Discussion About Evolution-Part 1 (by Abu ʿIyaad (Hafidhahullah) AboutAtheism.Net )
For a more detailed treatment of evolution and the way materialists and naturalists play games with catchall definitions and cryptic language to hide or camouflage the reality of what they are saying, refer to http://aboutatheism.net/?jqpdadp.
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Bismillāh wal-Ḥamdulillāh. Close to two years ago—in Rabīʿ al-Thānī 1438, January 2017—I received an email from someone regarding evolution. He was introduced to me by his brother and was seeking to discuss the subject. This is the text of his first email:
I have always been awed by nature and our existence and am bewildered why more people aren’t the same. I never could conceive the idea of a universe coming out of nothing. Which ultimately made me look for my creator.
Having been inspired by Ahmed Deedat and Maurice Bucaille I was convinced of Islam being the truth.2 I understood knowledge was a gift and came with a responsibility of spreading this knowledge. I eventually crossed paths with evolution and sought to disprove it. However I found myself convinced by it. The only way I could reconcile evolution and islam was if evolution occurred in nature but excluded humans, after all Allaah explicitly created Adam and then Eve from Adam. Unfortunately there is no evidence for this. Scientists are in agreement we have descended from a common ancestor. No Christian, Jew, Muslim or other has been able to provide any real evidence to the contrary. I started seeing nature in a different light. I feel extremely humbled that I now understand the origins of our existence and how most of it can be explained without the need of a creator. I am now angry that most of this decades old knowledge is suppressed by older generations who want to keep the status quo. Surely we owe it to ourselves as intellectual
beings and our children to seek the truth, however uncomfortable. We need to progress as a humanity. Rejoice in the knowledge we have gained. We are all truly brothers and sisters regardless of our background. All inanimate and animate material has a single cosmic origin. This has more chance of us all achieving peace.
I responded to him on the same day:
I would like to learn and hear more about your position and how you arrived at it. It would be nice to speak to you over the phone inshaa’Allaah, or otherwise in person if convenient. I do believe you are mistaken in your assessment, however, and hope that through discussion you are able to shake off these conjectures, by Allaah’s permission.
From here a discussion began. After he displayed a willingness to discuss, I started with the following, and this was two weeks after initial contact:
I think the best medium for discussion would be via email as it allows us to refer back to prior discussion.
There are multiple entry points for the discussion that follows from the remarks you made in your first email and I would liken this to a large house with multiple entrances all leading to a central hallway, the hub of the house. We
might open up different entrances, but eventually our direction should be to get to the centre, where the crux of the matter lies. As this is a complex subject, then we have to be aware of the nature and direction of our discussion, and that it can proceed with multiple strands, some might be dead ends, some might be productive, some will get to the crux of the matter etc...
So keeping that in mind and to remain in focus: Could you express for me, in a formal scientific way, the primary, central tenet (axiom) that underlies, justifies, proves, validates your new belief in “evolution” as a blind, undirected, purposeless yet creative force which in turn does away with a knowing, willing, creative force. That is to say, what has led you to change your belief that knowledge, will, wisdom and power are required for creating to the belief that blind, random, undirected, purposeless processes are sufficient for creating.
I would like to preempt you also in that the evidence for the existence of a creator is varied and diverse and does not rely upon any “gaps” arguments. That is to say, when you cannot explain something or have a gap in your explanation, does not mean that that gap has now become a primary argument for the existence of a creator, since the existence of a creator is not restricted to any one thing and is varied and diverse. So any retorts such as “that’s a god of the gaps argument” will be rejected.
The asl (foundation) in fitrah (innate disposition), reason (aql), the sum of all human experience in enterprise, industry and technology, is that knowledge, will and power and wisdom are attributes of an entity that creates. Since you have rejected that asl and have essentially claimed that knowledge, will, power and wisdom are not required for an entity that creates the burden is upon you to provide empirical evidence for this claim that clashes with fitrah, reason and the sum of human enterprise.
We can start on this if you provide us with the primary, central axiom that underlies this belief.
This is where the discussion must start with atheists in order to uncover the reality of their belief. Which is that acts of creation—known to have taken place by analysis of what is created, which is the artefact, product or item in question—must require an entity that possess the attributes that give rise to those acts. Those attributes are knowledge, choice, intent, wisdom and power, or they can be reduced and summarised as choice with intent or even further as intentionality. And essentially this is what the entire dispute is about. Is there evidence of “choice with intent” in creation and thereafter, what can this be
ascribed to on the basis of common sense, sound reason and the scientific method. That there is intentionality in creation is undeniable, it can be denied only on grounds of pure arrogance, and nothing else.
