Evolution

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Unbeknown, Jan 29, 2023.

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  1. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    In the introduction to "A Mousetrap for Darwin", Michael Behe (prominent Intelligent Design advocate), writes:

    How can Darwin’s theory be on the ropes and yet presidential candidates still be roasted for mealy-mouthed answers about evolution? How can new fossils be paraded monthly across the front pages of major newspapers as fresh and powerful evidence of evolution, but distinguished scientists still argue against the sufficiency of simple random mutation and natural selection? To understand the seeming conundrum one has to make a critical distinction between evolution itself—call it mere evolution—and the mechanism or cause of evolution. Mere evolution is the bare proposition that organisms living today are descended with modification from organisms that lived in the distant past.There is terrific evidence consistent with that. On the other hand we can ask, well, what caused such astounding changes to take place? What is the reason or mechanism for evolution? that’s the sticking point.​

    Is there?

    He is not a proponent of "(divinely) guided evolution" - promoted by philosophers like Alvin Plantinga.
     
  2. Ahlesaabiqoon

    Ahlesaabiqoon Active Member

    since you said it is Deviance of the highest degree. And Kufr.
     
  3. Ahlesaabiqoon

    Ahlesaabiqoon Active Member

    Agreed with everything you said except with this ^. How is it kufr? Of course if someone says we were created but were a different species, then evolved to become humans right now, this is wrong. but if someone said, we were created as humans from the get go, but we develop certain characteristics living in certain areas instead of other areas, and Allāh creates these minor adaptations, how would this be kufr if this view still holds that we are still the same species?
     
  4. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    yes, like i said, he's either trying to be maximum possible apologetic and pathetic without stepping into heresy and kufr, or has taken this route to appeal to the pathetic crowd that's wallowing in actual heresy and kufr, and somehow trying to bring them just within the boundaries of Islam.

    good example. like you said, what's the Islamic reference on the "resembling Adam" part?

    but if dubious comments like this sway people away from kufr or bid3ah then despite being wishful conjecture (lest a reference is given) it won't necessitate a harsh hukm on the author or those who follow him
     
  5. Adham12

    Adham12 Active Member

    JazakAllah.

    There is quite a bit of speculation in this article. A lot of, "well maybe this happened, possibly this occurred, Allah knows best, etc." to best fit the explanation of primitive humanoid fossils.

    I found this quote particularly interesting from the article: "One widespread opinion in the tafsir literature is that there were beings resembling Adam who inhabited the earth prior to him."

    The author does not cite which tafsirs the statement above was taken from to explain the humanoid fossils. Further cites Ibn Juzayy, who stated Jinns were creatures who were on Earth prior to Humans, who caused destruction. I was taught it was Jinns who inhabited Earth first but the author states, "it has not been confirmed by any explicit verse, prophetic hadith or scholarly consensus – as far as I’m aware – that these creatures were in fact jinn, there’s room, perhaps, to suggest they were hominids or primitive (pre-ruh) Homo sapiens."
     
  6. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    like @Adham12 said, this is quite against jalajel's kufri proposition.

    i quickly ran through it due to sheer size. it seems the author is either trying very hard to fit in with the modernist community, or perhaps he might be trying to convince the "intellectual" misfits who have subscribed to the idiotic theories, in a way that they understand. nonetheless, he does eventually get to the point

    i believe i did see some problematic statements that were problematic on their own, not in the larger context of evolution theory and Islamic aqidah on Sayyiduna Adam 3alaihis salam creation (slipped my mind what exact they are now)

    anyways, from my understanding of HIS theory (i may be wrong) he says that there can be other HUMAN-LIKE creatures before Sayyiduna Adam 3alaihis salam, and that perhaps evolution theory only unearthed proofs for the existence of those creatures, and as such it has no bearing on our Islamic aqidah for ACTUAL AND REAL HUMANS (us, with Adam 3alaihis salam being our first father)

    unless i misread his theory or am mistaken myself, it doesn't bother us as Muslims.

