Intelligent Design versus Natural Selection

Dr. Gill...

Your article ought to be helpful in the continuing effort to set the evolution story straight, however I`ve a few quibbles. For instance:

``Even after the passage of more than a century, theory of natural selection continues to be hotly debated...``

Not, Dr. Gill, among the biologists that I know. All, myself included, believe evolution through natural selection to have as solid, perhaps an even more solid, foundation as anything in science.

``The micro changes that are responsible in creating a random mutant occur over a period of several generations and are not reproducible in the laboratory, at present at least.``

Dr. Gill, how long has it been since you were in a biological laboratory? It`s quite easy, really.

mirmir

Another excellent article Mr. Gill.

raziffery Sahib:

Thanks for your post.

You’ve rightly stated that “I seem to favor evolutionist stance.” I also want to qualify this statement that my stance is not dogmatic. If I found any concrete reason to think that theory of natural selection is not right, I’ll drop it.

In science, things change all the time. Theories get refined and extended and are replaced by others which are in accord with all the empirical data. In my article, I had stated:

“There is no similar development in the theory of natural selection. In fact, this is one of the reasons that natural selection is so severely criticized. The antagonists claim that the theory does not make any predictions and is therefore not falsifiable. Whatever new facts are discovered, theory adjusts itself to them. But then nothing has yet been discovered either which would refute the theory definitively. The bag of arguments offered on both sides is a blend of scientific facts, philosophical arguments and the extrapolated inferences. “

I had also stated:

“It will be quite a while before the dust settles down and the status of theory of evolution by natural selection becomes clearer and is universally accepted. The burden of proof, as always, is on the scientists. One thing is however certain and quite reassuring. If there were any fundamental flaws in the theory of natural selection, the scientists would have cast it off because it is their business to construct reliable theories, which withstand the test of empirical evidence. Any scientist who brings forth a better theory than natural selection will be considered a revolutionary scientist by his compeers. The scientists do not adhere to a wrong theory
out of misplaced devotion. History of science bears witness to this fact.”

I also appreciate your posting of Jonathan Witt’s article. Although, I didn’t learn any new facts from it. I read it and could feel his emotions. Science is cold and emotionless. The scientists have their emotions. Man used to believe, and many of us probably still do, that he was a special creation of Allah and man’s abode, that is, the Earth, was special among the heavenly bodies. Earth was the center of the universe because the Allah’s choicest creation inhabited it. We’ve grown out of this belief, or have we not?

I am not saying that the evolutionists have presented the ultimate empirical evidence in support of ‘macroevolution’. At the same time, there is nothing concrete to show that macroevolution cannot occur. If there were, the biologists wouldn’t pursue this line of investigation; they would drop the theory of natural selection.

Strange things have happened in science. Max Planck had made a revolutionary assumption reluctantly regarding the quanta of energy; he considered it as an ad hoc stratagem. He didn’t believe intrinsically in it. He did not put much faith in the theory of quantum mechanics, which he himself helped in founding. Einstein who was a founding father of the theory of quantum mechanics was left out of its main stream because of his dogmatic faith in determinism; the theory of quantum mechanics is fundamentally statistical. Science marches ahead in spite of the personal beliefs of even the most distinguished scientists.

Darwin was a devout Christian. He did not invent the theory of natural selection to flout Christianity and other religions. He was led on this track by the empirical observations. He is criticized because he could not at once prove his theory. Things seldom happen abruptly in science and when they do, they take a long time to become established. They usually begin from hypotheses before they become theories. Many a time, some hypotheses don’t receive support from empirical evidence; under such conditions, they are replaced with better ones. Science is thus a trial and error process.

If the scientists found in their quest that God indeed is the creator of the universe and all the life in it, they wouldn’t hesitate to accept it. There are many theistic evolutionists, as I had mentioned in my article, who believe both in natural selection and God.

However, to many others such a belief seems redundant; it’s an assumption too many because the facts can be explained without invoking God in the argument.

I know you don’t want a general discussion. If you are asking for a concrete proof in support of natural selection (actually, in support of macroevolution because natural selection has found quite a bit of empirical support), I don’t have it. If there were such a proof, there wouldn’t be all this debate. At the same time, if there were a proof that natural selection was a wrong theory, nobody would pursue it.

With regards,

Mohammad Gill

Dear Mr. Gill and friends, This is a must read article for the issues that have been raised here. Perhaps the best defense offered from an aesthetic point of view - I would buttress this critique by citing numerous works which have demonstrated quite well (from biological inconsistencies to philosophical absurdities that evolutionism entails) that the debate is far from being over and the evolutionists still have a huge burden of proof, perhaps more than what they can carry.

I would love to hear people`s comments especially Mr. Gill himself whose descriptive analysis inadmittedly seem to favor evolutionist stance but I would insist on specific counterargumets etc. to the specific critique of the arguments made by Jonathan, not some general remarks based on misconstrual of his position.

The Gods Must Be Tidy!
Is the Cosmos a Work of Poor Engineering or the Gift of an Artistic Designer?
By: Jonathan Witt
Touchstone Magazine
August 1, 2004


Original Article

When as a boy I read “The Scouring of the Shire” near the end of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, I could not understand why Tolkien felt the need to tack on such an anti-climactic and shabby bit of evil. Only later, as I began to notice modernity’s penchant for ugliness in the world beyond Middle Earth, did I understand that the scouring of the Shire bespoke a present evil, a malevolence insidious precisely because it lacked the stark drama of the trenches or the gas chambers.

I came to understand that the demolition of the hobbits’ lovely village possessed the striking lines of caricature not because it was unrealistic but rather because the depiction is so sharp and trenchant. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it can also breed cataracts, an incapacity to see a thing vividly, truly.

God of the Nazis

The twentieth century was, in its darkest moments, an arresting illustration of the will to power, but it also exhibited a less imposing if somewhat more curious urge: what could be aptly termed the will to ugliness. The perversely drab “pre-fabs” of postwar England, the American slum projects constructed by a later generation, the willfully dissonant monstrosities of much modern high architecture, the willfully tortured, obscure, and graceless prose of the deconstructionists, even the black-eyed and anorexic grotesques of the Paris catwalks—all bespeak an age driven to throw up trappings repulsive in their embrace of detachment and death.

The cultural pedigree of this modern predilection for ugliness is old, various, and to some degree mysterious. But here I want to suggest that Darwinism—in which I include its DNA-inspired mutation, neo-Darwinism—has contributed to this will to ugliness not merely by underwriting a vision of the world as a godless accident, but also in the very way it critiques and thereby dismisses the idea of an Author and Designer of life.