So this is always the first point to start. In attempting to flee from this necessity (of choice with intent, or intentionality in creation), conjectures are used by atheists, materialists and naturalists to ascribe intentionality to “nature”, but in a stealth, cryptic manner and then to dismiss intentionality as just one big illusion that nature plays upon our senses and intellects.
So here this becomes a circular argument in that they have already assumed the non-existence of a creator and their religion of philosophical naturalism to be the absolute truth which cannot be challenged. This then forces them to confer divine attributes to nature. They are nothing but sophisticated nature worshippers and hence, mushriks in the rubūbiyyah of Allāh the Exalted. Their belief enters into the various categories of shirk spoken of by Ibn al-Qayyim in al-Jawāb al-
Kāfī, from which is ta’ṭīl (عناصلا نع عونصلما ليطعت), to strip the creation of having a creator.
So in his reply to the above, the person did not respond in substance to my question. In his email reply, he said he was grateful for my time and wanted a little more time to prepare his response. He then said he was researching materials that I may have written that are already published to get a broader picture of where I am coming from. He asked me to verify my authorship of articles and audios he had come across and asked me for my views on micro-evolution and macro-evolution. He then mentioned two points which he considered a direct reply to the points I raised—and I do not believe that they were really a direct reply, as I had asked him a very specific question which he had failed to address completely. These are his two points:
Direct reply to some of the points raised by your kind self: —Whoever claims something as a fact then the burden of proof is on the claimer (me for evolution and you for God) so neither of us can take a back seat.
—Please understand, anyone who has taken it upon themselves to refute evolution shoulders a huge responsibility for their community. I would imagine they must have studied evolution themselves to a certain degree. Then put that into context against all possible meanings of The Quran and Hadith in order to totally eliminate any possibility of evolution. For example, some Muslims to this day derive from their holy texts that the earth is flat while others hold the view that it is shaped like an ostrich egg. As a result, one of the two could be turning people away from Islam as only one view can be true. Would you equate the seriousness of this to the hadith of when someone sick was made to do wudu, unfortunately they died as a result, they were then declared to be murderers for ruling in that in which they had not done full research? I cannot imagine you would be of the view this equates simply to the idea of getting it right earns you double the award of not getting it right which earns a single reward. Views on evolution can turn people to God or away.
So note that this was not in fact a direct reply to my question. I asked him to first define and then provide empirical evidence for the primary, central axiom that underlies his new belief that knowledge, will, intent, power and wisdom are not needed for acts of creation. He did not answer this question.
In the above response, nevertheless, he made two points which are acceptable. The first is that whoever claims something as a fact in this issue of evolution— which is really a question about whether intentionality is involved and if there is evidence for it—must provide the proof. I answered this point in the email which followed (see below). His second point was that a lot hinges on this question and if not answered satisfactorily, it could be turning a lot of people away from Islām, which is a fair point.
I managed to respond to him a week later, when I found the time, with what follows below. I made sure to answer the questions he had raised so far directly and in substance and also to restate what I had presented to him in my earlier email but this time with a bit more elaboration:
I am short in time and offer you the following to get a clearer picture...:
1. First, we will continuously encounter problems with definitions and setting and moving of goal posts, this will affect the discussion. I am just making note of it here as this point may become relevant at some future point.
2. All biological organisms are have an in-built capacity to adapt and undergo change within limits. This is by design. The code base allows for such adaptation. Environment and the dna-gene-cell system can interact to provide such adaptability. This is what you refer to as “microevolution”. This is an observed fact.
3. I don’t really like to use the word “species” as it can be subjective3, but physiologically similar organisms (if you want to say “species”) can interbreed and produce viable, fertile hybrids. This can introduce novelty. You may refer to this also as “evolution”. This is an observed fact.
4. The above indicates that biological life operates upon the same “operating system” so to speak, and code
sections of software are portable and can be moved from one entity to another whilst retaining function.
5. Thus, there can be, within limits, degrees of interaction (between environment with organism and organism with organism) that lead to change, adaptation or novelty
(within limits). At this point, you will note that our “raw data” or “evidence” for our views are actually the same.
Belief in al-qadaa wal-qadar means that there is divine determination in all things and thus it obligates acceptance of the ways and means, causes and effects. So here, this would mean, for me, that all of these things are by design and determination.
