There is over 150 years of research into evolution and it has long been proven that evolution is a fact. It's backed by thousands upon thousands of scientific evidences and there is absolutely no doubt that evolution happened over hundreds of millions of years and is still happening. So from my understanding of Islam, there was no evolution. God created humans as is, despite the very fact that we evolved, in fact all life evolved so how can this be? Clearly these two are mutually exclusive, the Quran says one thing, science says another.
For example we share 98% of the dna that chimpanzees have, is this just a coincidence? 69% of our dna is shared with a rat...! A rat?! This is why we test vaccines and medication etc on rats and mice because they're so similar to us.
So my question to Muslims is, do Muslims simply refuse to accept this scientific fact or do they have a different understanding of evolution somehow? Obviously Muslims don't reject science, after all we use it everyday, you're utilising about 20 different areas of science simply reading this message. So my question is, how do you reconcile the fact that evolution is not mentioned in the Quran at all and it goes so far as to say that humans were created "as is" and did not evolve?
And yes I know science cannot yet explain how the first life developed (single cell organisms) but one step at a time.
I'm not trying to start an argument or pull anyone from religion... I just want to know your reasoning for accepting some scientific facts and rejecting others.
Show no concern for the praise of one whose praise cannot adorn you in any way, nor for the blame of those whose blame cannot dishonor you. And seek the praise of the One whose Praise is all honor and whose blame is all disgrace. Ibn Qayyim
I am however a little discouraged with the lack of sources in this islamqa post.
"It has become clear to many rational people that the theory of the atheist Darwin has been consigned to the trash can of history" - Who are these people? What is their education?
"refuted by the disbelieving scientists of the West" - Who?
"Hence fair-minded scientists" - Who?
"Specialists have refuted the idea of evolution in animals and plants" - Who?
"It has been proven through research that many of the plants and animals of Egypt have not changed from the way they were many centuries ago" - Evolution takes thousands, if not millions of years. Centuries just isn't long enough.
"At no time throughout history has humanity ever observed any living being transformed into another being through evolution" - This is because it takes a very long time.
"Dr Muhammad Barbaab" - I am unable to verify this person? Who is he and what is his education? Where are his research papers? In fact searching for "Dr Muhammad Barbaab" in Google returns only 1 result. The Islamqa post that you linked, which suggests this person does not even exist.
Allah can create any creation through whatever process He chooses.
If this is through the process of macroevolution/speciation, that is His wisdom and who are we to question it.
And if it is through any other processes, that is His wisdom and who are we to question it.
That being said,
microevolutions are a fact.
We see bacteria evolve resistances, and we can directly breed dogs and horses to suit our likings.
So no one is contesting microevolutionary changes being supported via data.
However although the concept of a gradual accumulation of microevolutions causing branching and eventual speciation of one species into an entirely new and different species (gradualism), sounds very logical,
in the fossil record we do not find this to be the case.
Instead of gradualism we find punctuated equilibrium,
which is why evolutionary biologists are always excited to find 'the missing link(s)' which would not be much of an issue at all if gradualism could be seen in its stead. (I do remember how excited everyone was when they discovered Tiktaalik in Nunavut, Canada)
Anyway, to say macroevolution (not microevolution) has a hundred years of evidence would be folly, as it has little evidence and is instead piggybacking off the fact that microevolution is proven.
I do not say that macroevolution is false, however I do not believe that it may necessarily be true either.
Saying a species which was originally gradually evolving through microevolutionary changes, had then suddenly accumulated 99% of their changes within the span of a few generations (decades or centuries), is not very different than saying that either an animal went extinct and God placed a new creation, or that God changed something into something else in a time frame that would not otherwise naturally occur.
However a species has come to be, whether it be from a pre-existing species, or if it be some entirely new creation, our belief is that The Designer has engineered it with whatever process was of His choosing.
Science is always liable to change and correct itself with the more we learn and the more evidence we collect over the years.
It would be a deep folly to stifle our scientific growth and accept any theory as fact (theories are are near facts but not absolute fact), otherwise we would still be using Dalton's atoms as our models.