What I call the a-teleological macroevolutionists—those who argue that the cosmos is the product of chance and has no intrinsic end or purpose—argue that life emerged by natural selection without design from single-celled organisms, and they claim to use strictly scientific methods to support their position. In truth, however, they often slip into what is essentially an aesthetic and theological argument against a designer.1 Others have noted this, but what has not been fully explored is the dubious nature of the evolutionists’ aesthetic argument.

Consider one especially prominent example, evolutionist Richard Dawkins’s critique of the mammalian eye in his The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design:

Each photocell is, in effect, wired in backwards, with its wire sticking out on the side nearest the light. . . . This means that the light, instead of being granted an unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to pass through a forest of connecting wires, presumably suffering at least some attenuation and distortion (actually probably not much but, still, it is the principle of the thing that would offend any tidy-minded engineer!)2

Never mind for the moment that it has been clearly demonstrated that the backward wiring of the mammalian eye actually confers a distinct advantage by dramatically increasing the flow of oxygen to the eye.3 Let us ignore that brilliant bit of engineering and look at Dawkins’s intriguing obsession with neatness. O brave new world whose supreme designer distinguishes himself first and foremost by his tidy-mindedness! Aldous Huxley has ably dramatized the horror of a society so engineered.

Do we really wish to substitute the exuberantly imaginative, even whimsical designer of our actual universe for a cosmic neat freak? Such a deity might serve nicely as the national God of the Nazis, matching Hitler stroke for stroke: Hitler in his disdain for humanity’s sprawling diversity; the tidy cosmic engineer in his distaste for an ecosystem choked and sullied by a grotesque menagerie of strange and apparently substandard species. Out with that great big prodigal Gothic cathedral we call the world; in with a modern and minimalist blueprint for a new and neater cosmos.

Bye, Panda

One of the first things that would have to go is the panda—if not the whole bear, then certainly his two thumbs. In Stephen Jay Gould’s book The Panda’s Thumb, the late Harvard paleontologist has this criticism for his title character:

An engineer’s best solution is debarred by history. The panda’s true thumb is committed to another role, too specialized for a different function to become an opposable, manipulating digit. So the panda must use parts on hand and settle for an enlarged wrist bone and a somewhat clumsy, but quite workable, solution. The sesamoid thumb wins no prize in an engineer’s derby. It is, to use Michael Ghiselin’s phrase, a contraption, not a lovely contrivance.

Now one might take the usual defend-the-engineer tack here, and any design advocate trained in such matters certainly should scrutinize Gould’s assumptions as to the inferiority of the panda’s thumb. Gould even provides a small opening when he concedes that the sesamoid thumb is “quite workable” and “does its job.” Indeed, when he finally witnessed a panda firsthand, he “was amazed by their dexterity and wondered how the scion of a stock adapted for running could use its hands so adroitly.”

By Gould’s account, the panda’s thumb makes a fine peeler for bamboo, the panda’s principal food, and investigation may demonstrate that it is actually superior to an opposable thumb for such work.4

However, do not hold your breath waiting for pandas to take up fly-fishing or needlepoint. For versatility, the opposable thumb is the clear blue ribbon winner. Which raises the obvious question: If an intelligent designer designed the world, did he not think of the opposable thumb until after he designed the panda? And was he too tired to go back and upgrade that poor panda?

To such a question the Darwinian community collectively responds thus: “Obviously not. If there’s a designer out there running the show, he’s a real bumbler, a second-rate engineer who could not get a job in a third-rate Swiss watch factory. Since the idea of a second-rate designer is patently ridiculous, there is no designer.”

This argument is rife with problems already underscored by design thinkers like William Dembski in his book The Design Revolution. The most basic failing of this line of reasoning is that even if the panda’s thumb is proven to be less useful than it could be, that doesn’t negate the evidence that the whole panda has the mark of design. It’s a creature dependent upon an architecturally marvelous cathedral of complex, specified information, the sort we know from experience is fashioned only by intelligent agents.
Indeed, the panda would remain so even if it had no thumbs at all. The Yugo, I’m told, was a badly designed automobile, but no sane person would argue that with all its problems, it wasn’t designed. The same logic applies to a panda or a duck-billed platypus or an ostrich.

But the point here is that these anti-design arguments by Dawkins, Gould, and other Darwinists are not scientific ones. They are aesthetic arguments, expressing an idea of what the universe should look like--that is, that it should satisfy the tidy-minded engineer. But who is to say that the Darwinists’ taste is that of the cosmic designer, if there is one? Who is to say that the designer should value tidiness over, say, whimsy?

Bad Art

Recently, something else struck me about this effort to call attention to the apparently jury-rigged quality of certain elements of the cosmic “watch” and then declare that such things could not have been designed: Critics of intelligent design tuck some idiosyncratic and highly dubious aesthetic presuppositions into the metaphor of the cosmos as watch. These include an overemphasis on tidiness, a de-emphasis on beauty, and a dismissal of any possibility that the creator might wish to commune with his creation. Surely a perfect watchmaker would wind up his perfect (tidy, efficient, functional) watch and step away, freed by the perfection of his instrument from the need to tinker any further with it.

We can see how Enlightenment thinkers arrived at this metaphor of the watch, confronted as they were with fresh insights into the orderly, mathematically precise nature of the cosmos. And contemporary astrophysicists, even those who resist the idea of a cosmic design, now tell us that the laws and constants of the cosmos are, in fact, finely tuned to an almost unimaginable degree, such that even very small changes in a few of them would render complex life utterly impossible. So at least in one sense, the universe is watch-like.

But all metaphors break down if pressed far enough, and this one breaks down pretty quickly. Where a single metaphor crowds out all others in a matter as complex as our living world, it produces an intellectually impoverished and very misleading stick-figure rendering of the subject. Thus, the thinking person is wise to ask, to what extent is the universe watch-like? To what extent should it be watch-like?

To cling to the watch analogy in a critique of the notion of a wise cosmic designer fails to face an obvious (and theological) question: Is this an adequate way to speak of the hypothetical designer? Is his satisfying the aesthetic demands of the Darwinists a sufficient test of his existence? To put it another way, if there is a cosmic designer, what does he need a watch for? He doesn’t. One would be hard-pressed to name a major religion that posits a transcendent god who uses the universe primarily as a tool.

