THEORY OF EVOLUTION; FACTS OR MYTH

Muhammad Taimur Tareen

The aim of his controversial topic is to express what I believe with full conviction. I am concerned with those who support “Theory of Evolution”. Believing in this theory to hold the truth, in my view, is an unwise compromise. Charles Darwin, in his famous book, The Origin of Species, states that Life started on Earth from a basic living cell approximately, more than three billion years ago, and has evolved to contemporary humans, sapiens. He has asserted that the basic cell acquired life by some strange coincidence, when some chemicals combined in such a way that it resulted in creation of life. The scientists have not yet been able to prove this hypothesis, much less creating the most basic living cell in the laboratory.

In his book, he has based his theory using an often repeated term, ‘Natural Selection’, which simply stated means, “the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring, and those less adapted, perish gradually. Also, that species is not immutable which means new species have appeared during the long course of the earth’s history by a natural process he called “descent and modification”, and due to, in his view, ‘the survival of the fittest’, the cells that have been mutating, have evolved to a level of contemporary humans. Word ‘natural’ is defined as “something that occurs in nature without any human interference.” Darwin did not ex- plain if nature also evolved and from which timeline and from what basic element of nature?

Consider a basic living cell coming into existence through a strange unexplainable cause. Questions arise; Any live entity requires food to keep itself alive, how did that coincidentally produced cell get its food to live upon? Also where that living cell was located and till what time before it evolved to the next level? Also how that single cell became aware that there could be some- thing like seeing, and how did the cell acquire resources to enable itself to create eyes to see in three dimensions. Construction of eyes is too intricate to evolve, a fact stated in Darwin’s own words, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” Some people consider, the theory of Evolution is based on science. When asked to describe that scientific part, they are unable to comment except saying, “The books and many scientists have said so”! When asked if they read Darwin’s book on evolution themselves, a majority would admit they had not.

In the sketch, depicting evolution of apes to humans as sketched in Darwin’s book, there is a gap between the most basic ape (marked 1, and humans (marked 5, there are no intermediary species (2,3,4,5) found anywhere. If evolution is an extremely slow process with even a small increment, requiring to take thousands, of not millions of years the intermediate and interim forms of apes should have been visible around us.

Some religious people ten to compromise, claiming, “God Himself designed the entire evolution process, and that when the evolution reached a certain level, He selected the best apes to shape them into humans, Adam and Eve. My question for them, did God select only one ape to declare him as Adam? Because there must have been many apes having evolved to be promoted to human beings like Adam! Besides, why not let other apes also rise through evolution to the category of human beings?

Why have the other apes stopped evolving any more even after the first one? How species knew how to evolve and what features to evolve to? It is known that a human brain has hardly used 10% of its capacity. How and why did the evolution process create 90% extra capacity of the brain? Evolution cannot explain how consciousness evolved? Living bodies are just physical entities, yet who is in control of these physical bodies?

What guided the basic cell or its evolved higher degree to the fact that there is abundance of oxygen around it and therefore decided to evolve into lungs, heart and all the intricate systems working in human beings and other living things? Honey bees, ants, etc have an amazing sense of responsibility. Has this sense also evolved? Were the conducive surroundings also evolved to help evolution to continue? How life originated and how the first cell came into being are matters of speculation/ presumptions only. To support their claims in favor of evolution, it is being assumed that at the time of the first living cell, the atmosphere of Earth contained only CH4, NH3, and H2, into which electric sparks were discharged, resulting in creation of a live basic cell!

Any explanation, how and when the atmosphere of Earth was provided with oxygen and nitrogen, replacing CH4, NH3 and who provided these sources? No idea! A most basic living cell is made up of the following: cell walls, mitochondria, choroplasts, cell membrane, vacuole, nucleus, ribosomes, plasmids.

How could a basic living cell with aforementioned parts come into existence, all of a sudden against the basic rule of evolution which is an extremely slow process and has to evolve very slowly and gradually? How long did the first ba- sic cell live to evolve into a higher level?

When and who, at a certain evolved stage, considered that there was a need to have male and female species to procreate and why it was decided, and by whom, and that such gender differentiation was necessary for procreation?. Before this point of time, how were the species multiplying? Besides who designed the body constitution to achieve procreation.

Mr. Darwin was known to be racist. He claimed, by coining a term, ‘survival of the fittest’, that an evolved superior race would survive and that rest will either be dominated or vanished. Darwin admitted that Britian’s gene pool might be improved by removing its socially, physically and economically handicapped citizens. His cousin, Francis Galton believed (as quoted in the book, titled: The Importance of Evolution Theory) that ‘the undesirables in society – the poor, the chronically ill and developmentally disabled’ should be steered away from having children’. So far this theory has so many snags, it is still a theory and cannot be made a scientifically proved phenomenon.

As a Muslim I would like to refer to Quran wherein it is mentioned that the creation of universe hap- pened by the command of God “Be and it was”

Quran also describes creation of Adam – the first human being – not as an upgrading process as an evolved ape, but very clearly as follows 15:29. “When I (Allah) created him perfectly and blew into him from my breath, then bow down to him”. Both the verses above are so categorical and commanding that they can put human mind baffled with amazing creation, to rest. I will appreciate it if some readers offer differing views on the subject to modify my views.