New word "stabby",I love it!????????

There was a tribe in South America mentioned by Dr. Savage that seemed to develop completely isolated: social strata; language; civil actions. Language seemed to have been secondary.

how do you know other species do not have language? I think they may and we do not understand them yet but I have not made a study of this

"So you'd think this would be a big arrow in the evolution denier's quiver, yet never once heard one of them bring it up."

Though your argument is different, there is some similarity between your concern about the evolution of language and Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, which a some Christians DO try to use often.

"Worse, the problem of deception should have selected against language evolving in the first place. How do you know if someone is telling the truth? You don't, so the best way to protect yourself against lies is not to believe anything. So no language."

This is an interesting concern, I can't say I've quite heard this one before, so sincere cudos on originality.

Let me change your basic argument to a different but similar context. 'The problem of debilitating viruses should have selected against the internet evolving in the first place. How do you know if the information you're getting is not a virus? You don't, so the best way to protect yourself against viruses is not to connect with any other computers. So no internet.'

In both cases, what is being said is that one common failure mode in a means of information transmission should be strong enough for that form of transmission to not work at all.

But as far as I can tell, the flaw lies here: "How do you know if someone is telling the truth? You don't". This is where the process of empiricism comes in, and always has.

If someone tells you while you're sitting in a tent that it is sunny outside, but you walk outside for yourself and it is completely overcast, then you DO know whether they've told you the truth or not. This ability to double check/do things over for yourself—while we don't have the time to apply it to everything—can give us power over other people's words. Other people know that too, so this is one incentive (among several others—including survival) for them to tell the truth.

This is like with my virus analogy. 'How do you know if the information you're getting is not a virus? You don't'. Well, we can learn about common properties of their transmission (to avoid them) and behavior (to sense when an infection is beginning) and we can sand-box them (to confirm that they are definitely viruses). Hence these multiple defenses have also evolved for the internet to keep working.

Likewise, we evolved a number of defenses against deception. From double checking to neuropathways that behave differently depending on whether we are lying or telling the truth—giving others the ability to sometimes intuit when another person is making a statement in a strange way; a red flag for a lie.

I would ask you to consider that evolving into a more efficient lifeform on this planet maybe a physical change in form while language is a means of communication. Many species other than ours communicates with each other for the common good. I would offer that when our brains increased in size so did our vocabulary.