By: Allama Mohammed Shihabuddin Nadvi

Among those of the contemporary materialistic ideologies and concepts which pose a challenge to the religious faiths, the theory of evolution is a major one. It is more an hypothesis than a fact and several attempts to prove it as a scientific fact have turned futile. Being one of the modern age’s most contentious issue, it has attracted good deal of intellectual efforts and discussion. The issue has inspired a lot of experimentation in farms, orchards and laboratories. During such experiments chimpanzees have been tamed and trained to produce out of them human beings. The quest for biological samples has led the scientists to remote corners of the earth, to the ocean beds, and excavation of fossil remains. Their findings have been carried in thousands of books and tomes all over the world. It is a ceaseless debate and the issue has only gathered further knots.

Yet the theory of evolution remains to be proved. Nothing in the findings so far proves it conclusively in order that it could be included in the laws of nature. All those evidences and arguments marshaled in its proof merely are in the nature of hypotheses. Even in the scientific world, it has increasingly come to be categorised under myths rather than among the facts.

It has to be borne in mind that most of the world scientists are agnostics which is a gray area between religion and atheism and emerges out of man’s admitted inability to gather knowledge about metaphysical world. They stand against the atheists and believers. Supporters of the theory of evolution mostly emerge from among the materialists. A considerable section of scientists from the believing category have, however countered the theory on the scientific lines. The conflict on the score has been continuing. But since the atheists dominate the scientific and cultural activity, they seem to have an upper hand.

Evolution, a Myth
Though all that has been written against evolution is voluminous, a few samples will suffice; The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance published by the Oxford carries articles from 60 noted scientific scholars. One of these articles has been titled as “Fallacies of Evolution Theory”. It concludes that the man’s knowledge about evolution is nil and to regard this knowledge as `factual’ is a fallacy. Its author Tomlin writes at the end :

The present impasse in evolutionary thinking productive of so many fallacies, is due chiefly to the interpretation of biological fact in terms of out-of-date physical theory.1

Another biologist, Chardin writes in his book entitled The Phenomenon of Man:

No amount of historical research will ever reveal the details of this story. Unless the science of tomorrow is able to reconstruct the process in the laboratory, we shall probably never find any material vestige of this emergence of the microscopic from the molecular, of the organic from the chemical, of the living from the pre-living.2

Lecomte Du Nouy, the noted French researcher and author of the marvelous treatise Human Destiny dismissed the theory of chance and Genesis by itself (spontaneous generation) through a massive mathematical analysis and says that the biological origin cannot be solved without accepting a miracle. He goes on to prove that even the existing age of the earth is not sufficient to produce a molecule by accidental accumulation of various elements in a particular proportion. He writes:

However, if this happened and we maintained our confidence in the calculus of probabilities it would be equivalent to admitting a miracle, and the result would be ONE SINGLE MOLECULE, or at most two or three.

Life itself is not even in question but merely one of the substances which constitute living beings. Now one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary.3

He further writes:
In the second place, it has been shown that, on the basis of our present knowledge, namely, by using the same methods which have been proved so useful for the interpretation of our inanimate world, it was impossible to explain, or to account for, not only the birth of life but even the appearance of the substances which seemed to be required to build life, namely, highly dissymmetrical molecules.4

Another among the noted researchers Dr. Isaac Asimov while discussing the mysterious constitution of DNA, stresses that there is strong relationship between the origin of life and religious faith. He attributes this to the apologetic explanations offered by the scientists about the mysteries of life on earth. He writes:

Without DNA, living organism could not reproduce, and life as we know it could not have started. All the substances of living matter – enzymes and all the others, whose production is catalysed by enzymes – depend in the last analysis on DNA. How, then, did DNA, and life start?

This is a question that science has always hesitated to ask, because the origin of life has been bound up with religious beliefs even more strongly than has the origin of the earth and the universe. It is still dealt with only hesitantly and apologetically.5

He further writes:
Pasteur’s demonstration apparently laid the theory of Spontaneous generation to rest permanently.6

This summarises the argument that the scientists are totally unaware of life, root or genesis of life. In other words they are ignorant of the alphabets of life. How could the man be competent to discuss the “changes” in life in the absence of any definitive knowledge about the life itself? The scientists’ claim on this score could thus be likened to the description of an elephant by perception of its limbs and body portions by hands in darkness. Have the scientists experimented on those variations and changes in nature or in laboratories which they claim to have occurred in various species of life on earth?

In reality, the explanations offered by Darwin and his followers for the evolution of new species of living organisms are only hypothetical in nature as they were based on certain similarities between various forms of life. He only assumed that certain life forms had developed from certain other proximate life forms. But he could not set any scientific links based on principles, nor provided any empirical observations. Even scientists admit that to set a demarcation line between two proximate species is as difficult as witnessing the evolutionary changes. Therefore J. Mynard Smith, a staunch advocate of Neo-Darwinism, while discussing with basic elements of evolution (change of genes, selection and migration) concludes that evolutionary changes cannot be examined directly.7

He begins his study thus:
There are a lot of things we do not know about evolution.8

The reality is that “life” and its “growth” are such divine mysteries which can never be unraveled, however hard man tries to do so. All the material that has been advanced to establish the evolution theory reduces to mere hypotheses or theories which remain roofless to the end.

Faith not Concept
The question that why does the scientific community insist on the evolution theory when it is not scientifically substantiated, will require a good deal of discussion. It was rather misfortune of the science that scientists were forced out of the realm of religion to study the nature’s phenomena independently. The universal popularity of the theory of evolution owes itself to the Church’s antagonistic attitude towards science in the Medieval ages. While this led to hatred against religion on one hand, and on the other, motivated them to look for materialistic interpretation for the nature’s phenomena.

This even prompted Darwin to organize his disparate thoughts in a book, Origin of Species which was published from London in 1859. Darwin was basically not a materialist. He was a believer in God. But his book brought convulsions in the intellectual circles and evoked a ground swell of support to the atheism and materialism. It was as if the materialists had discovered a mountain of support for their cause. The materialistic trends that had sprung in the 18th and 19th centuries drew sustenance from it and rose in revolt openly against the religious faiths. But it received major support from two more quarters: Communists and Jews. The Zionists and Freemasons, the organs of Judaism used them as tools. Support from the Communists was obvious as Communism bases itself on denial of God and materialistic philosophy. But Jewish support for the cause must appear to be bizarre. The Zionists and Freemasons merely used it as a tool for achieving their desired goal of ridding the world nations of all moral codes and taboos, thereby facilitating their own hold over them. The Jews followed a policy of merely propagating it. (to be cont.)

References:

1. Duncan, Ronald & Westen-Smith, Miranda, eds., The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1978, P.234.
2. Yusuf, Mohammed Ali, Masraud Darwiniah, Darus Shrooq, Jeddah, 1403 A.H., P.36.
3. Coley, Noel G. & Vance M.D.Hall, eds., Darwin to Einstein, Primary Sources on Science and Beliefs, Longman, Essex, 1980, P. 268.
4. Ibid., P.270.
5. Asimov’s Guide to Science, Vol. 2, The Biological Sciences, Pelican Books, Middlesex, 1978, Pp.172-73.
6. Ibid., P.174.
7. Smith, J. Mynard, “The Limitations of Evolution Theory” in The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance, P.236.
8. Ibid.