The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (70 page)

Adam and Evolution, Creation, and Modern Cosmology

Many Muslims have not yet come to terms with the fact of evolution…the story of Adam and Eve…has no place in a scientific account of the origins of the human race.

—M
ONTGOMERY
W
ATT

The Koran gives a contradictory account of the creation, posing great problems for the commentators:

Of old we created the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in six days, and no weariness touched us. (sura 50.37)

Do you indeed disbelieve in Him who in two days created the earth? Do you assign Him equals? The Lord of the World is He. And He has placed on the earth the firm mountains which tower above it, and He has blessed it and distributed its nourishments throughout it (for the craving of all alike) in four days. Then He applied Himself to the heaven which was but smoke; and to it and to the earth He said, “Do you come in obedience or against your will?” And they both said, “We come obedient.” And He completed them as seven heavens in two days, and He assigned to each heaven its duty and command; and He furnished the lower heavens with lights and guardian angels. This is the disposition of the Almighty, the All-Knowing One.” (sura 41.9)

Two days for the earth, four days for the nourishment, and two days for the seven heavens make eight days (sura 41), whereas in sura 50 we are told the creation took six days. It is not beyond the commentators to apply some kind of hocus-pocus to resolve this contradiction.

The heavens and the earth and the living creatures that are in them are proof of God and His power (Levy 1957, p. 2, 4); they and man in particular were not created frivolously (sura 21.16). Men and Jinn have been assigned the special duty of worshipping God, and though the privilege of obedience to God’s law was first offered to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, it was man who received it after their refusal (sura 33.72) (Levy 1957, p. 2, 4).

What are we to make of this strange doctrine? The heavens, the earth, and the mountains are seen as persons, and furthermore as persons who had the temerity to disobey God! An omnipotent God creates the cosmos, and then asks it if it would accept the “trust” or the “faith,” and His own creation declines to accept this burden.

Creation was by the word of Allah, “Be,” for all things are by His fiat. Before Creation His throne floated above the primeval waters and the heavens and the earth were of one mass (of water). Allah split it asunder, the heavens being built up and spread forth as a well-protected (supported) roof, without flaws, which He raised above the earth and holds there without pillars, whilst the earth was stretched out and the mountains were cast down upon its surface as firm anchors to prevent its moving with the living creatures upon it, for the world is composed of seven earths. Also the two seas were let loose alongside one another, the one sweet and the other salt, but with a barrier set between them so that they should not mingle. (Levy 1957, p. 2, 5)

Earth was created first, then the heavens. The moon was given its own light (sura 10.5), and for it, stations were “decreed so that it changes like an old and curved palm-branch, for man to know the number of the years and the reckoning” (Levy 1957, p. 2, 5).

As for Adam, “We have created man from an extract of clay; then we made him a clot in a sure depository; then we created the clot congealed blood, and we created the congealed blood a morsel; then we created the morsel bone, and we clothed the bone with flesh; then we produced it another creation; and blessed be God, the best of creators!” (sura 23.12).

Another account tells us that man was created from sperm (an unworthy fluid) (sura 77.22), and yet another version has it that all living things were created out of the same primeval water as the rest of the universe (sura 21.31, 25.56, 24.44). Animals have been created especially for the sake of mankind; men are the masters of these animals: “We have created for them the beasts of which they are masters. We have subjected these to them, that they may ride on some and eat the flesh of others; they drink their milk and put them to other uses” (sura 36.71).

The Jinn were created out of fire, be ore the creation of man out of clay. They live on earth with men.

While Muslim commentators have no problems in reconciling the apparent contradictions, a modern, scientifically literate reader will not even bother to look for scientific truths in the above vague and confused accounts of creation. Indeed, it is that very vagueness that enables one to find whatever one wants to find in these myths, legends, and superstitions. So, many Muslims believe that the whole of knowledge is contained in the Koran or the traditions. As Ibn Hazm said, “Any fact whatsoever which can be proved by reasoning is in the Koran or in the words of the Prophet, clearly set out.” Every time there is a new scientific discovery in, say, physics, chemistry, or biology, the Muslim apologists rush to the Koran to prove that the discovery in question was anticipated there; everything from electricity to the theory of relativity (Ascha 1989, Chapter 3). These Muslims point to the Koranic notion of the aquatic origin of living things (sura 21.31), and the current idea in biology that life began, to quote Darwin, in “a warm little pond.” Other putative scientific discoveries anticipated in the Koran include the fertilization of plants by wind (sura 15.22) and the mode of life of bees (sura 16.69). No doubt when they hear of the Glasgow chemist A. G. Cairns-Smith’s suggestion that the answer to the riddle of the origins of life may lie in ordinary clay, these Muslim apologists will leap up and down with triumph and point to the Koranic doctrine that Adam was created from clay (Dawkins, pp. 148–165).