Not even the god articulated by the orderly minds of Plato and Aristotle fits the bill. Whether we think of the morally compromised gods of Mount Olympus meddling in the affairs of their various mortal offspring; or of Plato’s “the One” (what he also called “the Good” or “Father of that Captain and Cause”); or the holy God of the Bible, father and shepherd and husband of his people, the deity is not construed as one interested in the world primarily as a tool for himself. Indeed, whenever he is construed as a personality, and not merely as some sort of non-sentient organizing First Principle, he is depicted as one interested in the world itself, as a creator who delights in the work of his hands.

The Lover’s Watch

Dare we use the word “love” in this context? Dare one suggest that the designer loves his creation in a way the watchmaker does not love the watch he makes, that the Creator would no more think of his creation as a tool than would a bridegroom his bride or a father his children? The fact that such terms as love and bridegroom strike many as inappropriate to the evolution/design debate merely testifies to how thoroughly the utilitarian assumption behind the metaphor of the watch has permeated Western thinking.

Certainly, we could try to discuss the matter without considering the designer’s attitude toward his creation (that is, whether he is a watchmaker or a bridegroom or father). But the evolutionists have already smuggled this issue into the debate by assuming that, if there were a designer, he would be some sort of disinterested and hyper-tidy watchmaker. Having smuggled in this highly questionable point, they then regard as beneath consideration any idea of a designer who (as they put it) “meddles in his creation.”

Or they dismiss the notion that an omnipotent and omniscient designer might fashion a creature short of an optimal design. Here they not only make a theological claim but ignore a key question at once practical and aesthetic: How do concerns about ecological balance impinge upon a critique of animal structures?

Must the cosmic designer’s primary concern for pandas be that they are the most dexterous bears divinely imaginable? From a purely practical standpoint, might opposable-thumbed über-pandas wreak havoc on their ecosystem? From a purely aesthetic standpoint, might not those charming pandas up in their bamboo trees with their unopposing but quite workable thumbs be just the sort of humorous supporting character this great cosmic drama needs to lighten things up a bit? If Shakespeare could do it in his tragedies, why not God?

Pandas as comic relief? To spurn the notion as if it were patently ridiculous and beneath consideration is merely to expose one’s utilitarian presuppositions. Why, after all, should the designer’s world read like a dreary high-school science textbook, its style humorless, homogenous, and suffocating under the dead weight of a supposedly detached passive voice? Why should not the designer’s world entertain, amuse, and fascinate, as well as “work”?

In summary, virtually the entire bad-design versus good-design discussion is framed by an engineer’s perspective, not an artist’s or mystic’s. When I mentioned this to the philosopher Jay W. Richards a few years ago, he responded in a letter: “After all, why do we assume that God created the universe to be a watch, in which a self-winding mechanism makes it ‘better’? Maybe the universe is like a piano, or a novel with the author as a character, or a garden for other beings with whom God wants to interact. It’s amazing how a simple image can highjack a discussion for a century and a half.”

What is worse, Darwinists like Gould and Dawkins commit the error called atomism: the idea that, in Gould’s own words, “wholes should be understood by decomposition into ‘basic’ units.” In other words, they assume not only that nature is a kind of watch but that each individual design is its own watch--its own machine--meant to be judged in relative isolation. They evaluate the panda’s thumb by how well it works as a thumb, not by how well it fits into the whole life of the panda, including its place in its own environment.
This is, at the most practical level, to misunderstand pandas. At the aesthetic level, it is to declare that an artist who might have created pandas could not have been thinking (as artists do) of the whole work.

Unaesthetic Shakespeare

Interestingly, the god of the English canon, William Shakespeare, came in for much the same criticism by the tidier-minded among his neoclassical critics as the God of the cosmos has come in for from the tidier-minded scientists. This actor turned playwright lacked classical restraint, the argument went.

In 1726 Lewis Theobald perhaps initiated the century’s long criticism of Hamlet’s coarse speech when he commented on a particularly bawdy line spoken by Hamlet to Ophelia: “If ever the Poet deserved Whipping for low and indecent Ribaldry, it was for this Passage.”5

Another regarded Shakespeare’s general habit of mingling the low with the high, the comic with the tragic as a “wholly monstrous, unnatural mixture.”6 With only a little more restraint, a third lamented the bard’s tragedies: “How inattentive to propriety and order, how deficient in grouping, how fond of exposing disgusting as well as beautiful figures!”, how often he compels the audience “to grovel in dirt and ordure.”7

Happily, most neoclassical Shakespearean critics were enthusiastic, and yet, as one modern critic noted, even the admiration of the more sympathetic critics was always “modified and tempered . . . by regrets that Shakespeare had elected, either through ignorance or by design, to embrace a method that discarded all classical rules.”8

What do we make of such criticism today? To use Freud’s language, itself rude and vulgar, such criticism strikes us as anal-retentive. What emotionally whole and thoroughly sane admirer of Renaissance drama would want to substitute for the works of the “myriad minded” Shakespeare, the relatively impoverished fare left over after unsympathetic neoclassical critics tidied him up?

Perhaps the relevance of the analogy is becoming clear. The criticism of Shakespeare is akin to the evolutionists’ criticisms of the cosmic designer. In each case the critic believes the respective artist in question should build all of his characters according to some rigid set of criteria that ignores broader concerns, be they ecological, aesthetic, or otherwise. Proponents of this line of argument value tidiness over other and often more vital aesthetic criteria like intricacy, harmony, variety, imaginative exuberance, freedom, even moral complexity.

A Queer Assumption

The Darwinists’ aesthetic criticism moves from the unconvincing to the positively odd in a further and even queerer assumption: the conviction that no all-knowing and all-powerful designer would restrict himself to the materials at hand, even when such designs are clearly superb. Darwinists are quite fond of this argument, apparently considering it irresistibly persuasive to all but the most irrational mind.

I saw an especially brazen instance of this strange aesthetic dogma at a debate at Texas Tech University between Darwinist James Carr and intelligent design microbiologist Michael Behe. Arguing against Behe, Carr used the similarities in the genetic code of chimps and humans as a bad-design argument. What all-powerful creator would need to recycle his materials like this, he argued. It was almost as if he considered it unmanly of the Fellow Upstairs.

