Title: Why is Evolution Considered a Lie? Question: I am often confused by why evolution is considered a lie and how it is so far out of line with the creation of man. How do we, as Muslims, refute physical evidence of Neaderthal man, the dinosaurs, etc. Are we supposed to believe it's a gigantic hoax???? Why can't the physical and intellectual progression of man be part of Allah's (SWT) wonders. I always thought that Islam explains science NOT the other way around ( that science explains Allah). For example the "Big Bang", for me, is simply Allah (SWT) creating the universe. I would so appreciate your kind reply. Answer: The question you have posed is not uncommon among religious believers who have been exposed to scientific theories, including the theory of evolution. Those who attack evolutionary theory do so for various reasons, but it can easily be observed that two of the most popular reasons for rejecting evolutionary theory are: an interpretation of evolutionary theory as a theory of blind chance that perforce precludes purposeful, hence divine, direction of any kind; and an understanding of evolutionary theory's account of human origins as flatly contradictory to the account of scripture. Often, the naturalistic assumptions of biologists render their presentations of evolutionary theory alienating, if somewhat offensive, for readers with anti-naturalistic convictions. (By "naturalistic," I mean the premise that the natural world is all that exists and that all explanations for its phenomena can be made without reference to anything outside the natural world). I would like to refute the foregoing reasons for rejecting evolutionary theory to show a possible compatibility between the teachings of the Islamic religion and evolutionary theory. But I must mention at the outset that I, probably like many religious scholars and believers, remain "agnostic" about the truth of evolutionary theory merely because I am not an expert in science. My case is only valid IF evolutionary theory has got the origins of species right and I accept this position here purely for the sake of argument, not owing to any certainty about the matter. Nonetheless, it is difficult to hastily dismiss the evidence for evolution from the fossil record of change in earlier species, the chemical and anatomical similarities of related life forms, the geographic distribution of related species, and the recorded genetic changes in living organisms over many generations. We shall see that the issue is not whether or not we should accept that fossils of Neanderthals and dinosaurs exist; of course they exist. Rather, the issue is about whether the narrative of evolution can be reconciled with the narrative of divine creation. The First Objection Let us take up the first objection. It is a common misconception that evolution, and its driving process known as natural selection, operates purely on the basis of blind chance. While it is true that no clear direction or goal can be ascertained from the dynamics of evolutionary processes and that genetic variation is random, there remain nonrandom aspects to evolution, such as the determinism of survival selection, sexual selection, and nonrandom mate choice. [1] The basic themes of evolution-survival of the fittest and reproductive success-might be viewed as "laws" built into an otherwise goal-lacking process. Nevertheless, even if we humans cannot discern any clear purpose or direction to evolutionary process, we cannot conclude that God cannot be guiding the path of evolution. Even if do not know which animal or plant species will prevail at the next moment, we can easily see that, at every moment, something new and beautiful is being produced by evolution, something so exquisite that it naturally impels us to infer that it must have been designed. For the naturalist, such an inference appears to be an exercise of "puerile intuition," but is evolution not, after all, a process rather than the ultimate "origin" of any living thing? Natural selection is a process of elimination and acts on already existing forms of life. This forces us to raise the question of the origin of life or, more specifically, the origin of the materials that came together to produce life on earth billions of years ago. For the religious believer, it makes little sense to think that these materials just happened to exist and just happened to coalesce into the chemical factories for life. The idea that life should fortuitously emerge from something lifeless seems absurd. We therefore seek an explanation outside the bubbling soup of the once lifeless earth; the mere fact that conditions had to be just right for life to emerge at all leads us to posit design and purpose acting from outside the natural world. [2] For the naturalistic scientist, however, explanations for physical phenomena can only make reference to the world itself, so "a lengthy span of time for life to gradually emerge" becomes a sufficient substitute for purposeful design. It would seem that the debate hopelessly ends here, except that science has featured a number of thinkers who do not consider evolution and religion incompatible accounts of life. Rather, most of them consider religion and science two distinct but consistent windows through which we view the world. Let us turn to the thoughts of famous evolutionists themselves, including its original proponent, Charles Darwin. Darwin himself recognizes the Creator in the final passage of The Origin