Evolution! Why Is It Never a Question of “If”?
When discussing life, man, or conscious-
ness, evolutionists ask “how” these
evolved but not “if” they evolved
The Word: Evolved Once, or Given Once for All?
by John D. Wise, PhD
Take a look at two articles from New Scientist posted on 23 June 2025. The first asks:
Colin Barras, “Ancient humans only evolved language once, but why?”
This article poses several interesting questions: 1) Why did language evolve? 2) When did it evolve? And 3) Why did it only evolve once?
Notice the one question that is never asked: If life evolved. “If” is off the table.
… one of the key things researchers want to know about language is how it evolved, and why it only did so once in our human lineage.
OK, pause. “Only once” should send up a flag or two if we know the evolutionary literature. Flight supposedly “emerged” independently multiple times, as did eyes and even sonar. Language, possibly the most adaptively useful trait ever, evolved only once?
Two psychologists[1] (psychology, too, is evolutionary today; more on this below) offer what they call:
… a fairly straightforward evolutionary explanation…. [arguing] that it may have emerged 1.7 million years ago, when ancient humans began making stone hand-axes that are beyond the ability of non-human animals to produce.
The idea is that novice tool-makers would have required guidance from an expert to make their own hand-axes, so tool-making sites became classrooms. Proto-language must have emerged as a way for teachers to communicate to students.
There’s only one problem. This theory fell apart a decade ago when it was experimentally demonstrated that language is not necessary to teach toolmaking. Another explanation was needed.
[Multiple] scenarios all assume that language is fundamentally a tool for communicating with others. But that might not be the case. A third way to think about the evolution of language focuses almost exclusively on the way it can help individuals “talk” to themselves and organize their thoughts to undertake complex tasks.
According to some, including the influential linguist Noam Chomsky, this is what drove the evolution of language, meaning it had nothing at all to do with tool-making. Instead, these researchers think language emerged as recently as 70,000 years ago, perhaps simply because of a random genetic mutation that prompted brain rewiring.
Let that sink in. The most complex, layered, recursive and symbolic capacity on planet earth, language, is the result of a genetic mutation that rewired our brain. Is it plausible that a mutation, or even a whole series of them, would give birth to Shakespeare, philosophy, morality and mathematics, not to mention the intimate word whispered into the ear of our spouse?
Language, I agree, is necessary for rational thinking. But … does no one read Aristotle and the Greeks anymore? Or the Bible? Man is the rational animal, created in God’s image with reason and speech. Maybe – just maybe – we might ask a deeper question: could language evolve?
The Disney Effect and Consciousness at the Cellular Level
Enter our second article.
Michael Marshall, “Why you should assume that even the simplest animals are conscious: There is mounting evidence that even the simplest animals, like invertebrates, are conscious – but not in the way you might think”
For readers of my first article on communication within the animal world, my agreement with this article’s central claim might come as a bit of a shock. To start, let me answer some of the author’s questions:
Are dogs conscious …? [Yes]
… with thoughts and feelings of their own? [Yes, though with greater caution]
What about pigeons? Honeybees? Earthworms? Jellyfish? [Yes]
But here’s the rub. This article rightly points out a “human tendency” to ascribe consciousness to animals. In my previous work, I criticized this as the “Disney Effect,” projecting human-like inner lives onto animals. With the help of this article, I can now make this more precise: the Disney Effect is not the recognition of animal sentience; it’s attributing human-like consciousness to them. Consciousness, however, is not a simple yes or no attribution. It is more complex and nuanced than that.
Not All Consciousness Is Created Equal
The article continues:
But first, we must decide what we mean by consciousness. Here … it is useful to follow the thinking of philosopher Herbert Feigl and split consciousness into three layers.
[1] The most basic is sentience, the raw sensation of the present moment …
[2] On top of that is sapience, the ability to reflect on our experiences – to think …
[3] The final layer, selfhood, is a sense of ourselves as beings with a past, a future and a life of our own.
I’m no fan of Feigl’s system,[2] but since our author appeals to him, we’ll go with it.
Human beings exhibit all three levels of consciousness, and the Disney Effect attributes all three to animals. But while animals do exhibit the first, they are completely devoid of the third and lie on a continuum with the second. My denial of animal rationality is not a denial of animal consciousness.
In fact, I believe that all life – from animals to plants to cells[3] – is conscious in the “bare bones” sense of sentience. Life is aware. One might even say that life is awareness. This implies that consciousness and life are coextensive, perhaps even the same thing.
The Great Divides
This draws a radical boundary between life and non-life. Even by evolutionary standards, life is a miracle,[4] and the more we learn about it the greater the miracle becomes. But there’s another miracle that is just as radical: human reason – logos.