Last edited by Cpt.America; 05-21-2016 at 07:05 PM.
Also evolutionary theory in its modern form only really came to be in the 1940s.
Darwin proposed the concept of survival of the fittest,
but evolutionists for the longest time had no real idea of mechanisms of inheritance or mechanisms for creating variation for evolutionary forces (nature) to work upon.
for inheritance Darwin suggested a "blending theory" which was absolute bunk. And variation was not even touched.
After Gregor Mendel's work with genetics was rediscovered, it seemed to fly in the face of evolution as traits could skip generations, be coupled with other traits (through nondisjunction), and harmful traits could be carried across generations as recessive alleles (which would almost certainly be selected against)
In fact for the greater part of the history (as I recall, if I remember correctly) of evolutionary biology the Evolutionists and the geneticists were at odds with one another.
Only the brilliant work of Fisher, Haldane, and Wright (contributing from 1920s to the 1930s) lead up to ultimately a paper written by Juilian Huxley in 1942: The Modern Synthesis, (definitely one of the most important books in the history of evolutionary biology as a subject) that ultimately reconciled genetics with evolution as we know the subject to be in our modern day.
I tell you what, lets put aside "research" and "scientific facts" of evolution and present this in the most elementary way so you can see the folly of your position. You say "evolution" brought all into existence. Well something had to be created for it to evolve. Who do you think created it or did it just happen out of nothing and then come into being? Finally, why don't you do a simple test and I will give you "hundreds of millions of years" to see if it will happen. Take a deck of playing cards and shuffle them up real good. Then I want you to throw them up in the air and see if they land in ascending numeric order according to the following suits in this order: hearts, diamonds, spades and then clubs. Keep throwing them up and see if they fall in that order. It would never happen. You would have to bend down and sort them accordingly to get that arrangement. That is the Intelligent Design. That is the Divine Order of things in this universe which you so foolishly ignore to your own peril as you are nothing but a tool of Iblis to believe otherwise.
Show no concern for the praise of one whose praise cannot adorn you in any way, nor for the blame of those whose blame cannot dishonor you. And seek the praise of the One whose Praise is all honor and whose blame is all disgrace. Ibn Qayyim
I tell you what, lets put aside "research" and "scientific facts" of evolution and present this in the most elementary way so you can see the folly of your position. You say "evolution" brought all into existence. Well something had to be created for it to evolve. Who do you think created it or did it just happen out of nothing and then come into being? Finally, why don't you do a simple test and I will give you "hundreds of millions of years" to see if it will happen. Take a deck of playing cards and shuffle them up real good. Then I want you to throw them up in the air and see if they land in ascending numeric order according to the following suits in this order: hearts, diamonds, spades and then clubs. Keep throwing them up and see if they fall in that order. It would never happen. You would have to bend down and sort them accordingly to get that arrangement. That is the Intelligent Design. That is the Divine Order of things in this universe which you so foolishly ignore to your own peril as you are nothing but a tool of Iblis to believe otherwise.
Brother, OP isn't muslim. He was asking an honest question in terms of what Muslims believe.
I tell you what, lets put aside "research" and "scientific facts" of evolution and present this in the most elementary way so you can see the folly of your position. You say "evolution" brought all into existence. Well something had to be created for it to evolve. Who do you think created it or did it just happen out of nothing and then come into being? Finally, why don't you do a simple test and I will give you "hundreds of millions of years" to see if it will happen. Take a deck of playing cards and shuffle them up real good. Then I want you to throw them up in the air and see if they land in ascending numeric order according to the following suits in this order: hearts, diamonds, spades and then clubs. Keep throwing them up and see if they fall in that order. It would never happen. You would have to bend down and sort them accordingly to get that arrangement. That is the Intelligent Design. That is the Divine Order of things in this universe which you so foolishly ignore to your own peril as you are nothing but a tool of Iblis to believe otherwise.
Actually it could happen lol but the chances are so low we cannot imagine. Nevertheless I'll try to answer your question.
