A scientific dissent from Darwinism?

Question

http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/

A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism
"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

This is the Islamic view of evolution
http://shadhilitariqa.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=23

Answer 1

Excellent.

Go and find another theory to replace the theory of natural selection. That is how science works. You don't like a current theory, you find a new scientific theory to replace it or alter it. Trying to poke holes in the current theory will not get you anywhere. You need to replace the theory with a different one that is backed up by scientific data.

The problem that you are going to run into is that most scientists agree with the theory of natural selection and the theory of evolution. These theories fit and work in the real world. There is lots of evidence to support them. You will need a ton of evidence to support any new theory that you come up with.

Answer 2

Scepticism is healthy. There is much we do not yet know. The solution is to set about finding out.
We could equally say we are sceptical about the existence of one or more deities. Careful scientific examination of the evidence should be encouraged, using the same scientific rigour we would apply to any other exploration and clearly identifying those aspects where further scientific study is necessary in order to establish proof. Sound fair?
Which is more likely - that the laws of physics and mechanics and chemistry and mathematics discovered so far are basically sound though there is more to be understood or that these tools are all false and evolution didn't happen and isn't continuing to happen? If we were created by a deity, is it reasonable to assume the tools she gave us by which to understand our universe are defective?
Skepticism and scientific enquiry are good. Denial of the results of scientific enquiry is probably just as silly as believing there is no more to learn. So let's keep finding out.

Answer 3

I agree that we can't entirely prove Darwinism and not all portions of Darwinism may be right. That is as far as I can agree after reading the papers.

Darwinism can however serve as a basic theory for studying evolution because like the wave theory of light many of properties mentioned due in fact exist and further study upon the points which we don't understand would yield scientific data that leads to further understanding of evolution.

Darwinism can't be discarded. It is as important as the wave theory of light even though we know now that light is made of particles that behave like waves.

Edit* I had respect for you and your question until you got religion involved. I don't care about what the church, the pope, the ayatollah, the rabbi, or any other religious has to say about this. This is strictly science not stories from a book.

Answer 4

Scepticism is good, keeps us all on our toes. Careful examination of evidence is good, that's what Darwin did. However, if you're going to call this a scientific dissent from Darwin let's hear your scientific theory to account for the complexity of life? Not got one? Thought so...

Answer 5

There is no real scientific reason to question the Darwinist theory of evolution any more than any other well-established theory in science. The reason why people question it so much is that people, as a whole, are afraid of acknowledging that their existence might not be magical, god given and eternal. Accepting evolution as the means of humanity's creation is the first major step in that direction.

The fear of death and non-existence has always been a significant factor in the life of humans. When approaching the phenomenon of religion from a purely scientific perspective, it is logical to conclude that it is purely fabrication simply because its appearance is predictable and explainable.

I will now shamelessly divert to a whole other topic, but it is justified because the topic of religion is the source of most of the questioning Darwinism gets.

The reasons religion was created would be as follows. People in the beginnings of civilization lived in primitive societies without any type of law enforcement or dispute-settling system that would resolve their quarrels. The sole determiner was strength in one form or the other.

However, they still understood when they'd been wronged and lie we do today, they felt a need for the wrong to be put right. Yet often they hadn't the means to do it them selves. In these kinds of societies most people are the victims while a few strong ones reap the rewards, so the victims, feeling a need for justice but unable to exert it them selves, have a need to believe that somehow, somewhere the injustice brought upon them will be corrected. Hence the need for an all-powerful, supremely fair being.

They also observed people and animals around them die. Inevitably they realized they would die as well. This caused them to question what was beyond the grave, the prospect of an afterlife, as unbelievable as it might seem, sounded much preferable to the end of existence.

These needs, the need for justice and the need for the cheating of death, left the people vulnerable to whoever offered them an idea that would explain the world in a way in which all those needs would be satisfied. The reason why it all didn't sound so absurd to them is that in those days, most of the things around them was unexplainable. Gravity (as it is today essentially), birth, consciousness, light, animals, existence, all of these were almost as incredible as the idea of god. It was much easier to say everything is magical and explainable by the will of god than it was to try and understand the fabric of existence.

Today, as we are left with less and less miseries to unravel, the idea of god, from a rational perspective, becomes more and more implausible, yet we cling to it out of custom and out of fear of being punished for not believing.

The mere idea of a supremely fair being punishing people for not believing in it is oximoronic. It is not fair by any standard that one should be expected to believe something simply because someone else told him he must believe it, a fair being would not demand such a thing. People, on the other hand, would. People searching for a system to bring more people to the faith and keep the people already inside faithful. So fear becomes a instrument of enforcing a supreme superstition that, although it means well and has a moral code worth adhering to, is nothing more than a not-so-well sawn-togeather bunch of fairy tales.

The general public is simply not ready for this kind of logical analysis however. Too many people still live in fear of divine retribution and non-existence. The world is not ready to accept the absence of a god, the fear is so great that many if not most scientists choose to believe in an afterlife, too afraid to consider the alternative. Beliefs out of convenience are a ridiculous idea to say the least, but it will be quite some time before the general public is ready to accept gods non-existence as a fact.

As you read this you might find your self angry at me for saying this, you might feel it is simply not true, or you might agree, however my purpose here is not to anger or insult religious people but simply to open the eyes of the those that might recognize the trought in these words.

Answer 6

Ok but i still like Darwins theory better.