Since Muslims still take the Koranic account literally, I am duty bound to point out how it does not accord with modern scientific opinion on the origins of the universe and life on earth. Even on its own terms the Koranic account is inconsistent and full of absurdities. We have already noted the contradictions in the number of days for the creation. Allah merely has to say “Be,” and His will is accomplished, and yet it takes the Almighty six days to create the heavens. Also, how could there have been “days” before the creation of the earth and the sun, since a “day” is merely the time the earth takes to make a revolution on its axis? We are also told that
before
the creation God’s throne floated above the “waters.” Where did this “water” come from before the creation? The whole notion of God having a throne is hopelessly anthropomorphic but is taken literally by the orthodox. Then we have several accounts of the creation of Adam. According to the Koran, Allah created the moon and its phases for man to know the number of the years (sura 10.5). Again, a rather primitive Arabian notion, since all the advanced civilizations of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, and Greeks used the solar year for the purpose of time reckoning.

Let us turn to the modern account of the origins of the universe.

In 1929, Edwin Hubble published his discovery that remote galaxies are rushing away from the earth with speeds proportional to their distances from the earth. The Hubble law states that the recessional velocity,
v
, of a galaxy is related to its distance, r, from the earth by the equation
v
= Hor, where Ho is the Hubble constant. In other words, the Hubble law is telling us that the universe is expanding. As Kaufmann says: “The universe has been expanding for billions of years, so there must have been a time in the ancient past when all the matter in the universe was concentrated in a state of infinite density. Presumably, some sort of colossal explosion must have occurred to start the expansion of the universe. This explosion, commonly called the big bang, marks the creation of the universe.” The age of the universe has been calculated to be between fifteen and twenty billion ears.

Before what is called the Planck time (approximately ten seconds after the projected time of the big bang), the universe was so dense that the known laws of physics are inadequate to describe the behavior of space, time, and matter. During the first million years, matter and energy formed an opaque plasma (called the primordial fireball), consisting of high-energy photons colliding with protons and electrons. About one million years after the big bang, protons and electrons could combine to form hydrogen atoms. We had to wait ten billion years before our solar system came into existence. “Our solar system is formed of matter created in stars that disappeared billions of years ago. The Sun is a fairly young star, only five billion years old. All of the elements other than hydrogen and helium in our solar system were created and cast off by ancient stars during the first ten billion years of our galaxy’s existence. We are literally made of star dust.” (Kaufmann, Chapter 12) The solar system formed from a cloud of gas and dust, called the solar nebula, which can be described as a “rotating disk of snowflakes and ice-coated dust particles.” The inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, formed through the accretion of dust particles into planetesimals and then into larger protoplanets. The outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, formed through the break up of the outer nebula into rings of gas and ice-coated dust that coalesced into huge protoplanets. The Sun was formed by accretion at the center of the nebula. After about 100 million years, temperatures at the protosun’s center were high enough to ignite thermonuclear reactions (Kaufmann, Chapter 14).

The preceding account is hopelessly at variance with the account given in the Koran. The earth was not, as the Koran claims (sura 41.12), created before the heavens; we have already noted that the sun and the solar system formed millions of years after the big bang, millions of other stars had already formed before our sun. Furthermore, the term “heavens” is hopelessly vague; does it mean our solar system? Our galaxy? The universe? No amount of juggling will make sense of the Koranic or biblical story of the creation of the “heavens” in six, eight, or two days. The light of the moon is, of course, not its own light (pace, sura 10.5) but the reflected light of the sun. The earth orbits the sun, not vice versa.

Those who are tempted to see in the Koran various anticipations of the big bang should realize that modern cosmology and physics in general is based on mathematics. Without the developments in mathematics, especially those in the seventeenth century (the calculus, for example), progress and understanding would not have been possible. In contrast to the vagueness of the Koran, the big bang in its modern cosmological formulation is stated with precision using advanced mathematics; indeed it is not possible to state these ideas in ordinary language without the loss of precision.

The Origins of Life and the Theory of Evolution

The earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and perhaps less than one billion years later, life appeared on it for the first time after a period of chemical evolution. The Russian biochemist, Oparin, argued in
The Origin of Life
(1938) that the primitive earth contained chemical elements that reacted to the radiation from outer space as well as terrestrial sources of energy. “As a result of prolonged photochemical activity, these inorganic mixtures give rise to organic compounds [including amino acids that are the building blocks from which the protein molecules are constructed]. Through time and chemical selection, these…organic systems increased in complexity and stability, becoming the immediate precursors of living things” (Birx, n.d., pp. 417–4 8). Since Oparin’s time, many scientists (Miller, Fox, Ponnamperuma) have succeeded in producing organic compounds from inorganic ones in the laboratory.

Controversy still surrounds the biochemical explanation for the origin of life on earth, particularly as to whether something analogous to the DNA or RNA molecule arose first or, instead, basic amino acids necessary for protein synthesis. Living things emerged when organic systems became capable of metabolism and reproduction; the development of inorganic syntheses in chemical evolution paved the way for biological evolution and subsequently the adaptive radiation of more and more complex and diversified forms, (n.d., Chapter 44)

In 1859, Darwin published his
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
In the Introduction of his great work, Darwin wrote:

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation which most justly excites our admiration.

Darwin’s answer to his own question of “the How of Evolution” is, of course, natural selection. Species were a result of the long process of natural selection acting on “constantly appearing, random, heritable variations.” Darwin put the matter himself in this way:

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.