500 years ago we didn't how the Earth orbited the sun, in fact everyone thought the sun orbited the Earth. Then a brilliant man by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus figured out that the Earth orbited the sun and it was the sun that was at the centre. Then we didn't know how how electricity or magnetism worked, then we didn't know how gravity worked etc etc. There is a never ending process of not knowing things.
Today we have absolutely no idea, not a single clue about how life on Earth came about. This does not mean we should attribute god to this because 400 years ago we had absolutely no idea, not a single clue about how the planets "hang in space". So we attributed the motion of the stars to god moving them. Now we know this is not the case and it's gravity that is responsible.
There is so much we don't know about the universe which is why we're trying to figure it out. So when you ask me how the universe came into existence or how the first life formed, of course I have no idea... because science has not figured it out yet, just like 400 years ago we didn't know the planets stayed in space.
I'm agnostic because I simply don't know if there might ultimately be some creator or designer that is responsible for it all, for all I know were some alien experiment, kinda like ants in an ant farm. I just have no idea. There will probably always be things we don't know but science has made tremendous advancements in discovery.
This wasn't even the point of my thread, as Cpt.America said, I just wanted to know what Muslims views are on evolution when science has confirmed that evolution is real, just like gravity. You believe gravity to be true right? Why? Why gravity and not evolution? Is it because it goes against the Quran?
I just want to know what Muslims think about evolution, that was all.
TBH Gravity is one of the last great mysteries of the universe (jk our science is incredibly rudimentary and there are mysteries we have not even thought to ask yet) We have hypothesis on how it, Gravity, works, but none have ever been tested and there has never been any proof until recently this year when LIGO labs were able to observe gravitational waves and formally presented the paper in February.
Just saying, Gravity is a bad evidence to cite as proof.
TBH Gravity is one of the last great mysteries of the universe (jk our science is incredibly rudimentary and there are mysteries we have not even thought to ask yet) We have hypothesis on how it, Gravity, works, but none have ever been tested and there has never been any proof until recently this year when LIGO labs were able to observe gravitational waves and formally presented the paper in February.
Just saying, Gravity is a bad evidence to cite as proof.
Magnets however!
Lol
Hardly a bad choice to go with. Gravity is curvature in space-time caused by mass, nothing more. The LIGO results were proof of gravitational waves... not gravity. There are still many unanswered questions about blackholes, dark matter, dark energy, quantum entanglement etc.
Ultimately my point was that throughout history there have been things we didn't have the slightest clue about how they worked and now we do know so at the moment we may not know how life came to form on Earth but in a few hundred years who knows, perhaps will figure out that mystery to. This is why scientists love their job because the universe to them is nothing more than a really cool puzzle book lol.
Greetings and peace be with you Lucozade; and welcome to the forum,
500 years ago we didn't how the Earth orbited the sun, in fact everyone thought the sun orbited the Earth.
The Earth and the sun can be observed, so it seems inevitable we would work this out eventually. Now we know the answer, what does this prove?
I'm agnostic because I simply don't know if there might ultimately be some creator or designer that is responsible for it all,
There is no absolute proof either way. Creation is history, either at least one God created the universe, or there is no god. Whatever you or I believe, we cannot change the truth of history.
for all I know were some alien experiment, kinda like ants in an ant farm. I just have no idea.
Did the aliens create the universe? Who created the aliens?
There will probably always be things we don't know but science has made tremendous advancements in discovery.
Of course, but here is the problem for me, Adam was created by God, he did not evolve from any other species. And just a question for you, how could life evolve without God?
In the spirit of searching for God.
Eric
You will never look into the eyes of anyone who does not matter to God.
The Earth and the sun can be observed, so it seems inevitable we would work this out eventually. Now we know the answer, what does this prove?
Scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo were persecuted by the Inquisition of Rome for promoting heliocentrism, because of its contradiction of statements in the Bible, such as 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 104:5 and Ecclesiastes 1:5, that we now know to be untrue. This is a classic example of religious ignorance opposing itself to rational inquiry. [The Catholic Church has since officially admitted that Galileo was right.] The current dispute over evolution is an ongoing example of the same basic opposition.
Of course, but here is the problem for me, Adam was created by God, he did not evolve from any other species.
You make two connected claims here. What is the evidence for either of them?