Gould leveled essentially the same criticism against a would-be cosmic designer in his description of Charles Darwin’s study of orchids:
Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components.9
Or as one writer Gould quoted put it, nature is a superb tinkerer, not a divine artificer.10

The argument that no cosmic designer would so often recycle his creative material is a common tactic, one Darwin himself employed. In a letter to Asa Gray around 1861 Darwin wrote, “Your question what would convince me of Design is a poser. . . . If man was made of brass or iron and no way connected with any other organism which had ever lived, I should perhaps be convinced.”11

Certainly humans made of iron or brass would create enormous difficulties for a Darwinian explanation of humankind’s existence. But the tenor of this comment fits Darwin’s attitude to the similarities among the species. His unstated assumption seems to be that the similarities are not merely one missed opportunity for the natural world to reveal its design and thus falsify his theory, but a positive argument against a cosmic designer.

Darwin’s Design

Most of us would respond, “But why?” The only logical way to use the similarities as an argument against a designer is to take as an aesthetic premise the assumption that no omniscient and omnipotent designer would design in such a way. In other words, one would have to assume that using the ho-hum materials at hand instead of consistently elevating higher works of art with newer and “better” materials violates some pre-established and widely accepted aesthetic principle. “Why,” Darwin asked in The Origin of Species, “should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern?”12

Ironically, Darwin unwittingly suggested a very un-Darwinian answer in a letter to his sister. Expressing his admiration for the Duke of Northumberland’s home, Darwin wrote, “His house was very grand; much more so than the other great nobility, and in much better taste.” The young biologist did not attribute the house’s nobility and beauty to a prodigal use of variously distinct materials or motifs--quite the contrary. “Every window in his house was full of straight lines of brilliant lights, and from their extreme regularity and number had a beautiful effect. The paucity of invention [emphasis mine] was very striking, crowns, anchors, and ‘W.R.’s’ were repeated in endless succession.”13

So why should Darwin be surprised that an intelligent designer of the world would proceed in the same way? Conventional wisdom in the field of aesthetics all but demands such an artistic method. Pattern and variation are interdependent concepts fundamental to art. Where would Schubert’s “Theme and Variations” be without the theme? The point is so basic one feels silly making it.

Should the later movements of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony be censured for continuing to build off an original motif? Do we exclaim with the woman at the first performance of Bolero that Ravel must be mad for building on his central motif? Do we not instead admire the way he built so exquisitely and powerfully on the central motif till the climactic grandeur of the finale? Ought we to demote Monet from the first rank of the impressionists because he had the bad taste to paint poplars and haystacks over and over again? Do we not instead marvel at the fecundity of his imagination, at the subtly of his observation and insight?

No one, not even his harshest eighteenth-century critics, accuses Shakespeare of bad art on the grounds that Much Ado About Nothing and Othello share virtually the same plot, creatively altered to produce radically different plays. Few if any object to Shakespeare’s repetition of motherless girls as heroines, or to his girls-disguised-as-boys theme, or to his repetitive use of the sonnet form for his poetry.

Unimaginable Genius

Where the atomist or reductionist regards elements in isolation (and properly so within certain intellectual disciplines), the artist seeks variety within unity, rhythm, and harmony, qualities fundamental to the creation of beauty. Notice I am not claiming a seat of honor for some culturally narrow artistic practice—say, the English sonnet—but rather appealing to principles broad and fundamental in the history of the world’s art.

If there is an intelligent designer behind this astonishingly complex work of art we call the world, it’s quite sensible to suppose he would be at least as artistically savvy as the artistically gifted among his creatures, that he would cultivate harmony and unity through the creative reuse of common materials. Now, the Darwinist might complain, “What is all this artistic, aesthetic balderdash? We are scientists, not poets or starry-eyed mystics. Leave the artists to their pattern-making and let us get back to our hard-nosed, empirical science.” Fine, but if they wish to avoid an argument about aesthetic principles, they should not assume within their arguments aesthetic principles that are at best highly debatable, and at worst contrary to the canons of art.

In the meantime, those who reject such dubious reasoning, who understand that the world is the handiwork of unimaginable genius, could do worse than to follow the aesthetic lead of those humble and beautiful hobbits who returned to their desecrated Shire carrying elven soil: We can take a soil richer than the dead ground of materialism and sprinkle it wherever we can, honoring the miracle of creation’s growth even as we tend to our proper role as stewards and gardeners of a world between Heaven and Hell, a place we might aptly call Middle Earth.

Notes:

1. See, for instance, Paul Nelson’s “The Role of Theology in Current Evolutionary Reasoning,” Biology and Philosophy 11 (1996), pp. 493–517; William Dembski’s Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press, 1999) and The Design Revolution (InterVarsity Press, 2004); and Cornelius G. Hunter’s Darwin’s God (Brazos Press, 2001).
2. W. W. Norton, 1996, p. 93.
3. Excerpts from “The Inverted Retina: Maladaptation or Pre-adaptation?” Origins and Design 19.2 (2000): 14 June 2000 http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od192/invertedretina192.htm.
4. W. W. Norton, 1980, pp. 21, 22, 24.
5. Quoted in Paul S. Conklin, A History of Hamlet Criticism: 1601–1821 (Humanities Press, 1968), p. 53.
6. Charles Gildon, quoted in Herbert Spencer Robinson, English Shakespearian Criticism in the Eighteenth Century (Gordian Press, 1968), pp. 26–27.
7. Edward Taylor, “From Cursory Remarks . . .”, in Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, 1774–1801, edited by Brian Vickers (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 130–132. This Taylor is not to be confused with the wonderful American poet Edward Taylor, the last of the metaphysical poets, who spent a great deal of time in the “dirt and ordure” exploring the mysteries of the divine and the human.
8. Robinson, English Shakespearian Criticism, p. xii.
9. The Panda’s Thumb, p. 20.
10. François Jacob, quoted ibid., p. 26.
11. “To Asa Gray,” 17 September 1861(?), volume 2 of Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by Francis Darwin, ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext00/2llcd10.txt.
12. Sixth London Edition (1872), ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext99/otoos610.txt.
13. 9 September 1831, volume 1 of Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext00/1llcd10.txt.

sr,
thanks for ur clarification. u had me fooled there with the chimp to human, human to chimp thing. so ur idea behind it worked. its easily `theorizable` (if thats a word) either way. you also point out very well that in science a theory can easily be changed based on evidence and earlier facts change to fiction.

considering evolution of humans from chimps is yet `unproven` i tend to believe its going to be one of those things that a few hundred years down the line (if humans still exist and have also been consistently developing in terms of scientific knowledge and experiment) we will see the non-truths and falacies in this theory. till then itll remain a battle between those who believe and those who believe otherwise.

SR:

I appreciate your additional comments.