    Sayyidi Amjad Ali Aazmi says in Bahare Shariat book of nikah, regarding "banmanus" that is popular among masses, which can be translated to "bigfoot" in english (also popular among the masses in the superior west). he says IF IT EXISTS, marrying it is prohibited, just as it is forbidden to marry "pani ka insan" a creature that looks JUST LIKE HUMANS BUT ISN'T and has a tail (DI referenced hayatul hayavan there).

    basically unless the primary nusus go against something, we have no problems with dinosaurs or bigfoots or aliens on mars, not that any of those are mukallaf. the author of that piece does allude to this.

    humans and jinn are mukallaf, 51:56

    speaking of jinn, it may be a fatwa to pass on to modern anglicized Muslims who believe in ghosts, like all the loyal-to-george's cross english folk do. it is also haram for humans to marry jinn. :)

    https://www.dawateislami.net/bookslibrary/709/page/7

    upload_2021-7-26_18-30-46.png
    upload_2021-7-26_18-32-2.png

    ----

    in reply to a comment that talks about the sabbath-breakers of bani Israeel who were turned to apes and pigs, the author takes great pains to explain that those recovered fossils that the evolutionists use can't possibly from them as they were humans... ermm, they were turned into apes and pigs weren't they? so isn't it possible that a human-like bone one discovered today could be from one of them turned to apes, or a pig bone unearthed today could be from one of them? as for their ages based on carbon dating not matching the ages of the fossils, he might have a valid point to an extent based purely on science, but then... since their maskh was Divinely ordained punishment and supernatural, it shouldn't be necessary that all the rules of physics apply to their morphed remains either, yes?
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2021
    Unbeknown likes this.
  7. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    yes, it's a good article and does not plant heresies - going by a quick look.

    Macro-evolution is "possible" - in the mind's eye - yes.

    In the sense that it's not what we call an 'aqlan-muhaal a-priori (like a square-circle).

    Actually "plausible" or "probable"? - likely as not.

    Just as it is "possible" that, like the coelacanth, some other pre-historic animal has survived in the deep-seas and the legends of sea-monsters are based on actual sightings of these, or a dinosaur or the abominable snowman are hidden in jungles around the world.

    But is it probable? - likely as not. Given the large odds against such huge animals going undetected for centuries.

    Allah knows best.
     
  8. Adham12

    Adham12 Active Member

    Last edited: Jul 26, 2021
    AbdalQadir likes this.
  9. faqir

    faqir Veteran

  10. abu Hasan

    abu Hasan Administrator

    split the thread and reach for ibn qayyim's work on ruH.

    :)
     
  11. Alf

    Alf Active Member

    What is interesting is that not too long ago it was fashionable for even non muslims in India to say in sha Allah in their conversations, and therefore I don't think saying Allah would have hurt anyone's sentiments, except that some muslims willingly chose other words when talking to non muslims, perhaps out of a desire to look 'moderate' or 'secular'.
     
  12. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    thanks for bringing this up. it's been parked on my mind for a long time, both for evolution theory discussions/refutations from an Islamic pov, as well as the other issue on its own - do animals have rooh?

    maybe you can even split the thread - rooh in animals

    years ago, i was discussing with some ahbash on machine slaughter, and they are big time anti-machine slaughter - one of the reasons the habashi guy gave me was - every animal has to be individually slaughtered with an individual recitation of Bismillah Alalhu Akbar as it's an individual rooh that's going to be ceased. it seems, as per what he said, animals also have rooh like humans and jinn but they're not mukallaf.

    i have never delved into the topic of rooh in animals ever since, and concede my lack of knowledge on this. if i came across it in any aqidah books or shuruh, i probably didn't pay attention and don't remember any of it.

    this is a good question - what is/are the proofs for/against rooh in animals in general?

    assuming it is proven animals do have arwah, how does that implicate on our treatment of evolution theory in general?

    right now, the discourse in traditional Muslims is only centered around humans, for the obvious reason of its direct consequences on the directly stated Quranic belief in our first father and prophet, Adam 3alaihis salam
     
  13. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    among the myriad colors of kufr reflected from this gem of reasoning - is one which would undermine a very fundamental doctrine of Islam, if we just reverse engineer this corpse of a theory.

    I mean the premise inherent in evolution theory, that "life" is nothing more than a meta-phenomenon of an accidentally fired chemical reaction.

    There is no concept of "rooh" - or the spirit - which is a core aspect of Islamic doctrine.

