Our sense organs 45

Genesis 1:28: “God blessed them and said to
them.” God spoke to Adam and Eve. Man is
addressed by God, and is called to respond. No
animal can speak! Only two exceptions are mentioned
in the Bible, the serpent in the garden of
Eden, and Balaam’s ass. But both of these animals
were controlled externally; the serpent by
the devil, and the donkey by God.
Only man has the gift of speech, a characteristic
otherwise only possessed by God. This separates
us clearly from the animal kingdom. We are able
to use words creatively, but we are unable to create
anything by speaking, as God can do. Our
words can bless and benefit other people, but
they can also be destructive. We are able to
express all our feelings in words, and we can
enter into trusting relationships like no other
beings on Earth. In addition to the necessary
“software” for speech, we have also been provided
with the required “hardware”:
The morphological conditions for speech are not
located in a single organ. We require a voicebox
(larynx) for producing sounds, a suitably shaped
throat and mouth working together with the
tongue, as well as a highly complex control system
(the brain), all functionally coordinated with
each other. If only one of them is missing, speech
is impossible. In the Middle Ages, peoples’
tongues were cut out to prevent them from talking.
The sounds produced by the vocal cords
travel upwards and are shaped in the throat and
mouth to form specific phonemes (speech
sounds). This requires movements of the tongue,
fine-tuned with those of the lips. In addition,
various resonant passages of the oral cavity contribute
to the formation of understandable
sounds. Each and every one of the 600 possible
sounds occurring in the different human languages
requires precise movements and exactly
shaped tongue positions. In 1756 Johann Peter
Süßmilch (1707 – 1767) established that man
could not have invented speech without the
required mental abilities, and, conversely, that
thought in its turn depends on the previous existence
of speech. The only possible solution for this
paradox is that God has given man the ability
to speak.
Characteristics of human speech:
– We can create new words and can link as
many discrete phonemes together as we like,
producing acceptable new sentences.
– We are able to construct sentences which we
have never before uttered.
– We can understand sentences which we have
never heard beforehand.
– An unlimited number of thoughts can be
expressed in human speech.
Systems used for communication among animals
are fixed and limited. No creative communion is
possible, and only severely limited concepts can
be expressed (for example food, danger, and sexual
attraction). These cannot be compared to
speech.
Like God, we can think
God is the source of all thought. No one advised
Him, since wisdom originates with Him: “Oh, the
depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge
of God! How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out! ’Who has
known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been
his counselor?’ ” (Rom 11:33-34).
God compares his thoughts with ours in Isaiah
55:8-9: “ ’For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways’, declares the
Lord. ’As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways and my
thoughts than your thoughts’.”
However, despite this enormous distance from
God, we too can think, consider, and contemplate.
We are able to ponder fundamental issues
such as life, death and wisdom, as stated in
Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to number our days
aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
We have the ability to handle widely differing
categories of thought, like inferential logic,
causality and complementarity. The following
ability is very important in our daily lives and in
all sciences:
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