The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia believes that biological evolution is false because chimpanzees cannot speak like humans do. BuzzFeed revealed on Tuesday that E.W. Jackson made the claim in Ten Commandments to an Extraordinary Life, a book he published in 2008.

In the book, he noted that scientists had taught chimpanzees to use sign language. He said this finding was wrongly used as evidence that primates were our ancestors. Jackson said the scientists were incorrect because spoken language was a gift God provided exclusively to human beings and “no other creature.”

“There is an unfathomable gulf between humans and all other creatures because creation was designed that way,” he wrote.

Scientists have uncovered that modern humans and modern chimpanzees share a common ancestor in the distant past. The notion that modern humans evolved from chimpanzees is a common misconception.

It is not the first time the controversial candidate’s book has been the subject of scrutiny. In late May, the liberal blog Think Progress reported that Jackson was an advocate of the so-called “prosperity gospel.” In apparent contradiction to the teachings of the New Testament, Jackson’s book declared the pursuit of money was not evil and didn’t make people evil.