3000 years is time enough for all languages, religions to develop

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Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 Fallacies contained in this claim 5 External Links 6 References 7 Further Reading 8 Related claims 9 Acknowledgments

Claim

3000 years is time enough for all languages and religions to develop, consistent with a young earth.

Source

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Responses

1. This claim is also consistent with an ancient Earth. If "consistent with" makes this claim support for the YEC position, "consistent with" equally makes this claim support for the standard ancient-Earth position.
2. Stipulating that 3000 years is enough time, that still proves nothing. If my life savings are $6000, and I earn $12,000 per year, does that prove that I am 1/2 year old? This is a case of confusing a minimum with a maximum. Simply because 3000 years is enough time, this doesn't prove that no time was wasted and that humans have therefore been developing language and religion for a grand total of 3000 years. Suppose we developed a set of languages and religions, lost those, and started again from scratch (or from partway along, whatever). The time spent developing the current languages would still only be 3000 years, but the total time spent developing all languages and religions would be substantially more.
3. There were already very complex languages and cultures extant at the beginning of recorded history. For example, Babylonian culture did not spring from the ground fully developed. It must have required its own time to develop from a less complex form.
4. It is consistent only with the assumption that people, the presumed creators of both language and religion, were around at the beginning of the earth, which is, of course, a circular argument based on creationist falsehood this claim is attempting to support. Since there is no evidence dinosaurs (or any earlier creatures) developed either religion or language millions of years elapsed (without contradiction from this claim) with even any creature attempting to invent language or religion.
5. The Romance languages (ex. French, Italian, Portuguese, etc) still show considerable similarity to each other, and to their ancestral Latin, despite nearly 2000 years of development - to suppose that a mere extra 1,000 years could've produced languages as different as English and Navajo is utterly absurd!
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Fallacies contained in this claim

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External Links

• Mark Isaak's page for this claim [1]

References

1. Diamond, Jared, 1997. Guns, Germs and Steel, Norton, pp. 342-345.
2. Pilcher, Helen R., 2003 (1 May). "Earliest handwriting found?" Nature 423.

Further Reading

• Ruhlen, M., 1991. A guide to the world's languages, Volume I: Classification. Stanford U. Press, Stanford, CA.
• Coulmas, F,. 1989. The Writing Systems of the World. Blackwell, Malden, MA.
• Talk.origins FAQ on the age of the earth [2]

Related claims

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Acknowledgments

• Swelke