“The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world.” Ps. 19:1-4 (NLT) Human speech, in its entirety, is a fascinating concept. Science proves to us that we learn to speak by hearing others speaking around us, and the feral children of the world prove this point loud and clear.

Now I didn’t know what a “feral” child was, nor did I have any idea there were so many in the world, until I did an internet search. Here are two real examples from the many I found: The Indian Wolf Boy was known as Dina Sanichar. He was six years old in 1867 when hunters first found him. They saw a human running on four legs with a pack of wolves in the jungles of Bulandshahr, India. They were able to rescue the boy, but although many people worked with him to help him adapt to human civilization, he was never able to speak.

The second case is known as the “Wild Boy of Aveyron”. Towards the end of the 18th century people began seeing the boy, whom they called Victor, wandering around the woods of Saint Sernin sur Rance in France. He was around twelve years old when he was captured on January 8, 1800, and he couldn’t speak. Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre, a Biology professor, decided to examine Victor. He was quite fascinated when he saw Victor rolling naked in the snow with no ill-effects from the cold. Pierre tried to teach Victor to talk, but though Victor could hear quite well and his vocal cords were functional, he was never able to speak.

It makes me wonder about Adam and Eve. If a human doesn’t learn to speak unless he is spoken to when he is very young, how were Adam and Eve, created as adults, able to speak? According to the cases of the feral children, Adam and Eve should never have been able to speak at all! Yet they did.

Who taught them?

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze…” Genesis 3:8 (HCSB). It was our Heavenly Father who taught them!

If God did not exist, the first people would have never learned to speak, and humanity in its entirety would be without the gift of speech. The fact that humans can speak is proof in itself that there is a God.

Rob Chaffart

(To access the entire “Why I am a Christian” devotional series, please click here.)