In my article, I had stated, ``The modern theory of evolution is substantially different from the one propounded by Darwin because he did not have the benefit of the research results in genetics and DNA, which were not developed at that time. But the mechanism of natural selection that Darwin suggested remains central to all the modern theories.``

At another place, I wrote, ``The bag of arguments offered on both sides is a blend of scientific facts, philosophical arguments and the extrapolated inferences.`` The article is about natural selection rather than neo-Darwinism.

My personal stance is that the mechanism of natural selection is suitable as long as it is not conflicted with the empirical data. When it did, it would be replaced with a better mechanism, which would more likely be a refinement or extension of natural selection. Science is not dogmatic like religion. When a particular theory reaches its limit of applicability, it is replaced with a more general theory. But the process is not arbitrary; it is always guided by the empirical data. There is nothing as holy as ``the word of God`` in science.

Please rest assured, I understand your point of view. With regards,

Mohammad Gill

Gill sahib

First off, let me apologise for leaving the unintended and erroneous impression that I am in the camp of the creationists. My fundamental concept is that life on Earth is a phenomenon that is dynamic and evolving. Being a committed student of the life sciences I have done some reading and reflection on these matters and have come to develop some serious reservations about the purely Darwinian model that has been dogmatically enshrined in the contemporary popular scientific culture. I view neo-Darwinism as a semi-useful “working model” that explains some, but not most, biological phenomena. At our present state of knowledge (or, more correctly, ignorance) the exact origins of life, and even the exact mechanisms of its evolutions, clearly remain elusive.

The tragedy is that many of today’s neo-Darwinists have adopted the same basic mentality which the proponents of creationism possess.

What little we do know can be likened to a hazy silhouette of the elusive cosmic mystery that is life. We can merely discern a shifting shadow through the mist of our ignorance. Yet the arrogance of man is such that either he deludes himself into believing that the Divine Creator has whispered the true answer in his ear or that his observational faculties have enabled him to deduce the true essence of the cosmic mosaic. The thrust of my previous message was to underscore this and not to support the creationist’s tall claims.

The essence of science, as Carl Sagan used to say, is that it is self-correcting. The trouble lies with the arrogance of the scientists. Having vested their careers in the pursuit of one theory or another, it takes only the exceptionally courageous ones to admit that their models are flawed, as indeed is the case with the purely Darwinist model.

The example of the location of the foramen magnum in the primate skull that I referred to in my earlier message (please pardon my typo where I called it the foramen ovale, which is in the foetal heart, not in the skull), was for the purpose of throwing a rotten egg in the face of pure Darwinism. It was a tongue-in-cheek remark (chimps arise from humans) that was meant to show simply that given the inadequacy of our existing models of random mutation, natural selection etc., it can be easily argued that this reverse evolutionary development could have occurred.

…SR

Re: # 37 Cannot recall, will try to find out though.

rgds

Re: # 36
might be it, what became of them...do u know?

Re: # 35 Perhps you are referring to QAUM-I-LUUT (the tribe of prophet Luut AH), from which the term `Lawaatat` originated, which would translate into English as `sodomy`.

#31 Thank you very much Dr. Gill for the hearty wishes. I am trying my best to add a flame to the extinguishing torch.

Re: # 34
Ill try and find out. from what i remember it was a tribe of people who were into homosexuality. i forget the name but i will let you know when i find out. i was hoping some other chowky might know.

Mr. paindupastry:

No, I don`t know the tribe you`re mentioning. there are several stories in Quran. If you be a little more specfic, I might try to find it.

Mohammad Gill

Re: # 30

thanks for the insight into mutation and evolution. that did clear up a couple of things in my mind. when i finish my 23 books in my to-read list, ill get around to readin sdomething on evolution as well. till then i have these articles on chowk to survive on.

any knowledge of the tribe i mentioned earlier. and what about SR`s point of the mutation being the other way (huans to chimps instead of chimps to humans)

showbig_sifar:

My last post was intended for you; I wrongly addressed to Mr. paindupastry. My best wishes are for him too whatever intellectual work he is doing. Sorry for this mess.

Mohammad Gill

Mr. paindupastry:

I was really glad to read that you are a research student in particle physics. Professor Salam has lit a torch in this field, please keep it burning. You young guys should encourage and motivate other youngsters to take up research fields; we`re so backward in science and we need to do a lot of catching up. I know research is difficult; none of my kids is so far motivated to doing research.

Wishing you best of luck,

Mohammad Gill

Mr. paindupastry:

Transformation of a species begins with a random mutation. The mutation is only slightly different from its parent species but has the seeds of becoming a different species in it, over a long period of time (millions of years), if the circumstances are favorable. The rest of the parent species remains unaffected of whatever might happen to its mutation.

Then the process of natural selection (survival of the fittest) kicks in. It helps growing the mutant into a new species. If the circumstances are not favorable, the mutation might die.

Since speciation takes a long time, that is the reason that it becomes difficult for us to believe in it because we are used to see tangible changes in our life time.

Wishing you well,

Mohammad Gill

Re: # 28
a post based more on religious hatred rather than logical thought is just as silly as what you are trying to (seemingly) dissapprove of

Shobig,

As Gill pointed out, you should read Theory of Evolution, from a human`s point of view, without any religious bias.

We are surrounded by evolution in every aspect of our lives....from agricultural progress, and animal husbandry....to....

All the comforts that you enjoy including the interaction on CHOWK, are gifts of science. If these scientists and inventors had let religious cloud their judgements and thinking, you wouldn`t be enjoying all these benefits. How many inventions the mullahs created?

Re: # 24 Thank you Dr. Gill for a detailed response. May be my method of putting forth the queries wasn`t an appropriate one. By no means were my intentions to raise a finger at your personal judgment of things or your individual perspective, since from your previous articles and this one, I have come to know that your idea of an article is just that of a precise study of the subject without any biase. Therefore, I do agree with you when u say
``Passing judgment on scientific theories quoting evidence from the revealed scriptures is retrogressive. `` But in response to your comment
``The scientists can keep their faith and continue working on science as I had mentioned in the article. Such scientists who are working on evolution are called theistic evolutionists. ``
I`d like to add that I myself am a research student in one of the pure sciences, particle physics, which to some, would appear to be based on ideas really challenging to even the concept of FAITH. I, on the contrary, posess perhaps equal faith in the human ability to question and explore, as i do in my particular theocracy.
Having said that, my queries in the earlier posts were, in no sense dogmatic ones, but just straight forward ones, and the kind i`d indifferently like to pose to a person of the respective profession.
May be a further probing of the word DAY as we use it today, and as it might have been used in the divine revelitions, can end up in drawing a connection between our own decipheral of the term, and hence the underlying theories.
rgds

I enjoyed reading the article and really enjoyed the views of SR and some others. SR, i do hope you let us know more of your views when you can.

