"In short, man is not only a unique animal, but the end product of a completely unique evolutionary pathway, the elements of which are traceable at least to the beginnings of the Cenozoic. We find, then, that the evolution of cognition is the product of a variety of influences and preadaptive capacities, the absence of any one of which would have completely negated the process, and most of which are unique attributes of primates and/or hominids. Specific dietary shifts, bipedal locomotion, manual dexterity, control of differentiated muscles of facial expression, vocalization, intense social and parenting behavior (of specific kinds), keen stereoscopic vision, and even specialized forms of sexual behavior, all qualify as irreplaceable elements. It is evident that the evolution of cognition is neither the result of an evolutionary trend nor an event of even the lowest calculable probability, but rather the consequence of a series of highly specific evolutionary events whose ultimate cause is traceable to selection for unrelated characters such as locomotion and diet. ... Thus I conclude that man is a highly specific, unique, and unduplicated species. ... From what we know of the human evolutionary pathway and of the critical elements that have directed it, the odds against its reexpression are indeed remote, if not astronomical. No other mammal even remotely shares the unique attribute complex that defines either man or his evolutionary pathway." (Lovejoy, C.O., "Evolution of Man and Its Implications for General Principles of the Evolution of Intelligent Life," in Billingham, J., ed., "Life in the Universe: Proceedings of the Conference on Life in the Universe, held at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California, June 19-20, 1979," , MIT Press: Cambridge MA, Second Printing, 1982, pp.326-327).
The implications of this fact that "... man is ... a unique animal ... the end product of a completely unique evolutionary [sic] pathway ... the absence of any one [element] of which would have completely negated the process..." include:
- No theory of naturalistic evolution can predict (i.e. retrodict) and therefore cannot explain the appearance of man, as admitted by evolutionists as diverse as Paul Davies and Richard Dawkins:
"PD: ... The question that we have to ask is if the earth was hit by an asteroid tomorrow and everything but simple microbes were destroyed and we came back in another 3 or 4 billion years, would we expect to find homo sapiens here again. Well, of course not.
RD: Of course we wouldn't!
PD: No, of course not. But the question is would we expect to find any intelligent life and I think most biologists would say no. ...
RD: Yes ... If you wiped our life and started again-no, you would not get Homo sapiens. I tell you what you would get, you would probably get a great diversity of living form . You'd probably get plants, animals, you'd probably get parasites, you'd probably get predators, you'd probably get large predators, small predators. You might well get flight, you might well get sight. There are all sorts of things that you can guess that you might get. You would certainly not get a re-run of what we've got."
(McKew, M., "The Origin of the Universe," Interview with Richard Dawkins & Paul Davies, Lateline, Australian Broadcasting Commission, 19 June 1996, in Australian Rationalist, No. 41, Spring 1996, pp.72-73);
- We are alone in the Universe, either actually in the sense that there is no other human-level intelligence elsewhere, or effectively in the sense that it would be so rare that we could never become aware of it and vice-versa (so SETI is a waste of time and money);
- Even such `mistakes' as the loss of the ability to synthesise vitamin C due to a mutation in the gene which codes for the L-gulono-γ-lactone oxidase (GLO) enzyme in man's ancestral primate was one of those "irreplaceable elements ... such as diet" without which man would not have arisen (and even if he had, he would not have developed agriculture and therefore civilisation); and
- If an Intelligent Designer did bring about man, then he would have had to have the degree of control (and therefore the power and knowledge) over the process that only an omnipotent, omniscient God (like the God of the Bible) would have!
Stephen E. Jones, BSc (Biol).
Genesis 25:7-10. 7Altogether, Abraham lived a hundred and seventy-five years. 8Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people. 9His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, 10the field Abraham had bought from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried with his wife Sarah.