Yeah, there's no doubt that humans and other primates are very similar. Humans have something that no animal has, though, and that is the capacity to ascertain spiritual truths. The reason muslims believe in a spontaneous creation instead of man having evolved from lower primates is because of the Qur'an. No muslim that I've ever met believes in Adam and Eve because of the fossil record-- we believe it because it's in our scriptures.
The contrast between a muslim and an agnostic is present because they diverge on where that knowledge came from. The muslim believes in a spontaneous creation because that's what the Qur'an says, while the agnostic looks at the evolutionary theory and applies it to primates, thereby thinking that humans evolved from lower species of primate. If I go with the Qur'an, though, that doesn't mean that I shut my brain off. In my opinion, it would be silly to dismiss the evolutionary theory altogether. There is evidence that dogs share a common ancestor with wolves, for instance.
We don't deny that primates evolved over time; we deny that the first man and woman evolved from other, more primitive primates. It's a conclusion that comes from theology-- not from Science. The muslim puts Scripture on a higher level than Science, that is why we continue to believe in Adam and Eve [peace be upon them]. Adam was created from clay, the Qur'an says.
You know why I don't believe in some "evolutionary" theory? Because it has been used time and time again to dominate people who are drawn to be on the lower end of the evolutionary scale and because the "White" body has been drawn over and over again to the evolved form, so other bodies that are different are deemed undeveloped.
There is over 150 years of research into evolution and it has long been proven that evolution is a fact. It's backed by thousands upon thousands of scientific evidences and there is absolutely no doubt that evolution happened over hundreds of millions of years and is still happening.
So from my understanding of Islam, there was no evolution. God created humans as is, despite the very fact that we evolved, in fact all life evolved so how can this be? Clearly these two are mutually exclusive, the Quran says one thing, science says another.
Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?
Quran 21:30
Verily, the likeness of 'Iesa (Jesus) before Allah is the likeness of Adam. He created him from dust, then (He) said to him: "Be!" - and he was.
Quran 3:59
And mention, [O Muhammad], in the Book [the story of] Mary, when she withdrew from her family to a place toward the east.
Quran 19:16
And [mention] when your Lord took from the children of Adam - from their loins - their descendants and made them testify of themselves, [saying to them], "Am I not your Lord?" They said, "Yes, we have testified." [This] - lest you should say on the day of Resurrection, "Indeed, we were of this unaware."
Quran 7:172
format_quote Originally Posted by Lucozade
For example we share 98% of the dna that chimpanzees have, is this just a coincidence? 69% of our dna is shared with a rat...! A rat?! This is why we test vaccines and medication etc on rats and mice because they're so similar to us.
Evolutionary differences
Parts of the genome that don't encode proteins tend to evolve rapidly, so you can have significant regions of the genome where there's no discernible similarity between species, says Moran. This means many sequences will not line up when you compare genomes between species.
And the further away two species are on the evolutionary tree, the greater the difference."
If we compare really closely related species, like a human and chimpanzee, we can still see the similarity between these rapidly changing sequences. If you move further away to the more distantly related pig, so many changes in the DNA will have occurred that it is no longer possible to recognise that the sequences were ever similar."Depending upon what it is that you are comparing you can say
'Yes, there's a very high degree of similarity, for example between a human and a pig protein coding sequence', but if you compare rapidly evolving non-coding sequences from a similar location in the genome, you may not be able to recognise any similarity at all. This means that blanket comparisons of all DNA sequences between species are not very meaningful."
Even so, we do see that both the apes and the pigs are mentioned in the Quran as items of transformation despite a myriad of other creatures available for presentation. Does that mean we came from apes and pigs? not necessarily at all. Could we have come along and branched off into different species therefore the huge similarities? God knows, maybe.
Say, "Shall I inform you of [what is] worse than that as penalty from Allah?
[It is that of] those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs and slaves of taghut. Those are worse in position and further astray from the sound way."
Quran 5:60
We know that humans, reptiles, chickens, birds, and mammals look similar/identical at early stages of embryonic development (nutfah, mudgah, alaqah etc) until "another creature" develops out of it so i find no valid reason to reject evolution with certainty and believe that research in the field will prove more.