The idea that perhaps chimps were formed from humans...as mentioned by SR with his example of the child chimps brain being closer to the humans brain as compared to the older chimps brain really facinates me. It gives more evidence (and hope) for my religious beliefs...wasnt there a particular group of people mentioned in the quran who had bad habits and were severely reprimanded by being turned into monkeys..(monkeys is the translated term it could well be chimps or wahtever in the actual thing).

i do believe thwe transformation takes place but if this is a natural process and us much smarter humans were formed thru a transformation process from chimps....why do we still see chimps, why are they not still transforming into humans. are we not a better life form. whats stopping them from evolving into a more sophisticated smarter species...maybe they`ve observed how evil and degenerate we humans have become...all the wars n shyt that we have......and based on that they`d rather just roam the jungles than become pathetic humans. :)

Re: # 24

...... excellent post, gill sahib ............ but reason doesn`t have a chance when it comes to matters of faith .............. even if you could produce an arabic-speaking monkey whose first name was cain and last name adam, the faithful would still accuse you of trickery ..........

Mr. shbig_sifar:

I have all the respect for your sentiments. My own roots are in a conservative Muslim family so I am not writing from any spite.

Science is a strange kind of discipline. Before the advent of the twentieth century, atomic concept of matter was harshly criticized by the philosophers (of the vintage of logical positivism) and others. Ludwig Boltzmann whose work was founded on atoms got so disheartened by the harsh criticism that many believe that his resultant frustration was one of the causes of his suicide. But he was right. Atomic concept of matter was vindicated by the tragic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not only that, matter and energy became one and the same at the atomic level. These facts were hard to believe before science showed that they indeed are right.

There are no preformed and inflexible ideas in science.

In Darwin’s theory of evolution, common descent is the fundamental concept. This seems to be abominable to them who believe in divine stories of creation. People in the west have been working on evolution for the last 200/300 years; yes, evolution is older than Darwin. This quest has led to the development of new sciences, such as microbiology, molecular biology, genetics, etc. If they had believed a priori that theory of evolution was wrong because it conflicts with the divine accounts, such fields of knowledge and inquiry wouldn’t have been developed.

Passing judgment on scientific theories quoting evidence from the revealed scriptures is retrogressive. The scientists can keep their faith and continue working on science as I had mentioned in the article. Such scientists who are working on evolution are called theistic evolutionists.

Those who do not have appreciation for science but pass judgment on it nonetheless are retrogressive.

You`ve raised some other questions in your # 23. I ask you to read material on evolution, pro and con, and try to find the answers yourself. If time allowed and I got sufficiently motivated, I might try to answer them in another article. However, self-study is the best form of education.

Wishing you well,

Mohammad Gill

Further, my question to an evolutionist, I am not sure whether it is the right borad for that, would be, `If evolution is inevitable, how much has the HUMAN form evolved since its origin at the microscale, and on the macroscale..WHAT is it likely to evolve into, or what is HUMAN a predecessor of?`

And with regards the idea
``Previously, the creation story included in the Bible was the immutable word of God for the religionists. Now it is hardly mentioned. It is now generally accepted by majority of the people that the world was not created in six days.``

I have to say that a DAY as we now difine it is the time taken by the earth to complete one rotation of the sun. I don`t think an analogy can be drawn between our modern DAY asnd the Biblical /Quranic day. Or, in other words, how could we be sure that the DAY mentioned in the divinie revelitions bears the same length as our present day, when certainly our definition of a day is by no means extensible to a galactic or cosmological level.

rgds

Re: # 21 Gill Sahib, with due respect, i would highly diagree with you on this issue of `asking Questions`! Lets take the example of Quran, the only Divine revelation to have survived in its original form...can you estimate how many times have the belivers been `asked` and `advised` to ponder and to question?..and how many times have they been forced to examine the `signs` that `are there` for the inquisitve and the curious??

Nevertheless...a very good read and an informative piece of writing, both in content and in comparison.

rgds

Interactors:

If one were to follow the divine revelations, there wouldn`t be any science. The spirit of scientific inquiry wouldn`t exist. Science begins by asking questions and trying to find verifiable answers to them; revelation discourages people to ask questions. And if these questions are asked, revelation provides answers which are not required to be questioned.

Theory of natural selection is a scientific theory and has withstood the test of times (more than one hundred years). If it doesn`t provide answers to all the questions now, it`s okay. Because in due time those answers will be discovered or the theory will be replaced with a new and better theory, which would furnish the required answers. Remember, there is no finality to scientific quest.

We can enter the scientific adventure and become part of it, or stand aloof on the sidelines and pooh pooh them who are doing science. The choice is entirely our own. Wishing all of you well,

Mohammad Gill

Creationism vs. evolution … the holy grail. Some rambling thoughts here …

I am of the opinion that Quran supports evolution … that is, development of species from less complex to more complex beings. Humans, apparently, at least in their immediate surroundings, are on top of the pyramid. The very first attribute of God, that of Rabb, has connotations of one who develops in stages.

Adam …

Throughout history of mankind, human race has gone through different phases of development. Civilizations have risen … and disappeared. Quran suggests that Adam was Allah’s khaliffa on earth. Khaliffa includes connotations of “successor” (as well as “leader”)… implying that humans existed before Adam as well, and Adam and his men became leaders of the phase of human development that followed. This does not necessarily mean that all other people/nations perished. During Adam’s era, there probably coexisted other people and tribes … some probably perished, and some became integrated within the larger community of Adam. I think according to biblical data, Adam lived about 6000 years ago.

A hadith sheds more light on this subject … where Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) reportedly stated that Allah has raised more than one hundred thousand Adams. Apparently, Adam connotes the first link in any cycle or phase of development.

… and Eve

There’s more to it than Adam unable to find a date. Much confusion has been caused by a hadith … according to which, Eve was created from Adam’s rib. This seems to be incorrect. The hadith refers to women, and not Eve. Obviously, not all women have been created from Adam’s rib. Apparently, this is a metaphor … suggesting a parallel between women, and rib, the highest part of which is crooked. Meaning, coquetry is the highest attribute of womanliness … which cannot be separated from a woman. Men, deal with it.

