Michael Denton Rocks the Museum of Flight as Privileged Species Premieres in Seattle to a Packed House

Imagine you find an elaborately cut key, carry it with you for years, then stick it in a random door lock -- and it opens!

Or imagine you and ten thousand or more of your best friends approach a door with a biometric fingerprint lock controlling access to what lies on the other side. The lock rejects all your friends. But it recognizes your fingerprint, yours alone, and lets you in.

The analogies are imperfect, but something like that was going on in the evolution of human beings on Earth. As...