The problem with debating the science to undermine evolution.
Amongst many that advocate creation over evolution in explaining the origin of species, the general approach is to try to undermine the science that underpins the theory of evolution.
There are four main problems when trying to look at the scientific evidence to undermine the theory.
1. Problem of authority.
2. For every scientific argument one brings to undermine it there will be a scientific
explanation
3. The theory is consistent according to the scientific methodology.
4. It inadvertently reinforces the idea that science is the only paradigm to establish knowledge.
Let us consider each in turn:-
1. The problem of authority.
One of the main problems arguing the theory of evolution is that many wont trust nor believe that the whole of the scientific community have made a clear and categorical collective mistake over the science. Why should they believe someone like me, who hasn’t studied evolution at degree level, nor has any published papers on the subject matter, nor teaches at any academic level unlike professors who have spent decades researching the topic? so effectively for a layman it becomes an issue of trust.
2. For every scientific argument against evolution there will be a counter to this argument.
We may raise the question of an incomplete fossil record that shows a smooth transition from one species to another, or the lack of the observation of the addition to DNA as a form of genetic mutation, or the argument of irreducible complexity or origin of life.
Each of these points may be valid questions relating to the science of evolution but each will have a rather detailed counter to them. The discussion will then become very technical with the average educated Muslim unable to either understand what is being presented or left without an answer to rebut this.
Therefore this approach can be counter-productive and doesn’t leave the individual with a clear understanding of whether it can be rejected or accepted and how this may or may not compromise their belief.
3. The theory is consistent with the scientific method.
According to the principles and axioms of the scientific method, only data that can be sensed qualifies for enquiry and as the issue of God’s existence or none existence cannot be subjected to direct sensation, it does not qualify as a valid area of study under this method so we preclude the option of their being a supernatural creator from the debate by reinforcing the tenants of the scientific method by arguing within its frameworks.
This framework explains Dawkins view on the issue when he said
“I think the probability of a supernatural creator existing are very very low”.
What he meant was as he can’t subject the question of Gods existence to the scientific method, Gods existence is as viable to him as the viability of the existence as pixies, lepricorns or unicorns as he mentioned in one of his interviews. Just as he could never sense these entities, likewise he will never accept proof for God until he accepts the limits of the scientific method of thinking and accepts it as a mere branch of thinking and not the main methodology of thinking.
4. It inadvertently reinforces the idea that science is the only paradigm to establish knowledge.
Sheik Taqiuddin an-Nabhani, a prominent Islamic scholar once said:-
“Therefore, the error was the adoption of the scientific method as a basis for thinking, and adopting it as an arbitrator in the judgment on things. This error must be corrected, and the rational method must become the basis of thinking...”
By using science to undermine the scientific theory, effectively we are inadvertently making the scientific method of thinking the basis.
Therefore the discussion isn’t actually a discussion over the specific scientific evidence for or against evolution rather it’s a discussion over the question of what is the correct basis for determining our knowledge and ultimately truths and certainties.
Can science be that basis and thus what follows from science must also be true. Or is science an inductive approach that leads to only speculative conclusions which can never override conclusions based on a more sound basis for knowledge such as the rational approach to knowledge (as opposed to the inductive scientific approach) ?
The correct approach is to question whether science is the only basis for rational inquiry and seeking truth.
Many people have become accustomed to accepting that science is the only basis for truths, therefore the dictum ‘if its scientific it must be true’. Hence the real confusion over evolution is confusion over the study of knowledge itself, a subject in philosophy called epistemology.
This concerns the question of how we know what we know, and what tools/methodology of thinking we can use to determine these truths.
Firstly science is not in the business to ascertain truths and certainties but the probability of the correctness of a theory which has yet to be disproven. This is because science is a methodology to understand and interpret the events we sense in the universe.
Historically a debate among philosophers centered on epistemology (study of knowledge itself), ie looking at the question of whether we can know truth, or are we trapped in an unending skepticism; is knowledge known prior to experience or after it?
For centuries in Europe such ideas and methodological approach to knowledge were confined in the paradigm of religion, specifically Christianity. As such any theory that ran contrary to Christianity was banned and adherents to these irreligious views were punished. This led to an inevitable clash which began to question the very essence of knowledge and methodology to ascertain knowledge. Thus not only was there a break from religion but also the rationalism that believed in innate knowledge or knowledge necessary prior to experience. As a result many new philosophers began to argue that humans are a blank slate, and that the only thing we can ever know for certain is what we experience.