+++++++++++++++

Urstruly (#10),

The choice seems to be … to either accept that we are descendants of apes … or that we are product of incest between the children of Adam and Eve. And then there’re the mullah … product of incestuous apes from fairly recent history. No further comments on your ullema ... or this post may get filtered out …

Re: # 7

Thanks to you and Gill for the the valuable information contained here. BUt as usual this article will not generate the ferocity of interatcs other appear to do on Chowk. Nonetheless, the saying too many cooks....is apt here..

from my understanding - natural selection is another subtle variant of mutation. Natures tries out diferent strategies - mutations to see which works and pick a strategywhich works. All those which dont work aredroppped or dead or mutate further. Hence the idea that all of mammals evolved from a vole (sp???) like creature after the destruction ofthe dinosaurs. The vareity of environments that these voles existed in requiredthem to specilise and mutate accodingly. Thus the genetic difference between the cow and the human is small (a few changes in the words and we could be having horns and hooves).

Where the variation is big is when we move from Mammals to other forms. At the end of the day allforms of life on earth are HC based with the same set of protiens connected up differently.

There was an experiement sometime back which generated the basic aminoacids.
I guess we have all seen those charged glass lamps - . They filled this glob with what is considered to be the primordial soup and let the charge generate lighteing inside the glob. Sort of early eath atmosphere was generated there. When the matter inside the glob was analysed it was found that amino-acids were found there. (think it was a guycalled jerath in the US who did this).


SR has however, pointed out some of the questions. However, could it be argued that Humans have evolved to the limit of their abilities with the current form of genetic structure and that a mutation is required for further growth. Hence the chimp example. Where it is not retardation but really simply a matter of some form a mutation in order to be able to cope with changes in environment. (I am no expert herebut very very lay and have no clue as to what I am saying!)

Re: # 6

read the rig/yajur for this (the upanishads have something more detailed). The concept is one of a primordial soup in some sense from where we have all evolved. Dont startassumng that they are talking of evolution in the sense we know today.

for example try reading the Works of Vivekananda - they are more accesible - here is osmething might inerest you

From the lowest protoplasm to the most perfect human being there is really but one life. Just as in one life we have so many various phases of expression, the protoplasm developing into the baby, the child, the young man, the old man, so, from that protoplasm up to the most perfect man we get one continuous life, one chain. This is evolution, but we have seen that each evolution presupposes an involution. The whole of this life which slowly manifests itself evolves itself from the protoplasm to the perfected human being

---

the Incarnation of God on earth the whole of this series is but one life, and the whole of this manifestation must have been involved in that very protoplasm. This whole life, this very God on earth, was involved in it and slowly came out, manifesting itself slowly, slowly, slowly. (Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. II, p. 228)




purnamadah purnamidam purnaat purnamudachyate
purnasya purnaamadaya purnameva vashishyate.

What do think about Harunyahaya work to refute evolution theory?


http://www.harunyahya.com/c_refutation_darwinism.php

Reply to #13, tahmed32

tahmed32. Sorry bud, you missed it big time! The joke was not on Gill Saab but on typical Chowkie readers (Let`s pick an example. How about: ``Greetings. I have ten fingers, two eyes, and a small brain. This is all I need to be on chowk.`` (not my words, I swear!)) Gill Saab is well aware of what I think of his works on this site (expressed through previous interacts). (Nevertheless, Gill Saab, if I said anything inappropriate, I am sorry and very willing to do penance!)

PS: I have been working very hard to erase this ``funny`` streak, but it keeps coming back! I think I should just give up! (I am beginning to miss being (intentionally) funny!)

Mohammed Gill,

A very appropriate article for people living in the states perhaps more than others. I think though, that creationism is of some importance for mostly christians and to some extent other Abrahamic faithfuls. For others to accept it or reject it, could be based on more honest personal insights. Not that I`m suggesting you are not honest. I think you consciously choose to be so.

Here in the US, its become a common tendency to ask the opinions of school kids on evolution and splash it across the media during any serious debate. I think no one should be allowed to form an opinion on this, until an accepted copy of the origin of species for laymen is read by such individuals. I believe that could be the first step in having a meaningful discussion on this.

Personally, I`m inclined to accept evoultion as a better explanation than any other. More on this later.

Adios

To rile our grandmother up, we used to say ``...Aseen aj school ch pur kay aaye, kay saaday daaday purdaaday day agaan purkh Bandar Si....`` She would respond, ``Eho jehiaan kitaaban nu ag laa daini chaee di ey....``

(We learned in school that our forefathers were monkeys, she would rspnd - to hell with such books, they should be reduced to ashes)


On a serious note the theory of Natural Selection is applied daily. The phenomena of natural and selection and survival of fittest manifests daily before our eyes. To what extent is this theory taken as a fact is debatable.

BeeJay: you were doing fine till the end when you starting joking about the writer being smart and so forth. Gill does an admirable service by writing on matters related to science, and thus adding an important dimension to chowk discussions. He deserves better than being joked at.

15 answers to creationists` non-sense, from scientific american:
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588
EEDF

This is essentially a futile debate. The quest for knowledge and the quest for spiritual salvation take place along different dimensions. People who are scientists, by definition, must always be able to question with an open mind. People of faith, must accept certain postulates without questions, because “it is written”. In a debate between the two, each side will score point after point in its own dimension, paying scant attention that it is still making a zero gain from the opponent’s viewpoint.

The spirit of objective scientific enquiry is the farthest thing from the minds of the proponents of “natural design” (which in my view is the new, improved reincarnation of the “science of creation”) and other such theories. These proponents don’t really care if the theory is scientifically sound, they want to ensure that the faith itself never gets questioned, directly or indirectly. This is not a new phenomenon. For example, the fact that evolution had widespread support among scientists did not stop the state of Tennessee from prosecuting and convicting John Stokes in 1925 (the monkey trial). Ever further back, it did not prevent the Roman Catholic church from prosecuting Galileo (1632) for proposing that the sun was not stationary.

The bottom-line is: when established religion perceives a threat to itself (no matter how remote and indirect) from any publications, lectures, teachings, or even random expressions of free speech (e.g., Taslima Nasrin, Rushdie, etc.) it treats it as an assault on its basic reason for existence and pulls no punches in fighting back. Intellectuals may consider such a knee-jerk reaction foolish, but unfortunately, smart people are vastly outnumbered by the other kind.

(Disclaimer: Before I cause serious and long-lasting injury to feelings of any chowkies because of the statement I just concluded above, I hasten to add that there are at least two very smart people on this site: one is the writer of these lines, and the other of course, is you… the reader of those lines. Happy now?!)

