Do Humans Possess Inate Numerical Skills?

To test humanity’s ability to know numerical concepts without knowing words for them, the researchers worked with Australian Aborigine children, “who have very restricted vocabularies for numbers,” from both Tanami Desert and Groot Eylandt. Although the languages that the children speak have words for one, two, few, and many, the children did not know the words for higher values.

The researchers relied upon visual and auditory cues that the children were asked to link to number values.

The lead author of the study from UCL, Professor Brian Butterworth, explained the difficulties in developing a means to test the children compared to native English-speaking children. “In our tasks we couldn’t, for example, ask questions such as ‘How many?’ or ‘Do these two sets have the same number of objects?’ We therefore had to develop special tasks.”

The researchers relied, instead, upon visual and auditory cues that the children were asked to link to number values. For example, after hearing sticks being banged together a certain number of times, the children would have to come up with the correct number of counters. Although lacking words for the numbers, the Aborigine children “performed as well as or better than the English-speaking children on a range of tasks, and on numerosities up to nine.”

The human brain is an engineering marvel. Faster and more efficient than any supercomputer we can yet create, it can process copious amounts of information without overheating; retain images, data, and events without running out of space; and produce beautiful works of art. And yet, naturalists would have us believe that what we cannot match with our combined intelligence, natural selection produced with no intelligence at all.

The best computers do not suddenly develop the ability to count. That ability is there because we program it in. If this research is correct (more studies are needed), then our brains come pre-wired with numerical aptitude added at no charge.

The double standard of Darwinists is staggering. They admit that the complex machines and computers we use every day are the product of intelligence. None of them would claim that computers just sprang up from bits of silicon and copper. But the much greater complexity of the human body (and all of nature) is assigned to no intelligence at all. One can only point to 2 Peter 3 to understand why anyone would think this.