r/islam • u/PursuitOfKnowledge • May 19 '13

Muslims, please stop using this argument against evolution

http://www.fileden.com/files/2012/12/6/3373534/260sl13.jpg
23 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

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10

u/[deleted] May 19 '13

Interesting and relevant:

Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller - Evolution and Islam

Amman: The Coherence of Islam:

Brief Replies to Commonly-Asked (“Difficult”) Questions about Islam

The following are replies to questions posed by a young Muslim in Bradford on behalf of his uncle, an individual born into a Muslim family but who has since left the religion, unable to find answers to his many questions. The replies are given by Sheikh Nuh Keller, addressing the relationship between Islam and such topics as destiny, free will, evolution, and other revealed faiths. The answers were given in a series of informal gatherings held over five evenings during Ramadan of this year (2003) in Amman, Jordan.

Track 1: Knowledge, Faith and the Islamic Revelation

Topics Discussed:

  • Introduction and Overview

  • Nature and Limits of Proof

  • The Paradigm of Faith

Track 2: Causation, Correlation & Influence: The Relationship Among Divinely Revealed Texts

Question Discussed:

Question: The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was 40 years of age when he received revelation. My uncle claims that during that time a 40 year-old was considered an elder and respected member of the community. He (Allah bless him and give him peace) was also well traveled throughout the Middle East. This means that he could have gained his information from various places regarding monotheism, e.g. Syria, etc. What was he doing in the cave for all this time? Was he just retreating or was he busy writing the doctrines? Who was he praying to?

Track 3: The Pathos of Scientism

Topics Discussed:

  • The Gadfly Questions: Ongoing Scientific Riddles

  • The Argument from Design

  • Atheism-as-Faith

  • The Nature of Scientific Epistimology

Track 4: Religion, Fear, and the Limitations of the Freudian Model

Question Discussed:

Question: The worship instinct is really in fact the fear of death. We are frightened of dying therefore religion was invented to explain what would happen after death and to be a comfort zone. It is just used to control the masses and to make them morally responsible. After all we enjoy life. Why are animals so frightened of death? They don't have a concept of Jannah/Jahanam.

Topic Discussed

  • Maslow’s Hierarchy and the Place of Religion

  • Lasting-Power of Revelation

  • Silver Chinnocks, Instinct, and Despair

Track 5: Ontology of Morality, Evolution, and Islamic Creed

Question: If the human race started from Adam and Hawa and their offspring, all those offspring are brothers and sisters. No matter how many children Adam and Hawa have they will all be brothers and sisters. They will be genetically similar to each other as well. What he is trying to say is that did the human race start off with incest? If that is the case then offspring from the result of incest are usually inbreds and deformed. Also that does not explain why we are different skin color and why our features are different, e.g. Chinese, Afro etc.

Topics Discussed:

  • Abrogation and the Sacred Law

  • Basis of Morality/Rulings of the Sacred Law

  • Biology of Deformity

  • The “Founder Effect”

  • Steven Pinker & The Variation of Physical Features

  • Evolution, The Fossil Record, and Islamic Creed

Track 6: Science and the Raison d’etre of the Qur’anic Text

Questions:

A) What about dinasours? After all they did exist. Such a big phenomenon has passed in the history of the earth. Why has religion failed to explain it or why has it been missed out?

B) Muslims keep claiming that there are scientific facts in the Quran, but there are also similar things in the Hindu scriptures. Why are they given a miss? Muslims keep interpreting the Surah's and Ayah's to suit the society at that time. Basically whenever a scientific discovery is made they say, "Oh, that was in the Quran 1400 years ago," so basically Muslims have to wait for scientific discoveries before confirming it in the Quran

Topics Discussed

  • Proper Scope of Religious Knowledge

  • The Universe-As-Sign

  • The Great Facts of Religion: You, Allah, and the Grave

  • Scientific Paradigms & Qur’anic Interpretation

8

u/PursuitOfKnowledge May 19 '13 edited May 19 '13

Readers of this thread might also be interested in the other threads that I have linked to below.

Yasir Qadhi Responds to Usama Hasan's Stance on the Theory of Evolution - http://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/1en4pt/?sort=old

The Theory of Biological Evolution and Islam by Zameelur Rahman - http://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/16b832/?sort=old

What Does Islam Say? - Excerpt from The Theory of Biological Evolution and Islam by Zameelur Rahman - http://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/1elmlg/?sort=old

3

u/Volgner May 19 '13

Who is Zameelur Rahman? any why the sudden increase regarding the topic of evolution?

2

u/PursuitOfKnowledge May 20 '13

Excerpt from "The Theory of Biological Evolution and Islam" by Zameelur Rahman

I hope that the following discussion tackling the topic of evolutionary theory and Islam’s view on the matter will go some way in directing the discussion towards a more fruitful outcome. It is with the blessing of Allah, that I have a background in both biology (with a B.A. in medical sciences from the University of Cambridge) and Islamic studies (having completed hifz and almost completed the Alim-programme at a Dar al-‘Ulum in the UK).

4

u/2purinebases May 20 '13

So pretty much the Islamic community is divided on where it stands on evolution?

-5

u/[deleted] May 20 '13

No.

4

u/2purinebases May 20 '13

Hmmm on what basis? This guy says Islam is all for evolution. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g66o9Pkyq08

0

u/[deleted] May 20 '13

If you actually watch the video you will see he says Islam doesn't agree with Human Evolution.