However these new natural philosophers (Locke, Hume, Berkeley) began to ask the uncomfortable questions as to whether experience alone can establish certainty. David Hume proposed that our senses are liable to mistakes thus if we can only know through our experiences which relies on our senses then how can we be 100% certain of our knowledge? His answer was we can never be 100% certain of any observation but only have a propensity or probable assumption of the truth through our senses. This in fact comforted many empiricists as they felt certainty was akin to dogma which would result in decay and ultimately decline due to not being able to question previous positions and thus move forward with better substantiated theories.
Philosophers such as Sir Frances Bacon in the 17th Century then began to refine this empirical (knowledge through experience) approach by developing the scientific method. In brief the scientific method is the isolation of a variable and defining a question that one seeks to answer which one may then hypothesize about. Then an experiment is designed to test ones hypothesis in order to answer a particular question. The testing recording and observation is repeated as often as one can in order to obtain a conclusion.
You therefore move from specific observations to a conclusion. As another example of induction, which is at the heart of the scientific method, consider the following. Every time you cut your hair it grows back so you conclude that cutting hair results in it growing back. This knowledge is induced and is consistent with the scientific method. In this cause the conclusion is very sound. This type of knowledge is referred to as ‘a posteriori’ knowledge in epistemological terms.
Deductive knowledge uses ‘a priori’ knowledge or previous information. The point being that the new information formed is not directly sensed as a means of arriving at it.
To understand the application of these 2 types of thinking consider some examples.
The obvious and less controversial examples are seen in mathematical reasoning. We can say for example that 3 is a prime number and that is it greater than 2. We then deduce that there is a prime number greater than 2.
Take another example. As far as deductive reasoning, a student observes that every time he makes a spelling mistake in his homework, the teacher deducts a mark without fail so he establishes previous info relating to the implication of making a spelling mistake. Here he has deduced the consequence by taking a piece of previous info and applying it to a reality which is the homework in front of him.
Often existing previous information is pondered and new previous information is formed without any link to having sensed each step of the way. This is commonly referred to as the constructivist branch of rational thinking or simply constructivism in epistemology which as stated is the study of knowledge.
An example of this is to state that all bachelors are unmarried, Then to state that Abdullah is unmarried and to deduce that Abdullah is a bachelor. Here 2 pieces of information have been used to generate a new piece of information.
This type of rational deductive thinking extends beyond the metaphysical world and everyday world around us and is able to conclude with certainty, based on a priori knowledge, ex cause and effect, that the universe had a creator upon which all dependent things depend.
The scientific way of thinking naturally excludes the scope for certain types of knowledge such as what preceded the big bang which marked the birth of space and time and whether a creator could have initiated or caused the initial spark that caused the universe assuming the big bang theory is correct. This thinking is firmly of the deductive type and can never be induced as no sensation can be made to validate it.
This shows that the conclusion or theory developed from the scientific method is based on the assumption that the particular experiment or observation can be generalized and that other such future events will follow the same pattern of the previous experiment. This assumption gives the ability of the theory or conclusion to predict future events.
Scientific thinking sees absolute truth as a weakness and fact as dogma.
Karl Popper recognized the indefinite and inductive nature of science and set about developing the idea of falsification, an idea that Dawkins himself proposes in his book the ‘God Delusion’. Here a theory can be considered scientific if an experiment can be conceived of in order to falsify it. So Dawkins asked whether the theory of intelligent design with the belief that an intelligent creator beyond this universe created all life can be falsified. Dawkins stated that no experiment could be conceived of in order to prove that a God does not exist thus the theory isn’t scientific. The scientific theory is therefore valid until an observation or experiment disproves the theory. Therefore we are not assuming the theory to be correct or true but we are saying the theory hasn’t been disproven.
So it becomes quite evident that the scientific methodology isn’t really about what is factual or definitively true, as this is beyond the remit of science. It’s about adopting what hasn’t been falsified yet with no limit placed on the endpoint of the process, and this is seen as this methodologies strength and our definite belief through rational deductive thinking is seen as a weakness in this context.
It’s of no surprise that when we feel we have cornered an evolutionist he mutates his argument and falls onto a new possibility which can’t be falsified easily so the theory survives the death blow. The theory of punctuated equilibrium to explain the lack of intermediate fossils is a classic example of this.
