From Terry Lane's book 'God: The Interview'(1993):
GOD: So at what point in the evolutionary process did Homo-sapiens acquire a soul? At the transition point from Neanderthal man to Cro-Magnon perhaps? Somewhere in the evolutionary process humans must have acquired this peculiar characteristic which you apparently do not share with any other creatures. Did Cro-Magnon man have a soul?
Or Neanderthal man? Do you think that I've got a bunch of Neanderthals up here somewhere enjoying eternal bliss- a bunch of hairy angels with beetling brows whose knuckles drag on the clouds? Do you see what you are proposing?
You know that every living creature on the earth has come about by a process which began in the Big Bang. Out of all that stardust that was flung around at the time life has emerged and organised itself into forms of ever greater complexity. And in the process one lot of genes have got themselves set up in a body with an outsize brain, rather than one with a fancy tail or great muscles for hopping.
And you are proposing that at some point in this process-fairly recently, apparently-the Homo sapiens branch of the evolutionary tree took a unique turning and somehow acquired a characteristic which it alone enjoys, called a soul.
But you can't tell me exactly when this is supposed to have happened and what the difference was in the creature before and after this curious development, except that presumably before it didn't have the capacity for immortality and afterwards it did.
Does that sound very probable to you?
Houston, we have a problem...