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1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

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Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#21

Post by Ancapistani »

Dangeranger wrote: post #20
kypro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair a lot of Christians do the same and explain away contradictions in the bible as being simply "metaphors". As more people become scientifically literate hopefully it will push religions to adopt a more rational interpretation of their beliefs.

I have had some success speaking with those who devoutly believe in God by stating that while the Universe is governed by the rules of physics and math, science doesn't address where those rules come from, and therefore they can be justified in believing that God created them. Put another way, God isn't the musician playing the symphony, God is the composer of the notes.

I’ve had some success speaking with those who don’t believe by stating that my faith is based on subjective personal experience, and therefore it would be unreasonable for me to expect them to believe based upon my testimony alone.

Instead, I only ask that they be open to the idea that the Holy Spirit exists and pay attention if and when they feel His presence in their life.

Coming from apparently very different perspectives, I’m struck by the beautiful symmetry of our approaches. It makes me happy :)

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#22

Post by silicon2401 »

steveridout wrote: post #8

I'm currently reading "Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant and was struck by this even earlier reference to a process of evolution by natural selection: > Empedocles (fl. 445 B.C., in Sicily) developed to a further stage the idea of evolution. Organs arise not by design but by selection. Nature makes many trials and experiments with organisms, combining organs variously; where the combination meets environmental need…

Just commenting to say that this is a great book, and I would gladly recommend it to anybody wanting a basic overview of western philosophy. I don't know or care if it's the most academically or historically nuanced analysis; I just enjoyed getting a synopsis of different philosophers' lives and ideas.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#24

Post by Ancapistani »

simonh wrote: post #5
02020202 wrote: post #3

natural selection doesn't fare well with leftis minds.

Well there was Lysenkoism in Soviet Russia, but generally I don't think there's much of a correlation between socialism and a belief in or skepticism of evolution. Although Karl Marx himself was a big believer in Darwin's theory and wrote about it in glowing terms Funnily enough in modern America conservatism is very heavily correlated with creationism and Intelligent Design, through the Republican alliance with fund…

> Frankly as a British conservative who grew up in the Reagan/Thatcher days I look at modern US Republicanism with a mix of bemusement and horror, but that's beside the point.

It may be beside the point, but it’s something shared by a lot of us “on the inside” as well.

I grew up surrounded by American conservatives and both US political parties seem like caricatures at this point.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#25

Post by Dangeranger »

Ancapistani wrote: post #21
Dangeranger wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had some success speaking with those who devoutly believe in God by stating that while the Universe is governed by the rules of physics and math, science doesn't address where those rules come from, and therefore they can be justified in believing that God created them. Put another way, God isn't the musician playing the symphony, God is the composer of the notes.

I’ve had some success speaking with those who don’t believe by stating that my faith is based on subjective personal experience, and therefore it would be unreasonable for me to expect them to believe based upon my testimony alone. Instead, I only ask that they be open to the idea that the Holy Spirit exists and pay attention if and when they feel His presence in their life. Coming from apparently very different pers…

This is indeed a beautiful symmetry. Thanks for adding your perspective.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#26

Post by throwaway123x2 »

pvaldes wrote: post #19
curiousgal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a Muslim country, unlike Christianity, Islam accepts scientific discoveries but attributes them to God instead. For instance, we were taught about the Big Bang in an Islamic Thinking class but the trick was that "God was responsible for it".

> Islam accepts scientific discoveries but attributes them to God So... Who invented computers? god. Who discovered radium? god... Who earned all nobel prices? god? :-) Exams must be really easy then. This is politics or ideology, not science. Ideology wearing a fur of dead science is more common that it seems nowadays (and is not exclusive from Islamic schools, it seems)

The discovery isn't attributed to God, but the existence of the phenomenon. So in your example, God made radium. God made the raw materials to make computers and gave man the intellect to make them.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#27

Post by est31 »

themgt wrote: post #14

This Twitter thread[1] from a professor specializing in Islamic thought debunks these claims and links to a paper making the counterargument in more detail[2]. [1] https://twitter.com/shahanSean/status/1314372114946895873 [2] https://www.academia.edu/39234303/Old_Texts_New_Masks_A_Crit...

Readable version of your [1]: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1314372114946895873.html

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#28

Post by Antipode »

rtx wrote: post #17
curiousgal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a Muslim country, unlike Christianity, Islam accepts scientific discoveries but attributes them to God instead. For instance, we were taught about the Big Bang in an Islamic Thinking class but the trick was that "God was responsible for it".

Accept the evolution of man from primates.

Accept or except?

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#29

Post by ilamont »

est31 wrote: post #27
themgt wrote: post #14

This Twitter thread[1] from a professor specializing in Islamic thought debunks these claims and links to a paper making the counterargument in more detail[2]. [1] https://twitter.com/shahanSean/status/1314372114946895873 [2] https://www.academia.edu/39234303/Old_Texts_New_Masks_A_Crit...

Readable version of your [1]: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1314372114946895873.html

Unfortunately, the Vice and the peer-reviewed articles contain numberous misconceptions that could have been avoided if an Arabist or medievalist were consulted. I’ll focus on three that seem to be persistent on Internet but that originate in the 19th cent (more on that later)... #1. The 𝐾𝑖𝑡𝑎̄𝑏 𝑎𝑙-𝐻̣𝑎𝑦𝑎𝑤𝑎̄𝑛 (Eng. The Book of Living Things) of al-Jāḥiẓ is not a work zoology or biology. It is a literary bestiary. Jāḥiẓ is a Muʿtazilī theologian and an accomplished belletrist. He wrote his Ḥayawān a compendium of stories, anecdotes, ... maxims, and poems that organized under the rubric of animals. In terms of genre and content, it resembles, for example, the 𝑃ℎ𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑢𝑠 and its medieval successors. #2. The Arabo-Islamic scholars mentioned in these articles are heirs to Hellenistic tradition and ... its views on nature, much like the medieval scholars of Latin Christendom and Byzantium. Ideas depicted as precursors to Darwin in these articles are, in fact, a part of the reception history of Aristotelian concepts like the “ladder of nature” and ... the Neoplatonists' “Chain of Being”, which were popular among monotheists at least as early as Philo of Alexandria (fl. 1st cent. BCE). The views of Jāḥiẓ no more resemble Darwin than does, say, those of Thomas Aquinas. ... #3. The peer-reviewed article contains many howlers that a competent Arabist would spot immediately. Most egregious is the discussion of 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑘ℎ (المسخ), meaning “metamorphosis”. This idea has more to do with theology than biology...

In fact, it has a qurʾanic pedigree: the Qurʾan speaks of God punishing the wicked – especially Jewish violators of the Sabbath – by transforming them into baser creatures, such as apes and pigs. This has about as much to do with evolution as Kafka’s 𝑀𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑠...

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#30

Post by diego_moita »

This is like saying the pre-socratic Greek philosophers "discovered" the atom. Their "discovery" was just vague speculation.

Darwin didn't just say "evolution happens", he demonstrated it. Before him no one else demonstrated it.

Surely, a lot scholars speculated about evolution long before Darwin. One of them was Erasmus Darwin, Charles grandfather.

But that misses the whole point: no other scholar was able to embed a theory of evolution into the scientific body of knowledge. More than discovering it, Darwin's achievement was the clear and irrefutable formulation of it.

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