A question arises as to whether such responses are genuine or indicate ulterior motives. An example which indicates how the thinking as to knowledge is forced to remain within the realm of the scientific method only comes to mind and is related to the origin of the universe. Steven Hawking said in a speech
“ Many scientists were still unhappy with the universe having a beginning because it seemed to imply that physics broke down. One would have to invoke an outside agency, which for convenience one can call God, to determine how the universe began. They therefore advanced theories in which the universe was expanding at the present time but didn’t have a beginning. One was the Steady State theory proposed by Bondi, Gold and Hoyle in 1948”
Also, Richard Dawkins was once asked why he told an audience at an Atheist conference to not study the philosophy of science and to just do the science to which he could offer nothing in defense of his statement to the enquirer.
Even if one dismisses the ulterior motives argument, despite the clear indications above, what is clear is that scientific theories like evolution develop into paradigms such that evidence is interpreted by such theories rather than the evidence substantiating it. That doesn’t mean evolutionists do not claim that evidence doesn’t exist to substantiate the theory in origin, however subsequent evidence are viewed in the light of evolution thus giving a ‘positive feedback’ effect to such a theory.
Popper notes this when he narrated a reality to a social scientist who immediately interpreted the new reality along the framework of his theory rather than validate whether the new reality actually affirmed his theory.
Rational thinking is the basis for thinking and Scientific thinking is a branch.
Rational thinking is the correct basis of thinking and scientific thinking is merely a branch of rational thinking and not the basis of thinking. It has its place and on occasion is more appropriate to use than pure deductive thinking.
The correct view is that there are three types of rational knowledge.
The first type was a form of synthetic propositions like the part is not greater than the whole, second was the empirical observation and the third was knowledge transmitted through narrations from one generation to the next.
Thinking more generally is composed of 4 elements:-
1. Reality
2. 5 Senses
3. The Brain
4. Previous information (apriori knowledge used to link the sensed reality to existing knowledge to produce new thoughts.
Note: Re 4, See the constructivist variant of rational thinking.
Through using the rational method of thinking we can clearly conclude that a creator for this universe exists. This is through applying previous information that we have obtained through observing the universe, information such as causality and deducing that the cause of the universe must have been via an external agent which was not subjected to the laws of the universe.
Two final points are worth mentioning to clarify the scope and context of the 2 types of thinking. Firstly, that they are not mutually exclusive but complementary. For example many pieces of previous information have been established through the scientific method and these pieces of information are then used in deductive rational thinking. Similarly, to form the hypothesis or propositions to be tested under the scientific method itself relies on the rational way of thinking.
There are extremes within both camps such as those who deny the role of the other for example within the rationalists there are those that claim that sensation is not relied on for the formulation of previous information and this previous info is innate for example the fear or heights known as the Innate knowledge thesis.
We must be rational, and not occupy such as extreme positions and instead incorporate both types of thinking when we state that scientific thinking is a branch of rational thinking.
Furthermore the Islamic position is very clear as we learn in Surah(chapter) Baqarah verse 31 of the Quran, when Allah informs us that he taught Prophet Adam PBUH the names of all things. This acted as the seed of information upon which the complex information we now have as a species had arisen from as sensation alone cannot produce thinking else a book in Chinese would be read given enough time to one not learned in the basics of the language.
CONCLUSION
As a final point the current discourse on evolution particularly taking is best addressed not by addressing the science but rather through addressing the methodology of thinking. The ultimate conclusion is why reject something that is certain using a sound method of thinking (ie the rational or deductive method of thinking) and instead adopt something which by definition must remain uncertain to remain valid ie the scientific method based on induction.
Allah the creator helps us make this choice is the Quran..
Allah SWT inform us in Surah(chapter) ‘An Najm’ verse 23 against following conjecture in place of certainty established through the rational method of establishing truth and certainty.
“They are merely following their conjectures and carnal desires although guidance has come to them from their lord”
This is the way to put to rest the debate and break the deadlock and not to fight the argument with science as so many such as Harun Yahya and others tirelessly do and rescue those upon whom doubts have shaken their creedal convictions.
I pray that this brief paper will help give confidence in how to deal with the arguments that pitch scientific thinking as the only worthy and reputable form of thinking and once again establish the balance towards the rational method of thinking so that it will be easy to clarify the power and simplicity of the Islamic belief.