6. “Macroevolution” (outside of what I have affirmed above) is an extrapolation from microevolution and is asserted upon prior metaphysical belief in materialism that necessitates—as the only other possible explanation— that chance (random events) and necessity (physical law), in blind, undirected processes can produce a net increase in prescriptive information within biological systems (after their existence has already been taken for granted) through mutation/selection. “Evolution” only occurs after we have a self-replicating cell. The graduated micro to macro claim is contested, subject to dispute and not agreed upon amongst evolutionary biologists. The reason for this is that the modern synthesis (neo-Darwinian view) as an all-explanatory mechanism4 which provided a basis for the micro to macro claim has been undermined by other evolutionary biologists.5
7. As for the burden and standard of proof, you have to realise that the demand for evidence has to be commensurate with the claim. The claim I have made is an axiomatic truth, empirically proven by the sum of all human enterprise in industry and technology. That knowledge, will, power, wisdom are attributes through which contrivance, design etc. comes about. Software code (a sign-symbol-token system, with decision nodes, logic gates, loops, instantiation, encryption-decryption, syntax, abstraction and so on) indicates knowledge, will, power and wisdom. That’s as much proof as I need to bring in order to validate my claim. I know there is a creator through this reasoning which is proven by the sum of human experience and enterprise.6 The dna-gene-cell system is a self-replicating software-OS-hardware system with all the features I just listed and much more. Physico-chemistry and randomness cannot account for that. These are known, empirically proven facts.
1 As I never heard from this person again, I do not know what his current state is in terms of Islām or absence of it. However, from what he stated about his beliefs at the time, there is no doubt that he exited from Islām.
2 Many of those who rode the “scientific miracle” bandwagon that was set into motion during the 80s onwards due to books like those of Maurice Bucaille were really building the foundations of their īmān upon shaky foundations. This is because this approach relies upon a) ubsubstantiated claims, b) lying about Allāh by imputing meanings to His speech that it does not contain and c) trying to impress non-Muslims by blindly accepting their conjectures about life, the universe and nature as uncontested truths, and then twisting verses of the Qurʾān to agree with them. Refer to our paper: Big Bang Cosmology and the Qurʾān at http://www.aqidah.com/creed/?nkqjq which addresses this subject matter.
3 The word “species” is also problematic. Species classification is a convention used to aid our ability to organize and classify nature. It is subjective and not objective. There are vague boundaries and the criteria of inclusion and separation are disputed. This problem is acknowledged and has not been satisfactorily resolved to date even amongst evolutionary biologists. Refer to, by way of example: Dobzhansky T. 1935. A critique of the species concept in biology. Philos Sci 2: 344–355; Hey J. 2006. On the failure of modern species concepts. Trends Ecol Evol, 21: 447–450; Hausdorf B. 2011. Progress toward a general species concept. Evolution 65: 923– 931; Ereshefsky M. 2010a. Microbiology and the species problem. Biol Philos 25: 553– 568. One should be aware of ways in which the ambiguity in species classification serves as a weapon for evolutionists in the construction of their arguments. Defining species works both for and against Darwinian evolution.
4 The claim of evolution occurring through “natural selection” acting upon “random mutations” as an all-explanatory mechanism for all variation and speciation in biological life is now known to be false. Fanatical believers in this doctrine such as Richard Dawkins still exist and they are at odds with the growing number of evolutionary biologists who reject this view because its falseness has become apparent in the past couple of decades with advances in genetics. However, this split among evolutionary biologists is not being communicated through popular science media and educational institutions in an open, frank manner. There is now a search for the “extended synthesis” and the “third way” of evolution because the “modern synthesis”—natural selection acting on random mutations—has been proven to be false as an all-explanatory mechanism for all biological variation. However, that explanation was the most ingenious one and gave atheists, materialists and naturalists a good ride for the latter half of the 20th century. The challenge for evolutionary biologists has actually gotten much harder, and their conjectures will become more and more laughable, when they are stripped of their cryptic language and put in plain terms so that the common person can understand what they are really saying.
5 There is no evidence for the micro to macro evolution claim and it is nothing but a glorified, exaggerated extrapolation. Though there are many citations to demonstrate this, we will suffice with just one. Roger Lewin writes in the Science journal: “A wide spectrum of researchers—ranging from geologists and paleontologists, through ecologists and population geneticists, to embryologists and molecular biologists—gathered at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History under the simple conference title: Macroevolution. Their task was to consider the mechanisms that underlie the origin of species and the evolutionary relationship between species... The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions
of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.” Roger Lewin. Evolutionary theory under fire. Science 210:883.
6 As for detailed knowledge of this Creator, then that only comes through revelation and this answers the doubt of the Atheists, when it is proven that some sort of agency must be behind creation, that how do you know it is the “God” you are asserting and describing, since you have no way of knowing who or what this force or power is. The answer to that is revelation and prophethood. The knowledge relating to God, the resurrection and the unseen cannot be reached by science.
Source: https://t.co/yLxRTnxLjf
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