Thread: Evolution and Islam

an article i found...

Comment is free: Creating controversy

Last Saturday's edition of The Guardian contained a small item about a talk due to be held tomorrow on "The Collapse of Evolution Theory" organised by the Islamic society at University College London. The speakers are from the well-funded and extremely active Harun Yahya organisation in Turkey that I wrote about in a Cif blog over 18 months ago.

Writing under the pen name of Harun Yahya, this outfit has since the late 1990s produced a series of very glossy books and documentaries in various languages including English which are all available to download for free and all of which seek to deny the theory of evolution and instead advocate a doctrine of special creationism.

All of the Harun Yahya arguments can be boiled down to one assertion: fossils discovered of numerous creatures show that they look just the same today as they did millions of years ago: hence life on earth did not evolve but instead each species was individually created in its present form. The influence of Christian creationist literature is evident throughout their entire output and that old stalwart of US creationism Duane Gish has indeed spoken at various Harun Yahya sponsored conferences.

An underlying assumption behind many of these types of arguments is that the theory of evolution is really just an atheist Trojan horse designed to undermine belief in God under the guise of scientific learning in the classroom. And the strident atheistic advocacy of some scientists has served to further buttress these suspicions. Science is in reality utterly agnostic on the God question and cannot adjudicate one way or the other. Prominent evolutionary theorists behind the modern synthesis (as neo-Darwinism is also referred to) have always included believers in God such as Theodosius Dobzhansky who was the author of the much quoted remark that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution".

A couple of years ago I purchased Dr Jacob Bronowski's wonderful 1973 Ascent of Man series on DVD. In episode five he discusses the Islamic contribution to science and after noting how far ahead of Europe many of these scientific studies were, he says that there came a point where the study of human anatomy was deemed to be forbidden by many Muslim religious scholars. The result was that scientists in Europe - who had for several hundreds of years been reliant on translations of ancient Arabic medical texts - pushed ahead with their own experiments and soon had no need to look to the East for inspiration.

That is the way science works. It is nobody's automatic property or birthright.

In my experience, creationists - of both the Christian and Muslim variety - often refer to very selective and misleading quotations from the work of genuine scientists.

Sometimes, they simply resort to outright dishonesty. The following quotation is from a book - you really have to read it to see how awful it is - called Theory of Evolution: An Assessment from the Islamic Point of View (note: not humbly from "a Muslim" point of view but "the Islamic" point of view) by Shaikh Abdul Mabud and published by the Islamic Academy in Cambridge.

"Some scientists, who were previously evolutionists, have now become either cladists or supporters of the theory of abrupt appearance. For example, Colin Patterson, S Gould, N Eldredge, etc."


Now this is highly misleading, as anyone actually acquainted with the writings of these three scientists will know. Patterson was indeed a cladist. What Mabud does not say, however, is that cladists are by definition also evolutionists. In fact, Patterson wrote a highly-acclaimed standard textbook on evolution.

Gould and Eldredge were co-founders of the theory of punctuated equilibrium and both were also totally committed evolutionists. Eldredge - who holds a senior post at the American Museum of Natural History - wrote the foreword to a recent book attacking creationism and defending evolution.

The Qur'an for its part repeatedly encourages the study of the heavens and the earth. Students - of all people - should value inquisitiveness and be wary of rejecting the findings of science.

well having said that i also feel the selective picking of quotes or proof goes both ways...but in the end who cares

Originally Posted by kingwilly

an article i found...

.... All of the Harun Yahya arguments can be boiled down to one assertion: fossils discovered of numerous creatures show that they look just the same today as they did millions of years ago: hence life on earth did not evolve but instead each species was individually created in its present form....

Although I believe that Christian and Islamic creationism are both nonsense (creatures do NOT look just the same as they did millions of years ago), the article suggests one powerful idea - the Darwinian theory of evolution is indeed full of missing links. Most species can be tracked backwards to an earlier form (larger, smaller, hairier, etc..), but transitional species are very rare. There was a brilliant professor named Arpad Elo who used to teach physics near my home (as a note of trivia, he also created the Elo chess rating system used today). Elo believed that the earth was 'seeded' by many varieties of genetic code at some stage of pre-history. Elo's theory sounds odd, but Darwin's idea that all of us evolved from the same primordial slime is even less supportable because of this lack of transitional life forms.

sigh.

there is a 350 page thread on evolution already here.

we are not talking about missing links, that idea is fundamentally flawed in biology.

the thing about fossils is that compared to living things, it is extraordinaryarily difficult to get fossilized.

most animals that die never become fossils, they decompose or are eaten etc.

God created the world 6.000 years ago, the bible says that !!! So that "must" be true... Everything there happend before that time is cheap lies from non-believing pagans......

Originally Posted by kingwilly

it is extraordinaryarily difficult to get fossilized.

Seems to have happened to quite a few of the posters on here, though.

[quote=GooMaiRoo;553964][quote=kingwilly;545114]

the Darwinian theory of evolution is indeed full of missing links.

some of those missing links post on teakdoor - not hard to spot them

Wander around the Galapagos for awhile, then we will talk evo sometime.
Have you really ever looked at it in an actual setting or do you just get all your info from a forum?

Originally Posted by kingwilly

In my experience, creationists - of both the Christian and Muslim variety - often refer to very selective and misleading quotations from the work of genuine scientists.

Indeed.
MeMock has provided some wonderful examples of such authors.

I haven't come across anything that reasonably casts doubt on the basics of the theory of evolution.

Originally Posted by whosyadaddy

there must have been some errors in grammar or spelling

God makes spelling mistakes?

^^ Me thinks you are out of your depth Bubba...

Originally Posted by blackgang

Wander around the Galapagos for awhile, then we will talk evo sometime.
Have you really ever looked at it in an actual setting or do you just get all your info from a forum?

Your Darwin reference is lame.

Interesting and fascinating how much Christian and Muslim fundies have in common...

I have almost finished reading the Koran and lots of it is modified versions of biblical stories. The biblical 'evolution' story with Noah and the ark and all the animals is in the Koran too and the story is told in much the same way with the exception that Noah has a massive barny with one of his his sons just as they are about to weigh anchor and basically ends up telling his progeny to go and get fecked. Noahs wayward son basically says 'suits me dad I will just go and sit on top of that mountain until it subsides - he he!'. Little does he suspect Gods prodigious rain making capacity and before you can say 'a salam alaikum' he is standing on top of the highest peak with water round his ankles scanning the horizon anxiously. Don't know quite what the moral of the story is but I am sure that taught him.

Originally Posted by Looper

I have almost finished reading the Koran and lots of it is modified versions of biblical stories.

And the bible is a series of modified versions of writings existing before the bible. Seems a bit of selective plagiarism and spin modification to fit particular religious philosophy is the norm.