    Now, did the amoeboid ancestors of the progenitors of the"non-Adamic broader human family" have a rooh?
    What are the proofs for or against it?

    Did the "evolved homo sapiens" have a rooh breathed into them gradually, or only after their evolution was complete?

    Is the nature of rooh same in both lineages or different?

    the "life" that animates an evolved human must arguably be fa more akin to that of his siblings - i.e. animals - than the human created ex-nihilo (Sayyiduna Adam - peace be upon him) - so how can they inter-marry? or what will the subsequent off-spring's rooh be like?

    by dressing the subject in a purely physical garb - hoping to ease the tension arising out of the special creation of human beings - the questions surrounding man's spiritual nature cannot be wished away.

    it will be evident to any thinking Muslim - who knows his creed well - that evolution theory is fraught with veritable landmines of kufr - and so the attempt to normalise it for 'muslims' can only stem from extreme stupidity or devilish designs.

    And Allah knows best.
     
  14. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    The missing fossils matter as much as the ones we have found

    Quote:

    Consider the idea that evolutionary changes are slow and cumulative, a theory known as Darwinian Gradualism. The fossil record contains some lovely specimens that point to gradual evolutionary change à la Darwin. But more often than not, a certain type of fossil just shows up in the rock strata, persists for a while as it is, and then disappears. Should we take the absence of proof of gradual change as evidence of the fact that evolution is not gradual?

    Darwin himself lost sleep over this problem. He eventually decided that the absence of evidence of gradual change is not, in itself, evidence of the absence of gradualism. Instead, he attributed the gaps to the record’s incompleteness. Yet this move had the unintended effect of relegating palaeontology to the sidelines. If palaeontologists study fossils, and if the fossil record is too full of holes to tell us about evolution, then palaeontologists must have little to contribute to our understanding of the process.

    Fast forward to the next century. In the 1970s, the biologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould argued that the lack of proof of gradualism is itself an informational signal. ‘Stasis is data,’ they claimed. If the fossil record contains periods where nothing changes, that’s because nothing, in fact, has changed. The lack of evidence of gradual evolution is simply telling us that there wasn’t much of it going on. Instead, they suggested that evolution happened by way of rapid bursts of change before reaching a plateau, a theory they called ‘punctuated equilibrium’.
    ...
    The case of the coelacanth and the pterodactyl are similar in one respect. Both fossils have been missing for the past 66 million years. But for pterosaurs, the best explanation is just that the animals went extinct. For the coelacanth, the message is more complex. Accounting for the gap might invoke the small population size, when and how fossilisation occurs in marine environments, and the fact that much of the rock on the ocean floor is quite young. For both creatures, at least one thing is clear: what doesn’t fossilise is often as revealing as what does.

    --

    This is what is called a "post-hoc explanation" [see] - and evolutionists are neck deep in a sea of these:

    Quote:

    Darwinists face a clear and formidable question: how can two animals, with very different ancestries, evolve to become almost identical? It is no small problem. Evolutionists waved it away with the hands of the clock, by claiming gradual evolution takes a long time. Convergence moves slowly as the two species move towards the same goal of becoming more alike as time flows forward. Wikipedia lists over 300 examples of convergent evolution.​

    You have an event that has already occurred - and you just have to pin it down to "evolution" - somehow.

    Another sample from muslim-skeptic.

    --

    Coming back to the paper under discussion - award-winning-logician argues that since no verse of the Qur'an explicitly states:

    there were no biologically-identifiable-as-homo-sapiens creatures inhabiting the earth prior to the creation of Adam (peace be upon him)​

    it means:

    there very well might have been - a pre-Adamic species - which could have evolved from single-cellular chemical structures over millions of years, to reach a form that was indistinguishable from modern day homo-sapiens, to the extent that, even if they inter-married with the children of Adam (peace be upon him) we would have no way of telling it. So your great great great grandpa could have been an evolved "non-Adamic homo sapien" who married your "purely Adamic" great great great grandmother - and in that sense you can claim to be an evolutionary half-blood member of the "broader human family".​

    Absence of evidence, reminds Dr. falafel, is no evidence of absence.

    You see, once the "just so" bug has bitten you (conceivably due to too much hanging around with your evolutionary biologist pals) - you can always get something out of nothing.
     
