Larynx, Language, and Logos

Have you ever tried to imagine what your life would be like if you had never learned a language? I don’t mean a second language. What would your mental world be like if you did not speak any language? We see that many animals use forms of non-verbal communication. But while some zoologists will point to rudimentary forms of oral communication in various species, there is something very different about human speech and the way human beings form words into languages.

Much of that difference arises from the unique physical makeup of the human body—and our physical differences from animals lay the groundwork for other vital differences that set us apart from the rest of God’s creation.

Thinking Out of the Voice Box

The human larynx, sometimes called the voice box, is a tube containing our vocal cords; it regulates our breathing, swallowing, and talking. Composed of cartilage, ligaments, muscles, and a mucous membrane, it prevents food from entering our trachea when we eat, and it affects the pitch of our voice—a large larynx corresponds to a deeper voice. The malady we call laryngitis, typically thought of as a greatly reduced ability to speak, is the inflammation of the larynx.

This remarkable segment of our respiratory tract is a controversial topic among evolutionists, many of whom believe it is evidence of random evolutionary development. Evolutionist Richard Dawkins suggests that the human larynx has become “a mess, unlike the tidily symmetrical, serial repetitiveness” of what he believes was its ancestor in fish (The Greatest Show on Earth, p. 360). He points to the fact that, in humans, the laryngeal nerve is about seven times longer than it would be if it followed the most direct route between brain and throat. However, the nerve in humans serves more purposes on its circuitous route than does the simpler, shorter nerve in fish.

Primates, unsurprisingly, differ from other mammals—and the human larynx further differs from that of other primates in a vital and surprising way. It lacks the vocal membrane found in other primates, and it also lacks the air sacs that help many species of apes bellow out their booming calls. This is a conundrum for evolutionists—could the evolutionary gain of the vocal membrane have benefitted evolving primates, only for its loss to somehow afford additional benefit?

Yet the lack of the vocal membrane is not by itself sufficient to allow human speech. The human tongue is connected in the throat in a different way than we find in primates, and its shape also facilitates the use of the voice box to make a variety of controlled sounds far more precise and distinct than the shouts and shrieks of animals.

Evolutionists offer their explanations for each individual difference between humans and animals, but all of the differences together raise the problem of sheer mathematical and statistical improbability. Much more could be said on this point; to learn more about the illogic behind so much of evolutionary theory, please read our informative booklet Evolution and Creation: What Both Sides Miss. You can read it right here at TomorrowsWorld.org or order your own free printed copy.

The Way We Use Words

Of course, having the physical capacity for speech does not guarantee our ability to use it. From time to time, scientists and other researchers have encountered children who spent their early lives deprived of the human contact that would teach them to use language. In the 1970s, the case of Genie Wiley gained international attention after she was rescued at age 13 from an abusive home in which she had been locked alone in a room for nearly twelve years. Though tests found Genie quite skilled at non-verbal communication and spatial recognition, her isolation had prevented her from developing language skills. Teachers and researchers managed to expand her vocabulary, but grammar—the way we connect words to express complex thoughts—eluded her.

And, despite much misleading media coverage, we find the same in scientific studies of apes, young or old, taught to use sign language—they may accumulate a vocabulary of signs, but grammar is beyond them. Human language is much more than using nouns to describe things and verbs to describe actions; it includes adjectives and adverbs to describe those nouns and verbs, and it gives us past and future tense. A porpoise or a bird can use sounds to communicate “I’m here” or “I’m hungry” to others of its kind, but it cannot say, “I was hungry yesterday but will not be hungry tomorrow.”

Human beings are unique as what philosopher Alfred Korzybski called “time-binding” creatures. Plants are what he called “chemical-binders” in that they process chemicals to survive and thrive. Animals are both chemical-binders and “territory-binders,” as—unlike stationary plants—they move within their territories to survive. Only human beings are what Korzybski called “time-binders.” Not only can we speak to younger people to pass forward our knowledge, we can also speak of the past and the future. Today’s coyote crowded out of its territory by developers building a new subdivision cannot directly share its experience with coyotes that will live a hundred years from now. Human beings, however, have the capacity to understand our past, apply its lessons to our present, and both speak and write for the benefit of future generations. Without words, and without the grammar we use to connect them, this would be impossible. Human developments of vastly differing cultures and lifestyles over time and around the world testify to the power of human language.

And there is more. We know from God’s word that the difference between apes and humans is more than physical—more than just the roughly 2 percent of DNA that separates us. Scripture tells us that there is a “spirit in man” (Job 32:8). This spirit sets us apart from all other creatures—and enables us to receive God’s Spirit (Romans 8:16).

The Word Made Flesh

Before He was born on the earth as the Son of God, Jesus Christ, that divine Being was known as the Logos—Greek for Word or Spokesman. He was the God with whom the Israelites interacted throughout the Old Testament, and He later came as the Spokesman for His Father to reveal that Father to humankind. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

When God gave the Holy Spirit to the first Christians at Pentecost in AD 31, He used it to give them words that were understood by their hearers. The gathered crowd of people, some of whom had called for Christ’s crucifixion only weeks earlier, heard the word of God in their own languages (Acts 2:6–11). The miracle of Pentecost was not the ability to interpret babble—it was a miracle of hearing with understanding that led many to repentance and baptism (vv. 41–42).

Sadly, human speech can also draw people away from God. Animals can try to deceive each other by making noises, but only human beings are able to use words to tell lies. Human language can be—and often is—used destructively. Let us each, as faithful Christians, heed not the divisive words of mankind, but instead heed the words of Jesus Christ: “He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day” (John 12:48).