Oh man, the Evolution of Language sounds kickass. Anything that has to do with Linguistics interests me

Oh yeah? Why is that?

Fair enough

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  Not to be too persnickedy about proper protocol, I just have to admit that when I see the word "prove," it gives me a rash that almost always has to be scratched. My statistics professors at the University of Oklahoma drilled into my head the immuttable fact that one should never use the word "prove, in science.  They claimed that one can never actually prove anything scientifically. In all scientific endedavors one opts to provide strong evidence for a hypothesis.  Stronger and stronger evidence makes it seem that something is "proved," but in fact science never admits that something has indeed been proved. Through his work with gravity and time dimensions Einstein (almost said proved) illustrated clearly that even natural law was not immutable. But that is the beauty of scince, we are not arrogant with our beliefs and findings. We produce the latest discoveries and put them to the test by which we determine its validity, and if sufficiently shown to be valid and relavant to known science we properly place it in the correct lineage. Then, in doing so we try to determine how this finding affects all surrounding elements. On a persoan note, the long lineage of mankind has been changed many times, and indeed it will change many times more in the future. And that is just fine. We admit we don't know it all, we are open to all new theories and opinions. Is this not light years better than being forced into an ideology and then all your life having to believe the most  proposterous explanations for everything concerning our species?  When new findings are produced, those functioning in a shut ideology have to make up the most fantastic theories to cover their untenable beliefs. But, I regress.  We do not "prove" anything. A devout Christian might say that such and such "proves" a point in the bible (no matter what it is, it surely does not "prove" any point), but in doing so he or she illustrates a lack of scientific knowledge about how truth is verified.

   The closest I ever came to "proving" the existence of evolution occured in my own classrooms at the University of Oklahoma. On occasion while teaching the elements of species modification thorughout eons of time a student would fervently deny the instruction and claim his or her proof of species existence came from the bible. They would adamantly deny the Theory of Evolution (it's actually recognized as the Law of Evolution). So I ask the recalcitrant student to come up and help me illstrate some things for the class. From that point on I totally ignored the student and only interacted with the class.  First, I would ask the students to look at the hair on my "associate's" arm. 

"Now why would a creater god produce a species of people that had such a useless feature? Obviously that god would not do such a thing. But our ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years did indeed have the need for body hair during all those ice ages. We still have hair on our bodies today because hair is a vestigial organ, one that had a use at one time, but through evolution started to go away through disuse."

  "Oh look right over here in this area (pointing to the associate's mid-section). "Do you know anything about the little organ that is found right here? It is the varicose appendix and you might have known relatives or friends who have had a great deal of grief because of the appendix. I had an uncle who died of an appendix attack many years ago.  Why do we have such a worthless organ that produces no good, only the potential for bad? Well, of course at one time it very much had a purpose, filtering some of the roughage our ancestors included in their diet. Again, something that is going away, but we at present still have one of the things inside us."

  "So (pointing to the associate's rear jaw area), have any of you had your molars removed? A lot of you have I see. Again, why would a god put something in our mouths that doesn't fit and served no purpose, only caused us pain and made oral surgeon's rich? Of course no god would have done us such a favor. But our ancestors needed those big rear teech badly! They were used to grind some really rough produce (we probably don't want to know what all the stuff they ate). So, here we are again stuck with a remnant from a past life."

  "If you are ever in a car crash you really hope that this organ down deep in here is not injured (pointing to the associate's side). Down there is the spleen and it holds a lot of blood that, if it losses too quickly, can be devastating.  Why do we have such a large reservoir in our body? We rarely need such a thing in modern times, with perhaps the exception of combat soldiers and athletes. It was designed to push a vast amount of blood into circulation in order to boost the energy of our ancient ancestors. You see, they needed to engage in flight or fight encounters all too often. Now the spleen is generally just a dangerous organ to have in our bodies."

  "Oh, look at this thing back here! (pointing to the associate's spinal column).  Have any of you had or know of someone who has had problems with their backs? Ah, see everyone has had or known of someone who has had back problems.  Why in the world is that?  The answer is simple, as any orthopedic surgeon will tell you. Our spine was really designed for a four-legged animal. Our primal ancestors learned to stand on two feet, and then learned to become ambulatory in that fashion.  But evolution could not account for such a drastic change so quickly, and thus we are stuck with a spine that suited our very ancient ancestors, but certainly not us."

  At that time I would thank the "helper" student for helping me and ask them to return to their seat. Some say that this technique is almost an ambush practice that wasn't fair to a religious student. My conention is that when a student enters a modern university it is to learn what is known in the world. Maybe I should be sorry (I guess) to drive in the Law of Evolution by way of illustrating that we carry in our own bodies all the evidence one would ever need. But when the evidence is so clearly in evidence, I believe I would be totally remiss to solf pedal my way around the topic. Maybe I didn't "prove" the Law of Evolution to all students, but every time they have a pain in their molars, a twinge in their appendix area, notice the hair on their arms, or buckle their seat belts tightly around their spleen area, they might just be a little more amenable to a more scientific world view.

I agree.

You can say there is a force called "gravity", but has it been proved? Well, a simple test shows you throw an apple up and it lands back down on the ground. What pulls it down? Strong evidence leads to a strong argument.

Then you have "gods" and a person may say, "my god is real", ok? prove it? Well I have a book written many hundreds of years ago, which is based on stories passed along the generations which say there is a "god" who created us, the earth and the universe. "Do you have any other evidence?"... "No?" Weak evidence leads to a weak argument.