of Species : "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved (Gramercy Publishing, 540)." Evolutionary biologists engaged in the "creationism vs. evolutionism" debate admit that evolution does not rule out the work of God in the FAQ section of their website, www.talkorigins.org: "There is no reason to believe that God was not a guiding force behind evolution. While it does contradict some specific interpretations of God, especially ones requiring a literal interpretation of Genesis 1, few people have this narrow of a view of God. There are many people who believe in the existence of God and in evolution. Common descent then describes the process used by God. Until the discovery of a test to separate chance and God this interpretation is a valid one within evolution." Dr. Kenneth Miller, an evolutionary microbiologist who teaches at Brown University and author of Finding Darwin's God , maintains that the beauty of evolution is a great testament to the intelligence of the Creator: "It seems to me that the scope and scale of evolution can only magnify our admiration for a creator who could set such a process in motion. To the deeply religious, evolution may not be seen as a challenge, but rather as proof of the power and subtlety of the creator's ways. The great Architect of the universe might not have written down each DNA base of the human genome, but He would still be a very clever fellow indeed (Perennial Publishing, 338)." You may find more similar statements in my discussion at our website titled " Squaring the Blindness of Natural Selection with Theism " I hope I have compellingly shown that evolution is not just a matter of random chance and that religious believers need not necessarily feel discomfort in simultaneously believing in the power and wonders of God and in the outcomes of evolutionary processes. The Second Objection Let us consider the second objection to evolutionary theory. Literally construed, the Qur'an makes two basic points about the origin of human beings: 1) Adam and Eve were created out of the earth by God and lacked parents and 2) the surviving human species are the offspring of Adam and Eve. Without being too pretentious, I would like to modestly propose an argument for the reconciliation of these two religious claims with what evolutionary theory suggests. (Again, this is all based on the assumption made for the sake of argument that evolutionary theory is factual, whereas God knows best). Concerning the first point, there is a conspicuous disjunction between the narrative of evolution and the Qur'anic narrative. Evolution tells us that human beings ( homo sapiens ) evolved from a predecessor primate known as homo erectus (similar to humans, but slightly more hunched and with smaller brains). The first human beings not only required parents, but those parents had to have been homo erectus primates at the cusp of evolutionary transition. The Qur'an, on the other hand, declares that Adam had no parents and that he was deliberately created. Clearly, the two narratives conflict: how can Adam and Eve both have had parents and not have had parents at the same time? But evolutionary biologists concede that the fossil record shows broad, general patterns of evolutionary change and cannot possibly reveal the remains of every single member of every single species that ever lived. That is, we do not have the bones of every generation of late homo erectus primates or early homo sapiens . Thus, the Qur'anic account can be squared with the evolutionary narrative by inserting the creation of Adam and Eve at some point in what otherwise appears to be an evolutionary transition from the homo erectus to the homo sapiens . As long as we accept what the Qur'an asserts as literally true, we may legitimately deduce that the first human beings were created at this juncture and that their bones dissipated into the earth without any special imprint that would indicate their direct creation by God. This raises a stimulating question: if God created Adam and Eve and did not allow them to evolve from homo erectus predecessors, then why did He make it appear as though humans evolved from previous primates? My only reply to this is that God could choose to direct evolution any which way He pleased and could even interrupt its flow for some purpose. In this case, the interruption seems warranted because the human being was special: he or she was to be the ultimate khalifah or vicegerent of the earth ( Surah Al-Baqarah 2:30) who would play the most central role in the history of life. Furthermore, there is no deception on God's part, for the Qur'an's basic message renders the multiplicity of views on the origins of our species morally redundant; in a sense, talk of how precisely we emerged is as impertinent and useless to our moral and spiritual growth as talk of how many young men were in the cave according to the story presented in Surah Al-Kahf . [3] Concerning the idea that the current human race is the progeny of the first human beings, Adam and Eve, we find consonance with the widely accepted monogenesis theory within evolution. To avoid complicated scientific detail, I will just briefly mention that this theory holds that the first human beings could only have appeared in Africa and that later our species geographically branched out from Africa, replacing the other species of then-living primates. This theory fits well with the Qur'anic account of Adam and Eve being our original