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Chapter 4, Is The Evolution of Humans a Glorious Accident?

As in the previous chapter, we will use as a counterpoint the theories of Stephen Jay Gould, who was convinced that we humans are a total accident. According to the odds, the probabilities, we shouldn’t have happened but we are here. Gould is a good place to start. Not only are his ideas unique, they have provoked angry rebuttals from other Darwinists who feel he is attacking some of the basic underpinnings of Darwin’s theories. I don’t like Gould’s logic and plan to rebut him also, while attempting to show that we are not accidental.

Before proceeding to discuss the proposal that the appearance of humans through the process of evolution is accidental, we will first look at the theories how the process of evolution operated. I accept evolution as having occurred, and feel that what is debatable are the mechanisms by which it operates: 1) whether it follows an accidental purposeless path (the Darwin theory); 2) a path guided by pre-existing inherent evolutionary principles (intelligent design); or 3) by an immanent and/or transcendent divine force (operating within or without our reality). God is specifically implied in mechanism 3 and possibly inferred in mechanism 2. A question that is always in the background is: Did God set this in motion, with or without rules, and does He take part in the process as it flows along? Further, in this chapter I will show that the history of evolution does not follow Darwin’s proposal that very gradual changes create the process. The flow of the history will be interrupted by side discussions when apparent defects in the original Darwin Theory appear.

In the last chapter bacteria were identified as the earliest life forms. They are unicellular, appeared possibly as early as 3.8 billion years ago, (New York Times on the web, “Dusted for Life’s Fingerprints, Rocks Fail, Kenneth Chang, 6/4/02; Science Vol. 296, No. 5572, pp. 1448-52, Fedo & Whitehouse, 5/24/02) and certainly as early as 3.6 billion years ago and they are still here. They are obviously very successful since 99.9 percent of all other species that have inhabited the earth are now extinct, of an estimated