Is Islam incompatible with Evolution?
Many ex-muslims, and Atheists more generally seem to believe that:
- Evolution by natural selection, including macroevolution and common descent of all living beings, is a proven scientific fact.
- Evolution operates on random, naturalistic mechanisms such as natural selection, genetic drift, horizontal gene transfer etc, consequently there is no basis to believe that God created or designed biological organisms.
- Islam denies Evolution in general and human evolution in particular. According to Islam, human beings are a special creation, with Adam (PBUH) being created directly by God with no parents.
- Islam is wrong about Evolution and therefore can be demonstrated to be false.
Let us factually analyse these claims, to determine their veracity.
Claim 1: Evolution including macroevolution and universal common descent is an irrefutable fact.
Fact check:
It is true that living organisms have changed over time and that changes within species (microevolution) can be observed even now.
We can call this ‘evolution’ and consider this a scientific fact.
However human lifespan is too limited to observe one species change into another (Macroevolution) and thus this can be considered no more than a ‘good working explanation’ of common homology, genetic similarity and so on, NOT an absolute fact.
Take the fossil record, any attempt at proving a family relationship between different organisms is entirely questionable, being a subjective human ‘invention’ rather than a clear scientific fact.
The great paleontologist Gareth J. Nelson writes:
“The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion”
Prominent evolutionary Biologists like Ernst Meyer and Richard Dawkins accept that evolution cannot be observed in real-time, or be proved using the usual methods of hard science.
Rather it requires historical interpretation and building a narrative in a ‘tentative’ manner:
Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought
“Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science—the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain”
“We are condemned to live only for a few decades and that’s too slow, too small a time scale to see evolution going on…”
Richard Dawkins, Transcript: A conversation with Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss.
What about the tree of life?
Can we objectively confirm universal common descent from a single ancestor?
Ford Doolittle and Eric Bapteste refute the claim that we can ever relate organisms to each other objectively in a ‘tree of life’ going back to a single root i.e. a common ancestor:
“Importantly, Darwin did not and could not test the reality of the tree pattern. Indeed, one is hard pressed to find some theory-free body of evidence that such a single universal pattern relating all life forms exists independently of our habit of thinking that it should. The notion that a tree pattern is the product of induction, obvious to any intelligent observer, is belied by most of the early history of systematics, during which quite different schemes seemed fully defensible.
In a search for independent evidence of a natural hierarchy, Panchen considers homology, paleontology, and biogeography. The first is problematic in that true (taxic) homologies cannot be distinguished from false ones (homoplasies) without some assumption of hierarchy: homologies are more often deduced from trees than trees are from homologies. Thus, explanans melds with explanandum, and neither is tested. The second and third may offer independent evidence that evolution by descent with modification has occurred but are limited in their relevance and applicability to specific groups, areas or times. They do not justify, except by extrapolation, the expectation that there should be groups under groups at all levels, that there should be a universal TOL, dichotomously branching all of the way down to a single root…”
“Pattern Pluralism and the Tree of Life Hypothesis“
In recent years, certain scientists have designed tests to ‘prove’ universal common ancestors existed.
Two Japanese scientists refuted one such attempt in 2012, noting that the very existence of a common ancestor is an ‘open question’:
“Although overwhelming circumstantial evidence supports the existence of the universal common ancestor of all extant life on Earth, it is still an open question whether the universal common ancestor existed or not.Theobald (Nature 465, 219-222 (2010)) recently challenged this problem with a formal statistical test applied to aligned sequences of conservative proteins sampled from all domains of life and concluded that the universal common ancestor hypothesis holds. However, we point out that there is a fundamental flaw in Theobald’s method which used aligned sequences.
Yonezawa & Hasegwa, 2012, Scientific World Journal
From the foregoing, one can judge that claims about evolution are subjective and questionable, not certain and absolute.
It would be foolish to claim that science has proved common descent beyond doubt.
Claim 2: Evolution operates on random, naturalistic mechanisms such as natural selection, genetic drift, horizontal gene transfer etc, consequently, there is no basis to believe that God created or designed biological organisms.
Fact check:
As we have just seen it is impossible to factually prove macro-evolution even occurs. Let alone what its mechanisms are!
Even Evolutionist icon, Jerry Coyne accepts the mechanisms of Evolution are ‘mysterious’:
“These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve”
Why Evolution is True
Secondly, it is absurd to claim that if ‘natural’ causes are behind a given event, this rules out God by default.
If one reflects on the fact that all the laws of nature that give rise to ‘natural events’ may have been different or not existed, it becomes clear that all natural events take place due to the will of a Personal agent who chooses one set of laws and events to actualise and not others.
