Greetings.
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 @ 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
[QUOTE="Lucozade, post: 2899066, member: 38920"]
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.
[/quote]
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."
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/05/03/2887206.htm
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
[QUOTE="Lucozade, post: 2899066, member: 38920"]
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.[/QUOTE]
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.;
