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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

#71

Post by duskwuff »

macspoofing wrote: post #61
sfjailbird wrote: post #47

There is a verse in the Quran[1] about the origins of the universe and life: And have not the ones who disbelieved seen that the heavens and the earth were an integrated (mass), then We unseamed them, and of water We have made every living thing? Would they then not believe? Commentators observe that this verse at the same time lends support to the idea of the Big Bang, and the origins of life in water. Thus there is…

It's easy to make post-hoc interpretations of these kinds of verses to make them fit anything. The reality is that there is quite a lot evolution denialism in the Islamic world - which should suggest that there is nothing obviously pro-evolution in the Quran.

> It's easy to make post-hoc interpretations of these kinds of verses to make them fit anything.

Absolutely. These sorts of post-hoc interpretations are particularly common in some branches of Hindu nationalism, where verses of sacred texts (such as the Vedas) are interpreted as representing foreknowledge of modern scientific discoveries, often couched in an anticolonialist narrative such as "Western science stole this knowledge from ancient India".

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

curiousgal wrote: post #9
eska wrote: post #7

I was excited to hear about this due to the golden age of science in the Arabic world, which was a high point of Arabic culture that has since then unfortunately declined. But wondering how the scholar was able to do this research despite Islam, it turns out that he made god responsible for the mutation, the animals just have a desire to adapt. The article makes it sound like that's a trivial difference to Darwin, bu…

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".

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by duskwuff »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #46

Religions might accidentally guess the correct thing part of the time. But that would be despite the numerous examples of religions being extremely wrong most other times. Islam is no different. This feels like a massive stretch you'd expect from an apologist, not an actual scientist.

Or, more frequently, a religious text may contain a story or a statement which can be subjectively interpreted as representing a modern scientific truth.

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

#75

Post by thefounder »

sfjailbird wrote: post #47

There is a verse in the Quran[1] about the origins of the universe and life: And have not the ones who disbelieved seen that the heavens and the earth were an integrated (mass), then We unseamed them, and of water We have made every living thing? Would they then not believe? Commentators observe that this verse at the same time lends support to the idea of the Big Bang, and the origins of life in water. Thus there is…

Well, all the religious versets regardless of the religion make sense and provide great insights in hindsight with enough "mental gymnstastics". One can find spiritual and astronomical significations even in children's books. Just watch Ancient Aliens! They are gold in this regard!

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

#76

Post by amriksohata »

diego_moita wrote: post #30

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…

Can you provide examples where he demonstrated it? I mean that would be pretty epic him able to demonstrate it happening.

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

#78

Post by throwaway123x2 »

hnracer wrote: post #33
throwaway123x2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This sounds like the God Of The Gaps line of fallacious reasoning. Once we figure out where radium came from then God will be inserted just before that new discovery, ad infinitum, turtles all the way down

Sure, that's the Prime Mover theory, which would be extraordinarily hard to prove or disprove. I don't think it's fallacious reasoning.

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

#79

Post by noncoml »

diego_moita wrote: post #30

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…

Or how the bible is telling the story of Eve(Mitochondrial Eve) and Adam(Y-chromosomal Adam)

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

#80

Post by thefounder »

Ccecil wrote: post #50
sfjailbird wrote: post #47

There is a verse in the Quran[1] about the origins of the universe and life: And have not the ones who disbelieved seen that the heavens and the earth were an integrated (mass), then We unseamed them, and of water We have made every living thing? Would they then not believe? Commentators observe that this verse at the same time lends support to the idea of the Big Bang, and the origins of life in water. Thus there is…

I find it interesting that the story of "Genesis" in the Bible basically goes through the order of operations for how the universe formed (aside from a couple of the days out of order...but it is very close). It does lean towards at least a reasonable assumption of what came first. Makes me think there was some sort of "knowledge" being encoded in the story that was attempting to teach the uneducated of the time.

"Genesis" got it wrong. The knowledge from "genesis" is no different than the knowledge of so many others that got it "close" but not quite right.

Another issue is that many texts are vague and open for interpretation so people can make it "make sense" regardless of how wrong/ridiculous/innacurate it is.

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