  15. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    It's an hr and 57 minutes.

    just randomly saw from 52 to 54 minutes and this guy too just like malm, uses that same reverse psychology tactic of driving people away from Islamic beliefs

    ... 'we have been too 'biblical' in our approach to evolution just like the christians' ... says this stuff to make room to bring in his heresies as supposedly possible Islamic positions

    i think it's a matter of time before someone says "we've been too dogmatic like the christians in our approach to zina, we Muslims take the bible's commandment 'thou shalt not commit adultery' to heart quite literally and fervently in the context of physical actions, without considering all the possible philosophical and spiritual interpretations of our Quran saying walaa taqrabuz zina"

    as an aside - my personal observation - any english speaking "shaykh" or academic or researcher who incessantly uses "God" for Allah in our times - is almost always a heretic at best, liberal murtad at worst, not as a consequence of using "God", rather he uses "God" as a consequence of being heretic/murtad

    you can cry me a river about Imam Abu Hanifa permitting "Khuda" and (if i remember correctly) "Parwardigar" in Persian and this is an extension of that, and i will respond "blah, blah, blah ... blessed Imam said that for his times and peoples. in our times, people who are too sorry to be Muslims and "deviant" from the kafirs, use "God", and in india "uparwala" (or "Khuda" too, not counting "eeshwar" or "prabhu") if they're in front of kafirs and don't wish to hurt their sentiments by saying Allah

    firstly can you summarize jalajel's perspective please. then you can advise what does keller say on jalajel's kind of perspective?

    Yaqeen Institute of which this jalajel is a part, promotes lgbt too, just fyi.
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2021
  16. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    ha ha - not really.

    I asked for information - as I have always observed your fence-sitting on very clear and very important issues with interest - and yes, suspicion. It's got less to do with you as an individual and more with a "type" or - perhaps a "pattern of beliefs and behavior".

    I still believe that your off-handed manner was, if not sinister, thoughtless. and I think it appropriate to leave a warning for the uninitiated visitors. anyway, I am not gonna bandy fruitless words.

    there we go again - I don't see how it matters what a label under my pseudonym bills me as - unless I am bringing it to bear on the discussion somehow.

    the pattern repeats. I think people should watch and draw their own conclusions about what daniel considers jalajel. He also has a good lengthy paper on his site - which I linked below.

    issuing rulings on the individual is a mufti's job - but the idea itself is heretical and has implications that cross into kufr.

    as for yaqeen institute itself, it is clearly a liberal trojan horse - with the added honor of being in bed with imperialist propagandists.

    ---
    A parting warning to late-comers: the language the doctor employs when referring to sayyiduna Adam (عليه السلام) in that video is also disrespectful and heterodox - to say the least.

    wa Allahu a'alam
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2021
  17. faqir

    faqir Veteran

    You seem to have some serious hate issues - suggest you get a life, worry about your self and not worry about me.
    Oh sorry to add just realised you are a ‘senior moderator’ - shame you behave more like a ‘senior to..er’
     
  18. faqir

    faqir Veteran

    I have never paid much attention or thought to the issue though I personally agree with the more ‘orthodox’ opinion as, for example, expressed in the old paper by Sh Nuh Keller. I’ve not listened to all of this rather lengthy haqiqatjou lecture yet but remain interested to know if he considers Jaljabels view to be disbelief and the reason for that. Kindly expound on this if you have time.
     
  19. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    James Tour (official website)
    His page on Discovery Institute (the main foundation backing the theory of ID):

    James Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and Nano-Engineering at Rice University. A synthetic organic chemist, he received his BS in Chemistry from Syracuse University, his PhD in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. He has served on the faculty of the University of South Carolina and as a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

    Tour has over 700 research publications and over 130 patent families.

    He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015 and was listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters in 2014. He has been named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine and was ranked one of the Top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade by a Thomson Reuters citations per publication index survey in 2009. The same year he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology in 2008, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007.

    --

    definitely one of the heavyweights throwing his weight behind ID - which makes one wonder at these "Evolutionary Muslims" ...
     
  20. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    I just randomly listened from 25:00 to 26:00 minutes and the monkey says that Islamic theology always classified humans as hayavan (being animated) and that the greeks also had a concept of hayavan natiq (a thinking animal). that one minute was enough for me.
     

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