parents. If the monogenesis theory is correct, then Adam and Eve were created somewhere in Africa and their many offspring populated Africa over thousands of years, and eventually spread beyond Africa to other continents, assuming different racial forms through evolutionary processes. The only possible objection to this proposal of which I can conceive is a mathematical one. That is, I have not calculated how many human generations it would take to get back to just two parents producing human progeny (and never planned to undertake such a mind-boggling calculation!) Suppose the math were to show that we could not trace six billion humans in 2004 to ONLY two parents 100,000 years ago (the estimated time for the origin of human beings) and that more than two human beings would need to have been producing offspring in order to reach six billion human beings in 2004. In that case, the only possible avenue of response is that when the Qur'an describes the humankind as "created from a single pair (i.e. Adam and Eve)," it means the single pair or couple of human beings to first formally communicate, interact, and relate with God and to be made into the first official vicegerents or deputies of God. Thus, there could have been other human beings who were either created or emerged by evolution at around the same time that Adam and Eve were created who do not deserve the status of the primordial human pair because they were not the first human beings to relate to God and to become appointed as His deputies on earth. I must clarify now what is ostensibly a glaring contradiction between the position that the surviving human race (i.e. the entire human race) is the progeny of the first couple, Adam and Eve, and the idea that, if our calculations reveal so, then the surviving human race is the progeny of Adam and Eve as well as other human beings, either evolved or created at approximately the same time as Adam and Eve. What is important to recognize here is the shift from interpreting the narrative as "Qur'anic biology" to reading it as "Qur'anic allegory." That is, if calculations were to show, without a shadow of doubt, that more than two human beings were needed to allow for six billion human beings today, then we would have no choice but to re-interpret the text non-literally, thereby understanding Adam and Eve as our first spiritual parents rather than our sole, original biological progenitors. They would be seen primarily as spiritual ancestors because of their unprecedented communication with God and ultimately faith-affirming experience. Secondly, Adam is considered the first prophet of Islam who taught and delivered God's message to his immediate contemporaries and progeny. Thus, the spiritual aspect of their existence seems to have far greater importance in the Qur'anic narrative than the biological aspect of their existence, thereby allowing for (though not necessarily requiring) an allegorical reading of that section of the narrative. [4] I am open to revising, even discarding, the foregoing arguments if substantial evidence emerges, demonstrating that the Qur'anic and evolutionary account of our origins are hopelessly incommensurate with one another. I cannot emphasize enough that my argument has been made on the basis of certain permises of which many religious believers are skeptical, if only because of their excusable lack of expertise in biology. I would encourage you to investigate some of the other suggestions regarding the possible reconciliation of evolutionary theory and Islam at our website, namely those offered by Javed Ghamidi and Moiz Amjad, and to develop your own position partly based on research of this kind. God Almighty knows best. I hope this helps. Omar Sarwar February 17th, 2004 [1] For further details, please see Ernst Mayr's discussion of determinism and chance in evolution in What Evolution Is (Basic Books: 2002). [2] Much has been written on the subject of "intelligent design" and anthropic principles, one of which holds that had the universe evolved in any other way than the precise way it did, we would not be here to observe, understand, and appreciate it. Some suggested reading includes God and the Astronomers by Robert Jastrow (Warner Books, 1984), The Creator and the Cosmos by Hugh Ross (Navpress, 2001), and Nature's Destiny by Michael Denton (Free Press, 1998). [3] Please see, for instance, Surah Al-Kahf 18:22. [4] The shift from "Qur'anic biology" to "Qur'anic spirituality" might be assailed as hermeneutical subterfuge were it not that we accept, at the outset, the notion that such shifts must be permitted some conceptual space in which to dynamically operate. In other words, depending on the "facts" with which we approach Qur'anic narratives, we would likely interpret certain aspects as literally true (or at least, we would not see any reason to be forced to accept a non-literal reading of such aspects) and other aspects as allegorically, or in some other way non-literally, true. We may also find certain narratives to be entirely literally true and others to be entirely allegorically true. The distinction between literal and allegorical is warranted by the Qur'an, which indicates that there are both clear, straightforward, literally interpretable verses and others that are allegorical and unclear ( Surah Aal-e-Imraan 3:7). To remain loyal to the content of this particular passage, we must again concede that only Allah Almighty knows best the final meaning of all revelation.