "Even though humans are more closely related to vervets than vervets are to chickens, it appears that vervets and chickens have converged upon a common tactic for survival. The forces that led them both to this strategy are powerful, but alarm calls were probably not bequeathed to them from a common ancestor. In fact, the most important thing that they share with all the other alarm-call-making animals is that they are small and delicious. W. Tecumseh Fitch explained: `The things that have alarm calls are little tiny guys who get eaten by lots of things, and the common ancestor of chimps and humans wasn't in that category. Humans don't have alarm calls, and apes don't have alarm calls. It's not that they don't have threats, but they don't have all these different threats where it pays to be able to refer very rapidly to aerial threat versus ground threat. Whether you're the Snickers bar of the Sahara or the Snickers bar of South Dakota, you're going to evolve alarm calls'".

If speech is a tough one, music is even more. Music, specifically Jazz has no place in the survival of the species, but is an amazingly complex thing of beauty that speaks it's own language. It is not a skill a primitive savage would need to survive and multiply. This finely tuned skill must be a gift from the creator, with nothing but the intention to bring us delight and celebrate the beauty of creation.