If there was no God to select the laws of nature, to choose what exists, there would be no nature, and thus no evolution, (see here, to understand why)
Tomorrow, if suddenly we found irrefutable evidence for Darwinian Evolution, it would not even touch – let alone disprove – the best arguments for God’s existence such as the Contingency Argument.
Furthermore, there are some serious scientific problems with the current Darwinian narrative that should not be brushed under the carpet.
For instance irreducible complexity in molecular biology, the ‘waiting time’ problem, the Cambrian explosion and the inability of mutations to add new biological information to the genome.
Taken together they seriously weaken the credibility of the current Evolutionary model.
This is aside from the fact that the origin of the first living cell by any naturalistic process, seems extremely unlikely the more we learn about biochemistry.
If one is interested in understanding the truth – not just defending a narrative- I would suggest reading books or watching videos (Discovery Science Channel, on YouTube) by Dr Micheal Behe, Micheal Denton, Douglas Axe and others for more information on these and related topics.
However as noted previously, even if Darwinian Evolution is proved beyond all doubt, this doesn’t change the fact that we cannot explain why anything exists, and why nature is as it is, without God.
CLAIM 3: Islam denies evolution in general and human evolution in particular. According to Islam, human beings are a special creation, with Adam alayhisalaam being created directly by God with no parents.
Fact-check:
In point of fact, Islam does not confirm or deny non-human evolution.There is no religious reason why a Muslim cannot subscribe to the idea that many or all non-human organisms, could have evolved from earlier species.
Islam also does not deny evolution amongst other human species -before the Children of Adam (alayhisalaam) – who may already been living on earth.
Islam says that Adam and Eve (Peace on them) were specially created and all human brings are descended from them.
It is at least possible that the Children of Adam were specially created, later sent to earth and reproduced with existing human species, who had evolved from other species.
In other words humans may be the product of evolution from non-human ancestors, and also the descendents of a Human pair specially created by God. Islam does not deny evolution in this case.
There is no contradiction between the metaphysical claim that Adam was specially created and the scientific claim that humans evolved from non-human ancestors.
Science cannot confirm or deny miraculous events, as it can only study physical regularities. If the creation of Adam was a miraculous event, we would not expect any scientific confirmation of this.
Thus, evolution does not disprove the Islamic claim that Adam alayhisalaam was directly created by God.
Dr S. Malik explains this view of Dr David Solomon Jalajel as follows:
Jalajel uniquely divorces the connection between the creation of Adam with the start of humanity. In this narrative, when Adam descended to Earth from heaven (as opined by the majority of scholars), the Quran doesn’t affirm nor negate the idea of there being already existing humans on earth. In other words, the Quran is silent on there being humans on earth prior to Adam’s descent. If this is the case, we have to adopt theological tawaqquf on this issue. This entails that there is equally the possibility of there being humans prior to Adam…
Claim 4. Islam is wrong about Evolution and therefore can be demonstrated to be false.
Fact check:
We have already established that:
a) Evolution and common descent cannot be proved as absolutely true. One cannot ‘disprove’ something on the basis of something that is itself questionable.
b) God’s existence is proved beyond doubt on the basis of the contingency argument, and is unaffected by the case for evolution.
c) There is nothing in Islam to rule out evolution amongst non-humans.
d) It may that some humans may have evolved from non-human ancestors and these may have interbred with the children of Adam – who was specially created by God.
If the above scenario is granted,we would not expect any scientific evidence of Adam’s creation – being a purely metaphysical claim.
Whilst, the circumstantial evidence for the common descent of humans and animals would also stand explained, and acceptable from an Islamic point of view.
As Dr. Jalajel explains there is no scientific evidence to deny the metaphysical claim of Adam’s special creation, and no Islamic reason to deny human evolution as advocated by scientists:
“Adam’s creation and human biological origins are two separate and unrelated issues established in two very different ways.
Muslims have no need to discuss biological human evolution from a theological or scriptural perspective. Likewise, scientists have no need to discuss the life of Prophet Adam from an empirical, scientific perspective.
Because they are separate issues, there are people who believe in human evolution, based on scientific evidence, and dismiss the story of Adam being created without parents, as some Muslims do who choose not to follow the classical interpretive strategies I am exploring.
Atheists and followers of non-Abrahamic religions would simply dismiss the idea that Adam existed. However, none of them could furnish scientific evidence to prove that Adam did not exist or that he was not created in a unique manner.
There are people who believe in the story of Adam, as traditional Muslims do, and then deny human evolution for whatever reasons they might have, like not being convinced by the empirical evidence.
However, they would not be able to base their denial of human evolution on theological or scriptural grounds, since there is no basis in scripture for doing so.”
Tawaqquf and Acceptance of Human Evolution