Long before I encountered modern research in cell biology, I already suspected that life required some form of of-ness, a minimal awareness that wasn’t just causal reactivity. We can program machines to react. That doesn’t make them conscious. What does? Something like intentionality – a valuing directedness (sometimes referred to as valence in the study of consciousness literature). Plants turning toward light aren’t just mechanically reacting. They want[5] the light. Philosophically, that’s called intentionality, a foundational concept in phenomenology, especially in the work of Edmund Husserl.
All consciousness is consciousness of … something.
This was Husserl’s key insight, and though it seems underwhelming it is profound. Nothing non-living exhibits this of-ness. Let’s think about a single cell in your body. DNA provides an informational blueprint, but there is no of-ness to DNA. It is the transcribers of DNA, its unzippers, the protein factories, the repair technician, the protein folders that seem to “know” what to do, and when and where to do it. Kinesins carrying vesicles across the cellular cytoskeleton don’t act randomly. They move with purpose, directionally, intentionally, not by chance. It cannot be simple mechanics and chemistry conducting this orchestra.
This is the miracle of life.[6]
But human rationality is more. It is the crown of creation because not only is it responsively aware, it can also speak. It has The Word.
To answer our first article’s question, language didn’t evolve – not even once. It was God’s gift to man, uniquely endowing him to listen with understanding and respond in common words with his Maker. We were made the stewards of life, but we alone among God’s living creations can talk – with one another and with God. Evolutionary thinking requires the dissolution of all these boundaries, these kinds.
Dr A.E. Wilder-Smith, with three earned doctorates, was a gifted public speaker, and fluent in multiple languages. The human capacity for language and rationality is so far above any animal’s capabilities, it is in a category by itself, shared with our Creator who gave man the logos.
Final Thought: Evolution as Imperialism
Evolution is an all-consuming narrative, a colonial power endlessly conquering and absorbing everything else into itself. Nothing stands untouched. It dissolves all distinctions: those between man and beast, between mind and matter, life and non-life, being and non-being, even between scientific disciplines.
Darwinian biology opened the door to this imperial thuggery, but it didn’t stop there.
Click to attend a brief evolutionary press conference about the origin of language.
“First life” – despite evolutionist attempts to deny and avoid the problem – must have “evolved.” Origin of life is evolution,[7] no matter how hopeless. But it can’t stop there, either. The inorganic compounds from which life supposedly sprang, too, must have evolved: “we are star dust.” Cue stellar evolution, galactic evolution, cosmic evolution. All is evolution, and evolution is all.
Evolution is The Absolute [8], the fundamental reality. It is philosophy, science, reason and faith – the uncreated creator, that which is, and was and evermore shall be.
Rule out creation by fiat and you need never worry about evidence for creation.
The question of “IF something evolved” is no question at all.
Footnotes:
[1] Shimon Edelman of Cornell and Oren Kolodny of Hebrew University of Jerusalem..
[2] They are overly simplistic and misrepresent the true distinctions to be made. However, in the evolutionary dialectical materialism of today’s science, they’re useful to make the case that consciousness is not simple. Remembering definition by genus and difference, we might say that all rational beings are conscious, but not all conscious beings are rational. The Greek definition for human still stands – man is a rational consciousness.
[3] I’ve only recently encountered this article on a theory called “Cellular Basis of Consciousness” (CBC) that posits the same thing. It is exciting to see that many of the “evidences” I used to draw my conclusion are leading others to the same.
[4] A statistical miracle at the very least. Evolutionary biologist Eugene Koonin estimated the likelihood of only two of the systems required to start life so that biological evolution can begin is one in 101018 – not a statistical improbability, but a simple impossibility. Koonin, Eugene, The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution.
[5] In speaking like this I am consciously committing the Disney Effect, as we have to use the familiar to represent the unfamiliar. A plant’s desire for the sun is not like a human desire for a suntan, but it’s not merely a chemical reaction, either.
[6] I am not wedded to this theory. It was a long time in the making, and I made many mistakes while formulating it, so it might well be wrong in small or even big ways. Hold all theories loosely, but cling tightly to Truth, Light and Love – God’s Word.
[7] The whole point of the process is to avoid transcendental causes.
[8] This is the same reason Hegel’s philosophy is known as Absolute Idealism.
John Wise received his PhD in philosophy from the University of CA, Irvine in 2004. His dissertation was titled Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology and the German Idealist Tradition. His area of specialization is 19th to early 20th century continental philosophy.
He tells the story of his 25-year odyssey from atheism to Christianity in the book, Through the Looking Glass: The Imploding of an Atheist Professor’s Worldview (available on Amazon). Since his return to Christ, his research interests include developing a Christian (YEC) philosophy of science and the integration of all human knowledge with God’s word.
He has taught philosophy for the University of CA, Irvine, East Stroudsburg University of PA, Grand Canyon University, American Intercontinental University, and Ashford University. He currently teaches online for the University of Arizona, Global Campus, and is a member of the Heterodox Academy. He and his wife Jenny are known online as The Christian Atheist with a podcast of that name, in addition to a YouTube channel: John and Jenny Wise.