Why can`t this bickering be settled using democratic principle: all those who think that their momies and dadies are monkeys, please raise hands.

While using the term ``Intelligent Design vs Evolution``, the article misses I think a the significance of the term ``intelligent design`` itself. When the original Scopes trial took place in the 1920`s, and until perhaps a few years ago, the debate was in terms of ``Creationism vs Evolution``. The mountain of evidence that has been accumulated (which includes, among other things, the actual observation of mutations of the HIV virus e.g. over the past couple of decades) makes this ``theory`` as irrefutable today as the ``theory`` of the earth being round.

This switch has in effect changed the nature of the debate from ``If`` evolution took place, to ``How`` it took place. In other words, the original ``Creationism vs Evolution`` concept has been given up even by the religious right in favor of a more defensible strategy. And it is indeed true that the ``how`` is not completely understood, although some speculation has been made (e.g. that it is the genes themselves that are the true generals in the ``survival of the fittest``, and bodies are mere mechanisms through which they conduct this struggle).

Trouble with this switch is: it continues to confuse people into thinking that there is still a question of the ``If`` (as reflected in this article as well), when in fact the creationist approach has effectively been discarded by the creationists themselves!!

Thanks, Gill sahib, for continuing to write in this fascinating area of science. The quality of the posts below is also high.

SR:

Thanks for your post.

One important point that I tried to make in the essay was that although theory of natural selection has been quite successful in explaining the evolutionary processes, it has not yet produced a compelling evidence in support of macroevolution which would silence the harsh criticism to which it is subjected. The theory of natural selection is still unfolding. One point in its favor is that many of its critics who are biologists have accepted that it is a constructive theory. I had quoted one example in the essay; there are many others. Many of the theistic evolutionists are scientists.

If I understand correctly, the evolution is a two step process, namely, mutation and natural selection. Mutation is caused by genes (genotype) and natural selection is due to acquired characteristics and other factors (phenotype). Mutation is a random process and natural selection is directed.

Natural selection is thus a mechanism that controls and explains the evolution of a lower type into a higher type. A mutation different from the parent species occurs randomly and it is only slightly different from the parent species. Such a mutation has a low probability but it does occur. The mechanism of natural selection helps it on its way to accumulate suitable characteristics (by a slow process) and it might differentiate into a new species over a long period of time.

The question of chimps evolving from humans is probably unlikely because chimps were an earlier species than the homo sapiens.

With regards,

Mohammad Gill

Gill sahib, thanx for yet another stimulating topic. The archives of Chowk.com have a few more articles of a similar theme. I hope this article will generate a good discussion.

It`s too late in my time zone, and I`ve just returned from overseas travel, so I cannot go in much detail, but let me just say that the gaping holes in the Darwinian model need to be acknowledged and explored rather than be stubbornly defended as is usually seen done. This makes the evolutionist look just as prejudiced in his attitude as the creationist and the cause of science and free enquiry is ill served.

The famous textbook example of the pigmented moth, for instance, turns out to be something of a fake (details later) and yet it is touted around as the definitive evidence of natural selection... This undermines the credibility of the whole scientific model and the debate gets muddy.

Similarly, the knee-jerk revulsion that neo-Darwinists demonstrate at the very mention of the Lamarkian concept of ``effect of environment, adaptation, and transformation of characteristics`` argument as opposed to (or even in addition to) their cherished argument of over-production, random mutation, and natural selection leads one to wonder why there is such dogmatic intransigence among supposedly open minded scientists?

If one accepts Steve Gould`s ``ontogeny traces philogeny argument, then it would generally follow that the adult would be the more advanced (or evolved) specimen of a species than its young. Thus if we were to compare human to the chimp and looked at the location of the foramen ovale in the skull cavity we would notice that the baby chimp`s skull is much more like that of a human than the adult chip. Would it not then be prudent to argue that indeed the chimp is evolved from the human rather than vice versa? :-)

Furthermore, the more highly specialized in a certain function, the more advanced (or evolved) the organism. If this logic is applied to such indices as the relative size of the RBCs, the alveolar surface area to body mass ratio, the concentration of urine function of the kidneys, to name just a few and compare the human to the other primates, one is compelled to acknowledge that the human shows signs of evolutionary retardation that cannot be explained by the natural selection model.

There are many, many more pitfalls, but I will keep it brief for the moment and await your input.

...SR

Its amazing how people who are not of the book know about adam and eve but dont know much about human creation in hinduism (including me). I would like to know what hinduism say about it.
For me to think that GOD uses natural selection is because the amount of role nature plays in our life and death e.g. tsunami, earthquake, volcanos, flood & famine.

Also, same as #4:
PS:
I do not mean any disrespect for any religion in my posts, these are just random thoughts and only for the sake of discussion.

the Bible says that God rested on the seventh day. Since man was created in Godly image,


The genesis account isn`t meant to be interpreted literally....god created light before he created the sun and the stars?


is only marginally different genetically from a chimp. They interpret this result as transformation of a chimp mutant into a human, over a period of thousands and thousands of years.


chimps didn`t evolve into humans...both chimps and humans have evolved from a common ancestor...


On this basis, they claim the creationist science should be allocated equal time in school curricula.


I believe humans were created by aliens....there`s more proof for the existence of aliens than for god...why shouldn`t that be taught in schools while we`re including wild-assed guesses along with solid science(like evolution)....

Re: # 3
It is very easy for you, me and all the other people who are not people of the book ( Jews, Christians and Muslims). Most of the opposition to the theory of evolution comes from Jews, Christians, and Muslims who believe in Adam & Eve. When you ask why God cannot use natural creation to create humans, you are essentially talking about a God different from the God who supposedly sent down the Prophets and holy books. All the people who are talking about intelligent design etc are just trying to justify their beliefs. So they will not deviate from what is already written in their books. So even if you and me start believing that God has created man using natural selection, there will be whole lot of people who will still believe in Adam and Eve.

Why does God need any kind of natural selection or 6 days to create the universe as he is all powerful, all knowing. Couldn`t he have created this whole universe with in a fraction of second or what ever smallest possible unit of time?

PS:
I do not mean any disrespect for any religion in my posts, these are just random thoughts and only for the sake of discussion.

Why should one need to start by believing in adam & eve. Why not start with nothing and see what seems more plausible.

Re: # 1
Hmmmm, Wouldn`t that invalidate the whole idea of Adam and Eve?

Why cannot GOD use natural selection to create humans? I think that is what GOD did.

Regards.