And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge.
Quran 30:22
format_quote Originally Posted by Lucozade
So my question to Muslims is, do Muslims simply refuse to accept this scientific fact or do they have a different understanding of evolution somehow? Obviously Muslims don't reject science, after all we use it everyday, you're utilising about 20 different areas of science simply reading this message. So my question is, how do you reconcile the fact that evolution is not mentioned in the Quran at all and it goes so far as to say that humans were created "as is" and did not evolve?
And yes I know science cannot yet explain how the first life developed (single cell organisms) but one step at a time.
I'm not trying to start an argument or pull anyone from religion... I just want to know your reasoning for accepting some scientific facts and rejecting others.
Thanks for reading.
I seriously believe that many of the people who ditched the rejected the teachings of the roman church during the 1500 to 1900s were rational thinkers who could not reconcile between the differences they noticed in obvious scientific facts such as round earth etc and what the pope was saying.
However, when you look into the lives of scientists such as abbas ibn firnas, scholars such as ibn taymiyyah etc, you listwn to their arguments on such topics despite the bitter opposition from their friends and acquaintances, and you'll realise that the position Islam cannot be compared to such irrational argumentation seen from the crusaders' religious wing (while it was their secular wings that were putting a blanket over the western econo.ies and way of life).
Many would have rejected faith out of desire, lust, hypocrisy ignorance etc, but there were certainly some confused thinkers who made a solid choice to call out the glaring false assertions in the wholesale edited bible.
Newton was wiser, he was not only granted an inquisitive, imaginative and logical mind, he held to what he knew to be true of the faith and rejected concepts such as trinity etc.
Please bear that distinction between the Quran and the Roman church in mind as it will help in understanding the matter more clearly.
Verily, the likeness of 'Iesa (Jesus) before Allah is the likeness of Adam. He created him from dust, then (He) said to him: "Be!" - and he was.
Just as adam didn't come equipped with headsets and bluetooth at the beginning, i don't think jesus did either, he definitely evolved from fetus to baby to boy to man. And God describes that process vividly, and even though God created Adam and later made him appear on earth, He did the same with all of us but we came about very slowly the second time around.
God knows best.
I tell you what, lets put aside "research" and "scientific facts" of evolution and present this in the most elementary way so you can see the folly of your position. You say "evolution" brought all into existence. Well something had to be created for it to evolve. Who do you think created it or did it just happen out of nothing and then come into being? Finally, why don't you do a simple test and I will give you "hundreds of millions of years" to see if it will happen. Take a deck of playing cards and shuffle them up real good. Then I want you to throw them up in the air and see if they land in ascending numeric order according to the following suits in this order: hearts, diamonds, spades and then clubs. Keep throwing them up and see if they fall in that order. It would never happen. You would have to bend down and sort them accordingly to get that arrangement. That is the Intelligent Design. That is the Divine Order of things in this universe which you so foolishly ignore to your own peril as you are nothing but a tool of Iblis to believe otherwise.
Brilliant reply. May Allah SWT bless you and all of us. Ameen.
It'd be impossible without a intelligent designer. They may say "But there is a chance" is like saying "jumping down this building without breaking anything is poosible" only someone without common sense would say that.
The ascending numeric order would NEVER happen. Just like me being created would never have happened if Allah SWT didn't create me. Common sense tells that. Only someone with a lot of faith on 'chance' would say otherwise.
Tell me, what I am writing now, could it be by chance?! Could an air plane flying in their air be random? Could a plane be formed if I threw items at the wall? Or if I threw a deck of cars, would it be able to be arranged in a numerical order? NO, never could it happen. Ever.
Why? Because our minds would never accept it, why? Because it is soo unlikely it is impossible. It can't happen, there is no chance it could. Actually it'd require more faith to believe that by chance it could happen, than to believe it can't happen. It'd require soo much faith, it'd be blind faith. But the rebellious ones earn Jahannam.
Because our minds tells us for something to ascend in numerical order, or a car to be made requires intelligence. For a plane to be built requires intelligence.
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