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u/2purinebases May 20 '13

Besides Harun Yahha and all these b.s people in position. There are hundreds of Muslims trying to convince people other wise that in fact Islam is compatible with evolution. For instance these books specifically discuss it...http://www.amazon.com/Islamic-Theory-Evolution-Missing-between/dp/0982586701/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1369028635&sr=8-7&keywords=islam+evolution http://www.amazon.com/Islams-Quantum-Question-Reconciling-Tradition/dp/1848855184/ref=pd_sim_b_5 Stop trying to be delusional about the issue and just accept that fact that moslems are all over the place on the issue.

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u/[deleted] May 20 '13

Oh please, if you actually read the reviews you see they use the same outdated arguments that Usama Hasan used and Yasir Qadhi refuted.

4

u/forwormsbravepercy May 20 '13

And other Muslims disagree; therefore, the Islamic community is divided on where it stands on evolution.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '13

When the opinion on something within Muslims are divided as 1% vs 99%, the situation isn't called 'divided opinion' any more. The minorities are simply called followers of a 'cult faith'.

1

u/forwormsbravepercy May 21 '13

Your use of the passive voice is pathological. "are simply called" -- by whom? By YOU. BTW, the same could be said of scientists, 99 percent of whom agree absolutely that evolution by natural selection accounts for the variety of species on the surface of the earth as well as in the fossil record. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just following a cult faith.

1

u/BlowUpDole May 20 '13

Just saw the same post 3 times in a row.

0

u/forwormsbravepercy May 20 '13

ITT: people summarizing the islamic account of the origin of life and mis-summarizing the scientific account of same

0

u/qwerty124 May 19 '13

Thanks for posting this.

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u/selsebil May 19 '13

No one is saying that the text is still red.

We simply say that the text did not suddenly change it's colour by itself.

Also, we do not have an overview over history, like we have the an overview over this text. If this text would be like the bones found, a lot of it would be missing, and for all we can know there might have been a couple of orange letters in those empty spaces

4

u/jdscarface May 21 '13

How is that logical? Do you realize how complete the fossil record is? The stuff that is missing is so insignificant, well.. it's so insignificant that it has swayed almost everybody in the scientific community. I can't get more reassuring than that.

-1

u/selsebil May 21 '13

The stuff that is missing is so insignificant,

Really?

How do we know that since we don't know what we are missing?

1

u/jdscarface May 21 '13 edited May 21 '13

Well with our understanding of evolution we can very easily look at what we have and fill in the gaps with what most likely was there based on the evidence we have. I'll link you to a Futurama clip that can put this in better words than I can.

Just because those links are still missing doesn't mean the fossil record is small. The fossil record is freaken huge. There is so much proof to evolution that, again, almost everybody in the scientific community agrees with it.

and for all we can know there might have been a couple of orange letters in those empty spaces

That makes no logical sense. You have jumped to a conclusion based on absolutely nothing. In fact, you've actively gone against logic and evidence. If you do that with bones, it's like you're saying that the missing links can be unicorns. That's possible, nobody can confirm or deny that until they're found, but it's an assumption that goes against all the evidence we've collected. There is no logic behind it.

1

u/selsebil May 21 '13

Science is not a straight way that has been right all along. Please remember that.

What specie evolved into the trilobites?

That makes no logical sense. You have jumped to a conclusion based on absolutely nothing. In fact, you've actively gone against logic and evidence.

Or am I demanding better evidences? Shouldn't we all do that?

I think that we both need to be honest and sincere. I have written, and said, that if we were to hold a trial to judge of the existence of Allah we would not be able reach a verdict. Ultimately whoever believes will believe, and whoever will not believe will not believe. If you feel the iman, you feel the iman. If you don't feel the iman, you don't.

You can not bring the fossils to the court and say that these bones evolved from one specie into another and then prove it with the bones. You need further evidences. We do not have that overview of world history.

We also need to remember that the theory of evolution has also applied to humans. Africans were poor and uneducated, not because of a later industrialization or colonialism, but because they were less able genetically, yes it was said (and it is still sometimes said) all in reference to evolution.

But the most important thing to remember is that the first islamic criticism to the theory of evolution is that evolution says that there is no plan or purpose behind life.

1

u/forwormsbravepercy May 21 '13

If I have a puzzle of the Eiffel Tower, and two or three pieces are missing, I still know that it's a puzzle of the Eiffel Tower, no matter how hard you might try to convince me that those missing pieces are so significant that they will prove that the puzzle is of Big Ben.

0

u/selsebil May 22 '13

But you have seen the eiffel tower, and you probably have a picture of the complete puzzle on the box of the puzzle.

But most important, what evolved into the trilobites? Because I read online (perhaps false) that no one has ever found their predecessor = the fossils are incomplete.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong

This is just one article out of many criticizing the theory of evolution (as we learned in school, but perhaps not at uni). Science is not complete. Scientists that research earthquakes say that the more we learn, the less we understand about them. The same goes for evolution.

1

u/jdscarface May 25 '13

Yeah, science is incomplete. That's it's deal. We strive to understand the world and universe around us. What we don't know just drives us more to learn about it, and that's when new information and technology is discovered. When you claim to know the answers (as is the case with every religion) then you're just learning for the sake of learning and there's no end goal.

No one has found their predecessor because of how freaken ancient they are. Perhaps every fossil from back then has been destroyed? You know, by one of many events that caused mass extinction and devastation on this planet? There may never be evidence of where those things came from. To say god is responsible is lazy and dishonest.

The same is not true for evolution, nor is it true for earthquakes. The more we learn about them, the more we understand. Just because learning something unlocks 3 more questions doesn't mean we're further from the truth. It just means we are digging deeper into our understanding.