Answer 7

That site is tantamount to saying, "Duh, we disagree." It provides no rational justification for their dissent, shows a blatant lack of understanding about evolution by natural selection as well as systems theory.

In short, there's nothing scientific about their dissent.

Answer 8

If we agree that Man was created out of clay first of all during the act of Creation, where a clay mould was prepared for the main purpose, the infusion of soul into the body of Adam, to cause human spirit into the world with physical as well as divine attributes, then we can see that there are two distinct stages in the creation of Man: first primitive and physical and second spiritual and divine.

If we allow ourselves to think, with due acknowledgment of the limitative nature of our knowledge, that the earliest stages in the process of creation, the development of the clay mould into appropriate form (taq`weem-e-ah`san ma`di), was in fact the process of biological evolution as we understand through scientific knowledge, then the second stage was the stage of completion, the stage the soul was infused into human body; and thus mind was created housed in brain all conscious of himself and also of the Creator.

This is human mind altogether taken over by Darwinian interpretation of evolution making part of the recent developments in science that whenever we think of evolutionary development of human kind, we think only in terms of biological evolution, whereas what we call human being is more than what is merely biological. I think both the scientific evolutionary theory and accounts of creation as claimed in scripture, we can accommodate in our understanding.

Scripture use allegorical language and that, in my humble opinion, is to encompass maximum knowledge for optimum understanding. This is with the purpose to exemplify divine notions in humanly comprehensible terms addressed to all levels of human comprehension, and also to lead the mind from the familiar and merely unto spiritually abstract and higher in existence – Quran does not mention just one reality but realities in existence, as raab-ul-ala`meen and not raab-ul-alam.

But these allegories might be too real, and far too meaningful to the precise nature of scientific and for the restricted domains of certainties required for its method to bear fruit - too real for the understanding of a purely scientifically attuned mind. For instance, all three monotheist religions agree on the story of temptation of Adam in the Gardens of Eden, the act of disobedience and the consequent down fall of Man from a higher dimension onto a baser one. But is it merely a historical account of things that happened sometimes in the past, things bound in time and space? Is it no true that God who created Man, also created heavens and earth, time and space? If space-time continuum is just as much a creation as Man is, then there in Man is surely something that reaches beyond space and time of the physical reality.

What for instance would be the destiny of a child if he would be left in jungle at the mercy of the creature to raise him to be just as much a beast as they themselves? In such arbitrary situation, the mental development will not take place without the guidance of a parent, to develop conscious mind capable of representing the soul innate to all human beings; a child without a realization of his essential human capacity would be just a physical being, what would have only physically evolved.

Then in the earliest days of the life Adam and Eve on earth their children, who were all brothers and sisters, are said to marry each other, which sounds preposterous for all creeds of all times of human civilization. But does not that sounds like bothers and sisters in Islam, for instance, i.e. people bought together by a common realizations of ultra physical spiritual capacities, that in due course of time when gradually they knew their God, they form into a family of prophet Adam (peace be upon him), who was their spiritual father? Could THIS then be the interpretation of the act of infusion of soul into the body on Man closer to the reality? That instead of a traditional picture that we allegorically conceive of the God standing next to Adam who is lying on a heavenly tablet as a mould of clay with angels surrounding him, could we realize that the infusion of soul into body was in fact a giant leap in Man’s mental evolution, when human mind was for the first time realized his divine origins and opened up to its fullest spiritual potentials? But again this interpretation like the most scientific one could also be partial truth, a very personal view of mine, or no truth at all!

The story of Man’s creation, his fall from his original grace and the consequence trials and tribulations on earth, in my humble view, form part of essential human condition as it is now and as it has always been since the dawn of civilization. In my opinion, therefore, all that we believe happened to Adam in fact is happening to every man and woman now. This is the not our destiny but the destiny of our condition to fight temptations of this world, to falter, to repent and rejuvenate our spiritual self through acts of virtue and rediscover our original selves is all. This is all that is portrayed in scripture and is there to read not as records of historically event but also facts of our life as we have them here in this very moment. And so could the act of creation be an ongoing process too? Could it be possible to regress into primitive forms if we act against the purposes of our higher self?

For these reason and more, therefore, I do not think that the divine knowledge of scriptures and its reasoning should be pitched against science as if they were from one and the same origin, or as if it were mandatory for us to check to see if everything scriptural tallies with what we temporarily see though the scientific eye. Scriptures claim absolute truth with a hundred percent certainty and form the basis for human faith; science, on the other hand, is a humble discipline that is systematic and correct only within certain domain of reality rounded on all sides by immense voids of the unknown - the scientific knowledge is never ultimate about anything, and it undergoes inherent changes as it develops.

This is correct that ‘Man is something else’, as there is nothing in the known universe quite like Man. Its nature is quite significantly different from the general nature of all other living things. As a matter of fact, speaking in mystical terms, Man feels quite out of place in this world, which it regards as house of troubles froth with perils to his soul, his higher being. There however is assurance in the words of God that make this physical being not only bearable but also an experience part of journey divine. If we observe and keep to the certain path of righteousness, as it is revealed, you will find your rescue not only in the end but thought out this journey, and the ultimate deliverance from pain and suffering, and your reward for your ultimate success.

However, being human beings, as we are, we are imperfect and make mistakes, and that when we do, we become needlessly or overly physically aware, or possibly dangerously oblivious of spiritually on the other hand. But science does not follow this type of knowledge that is based upon faith of any kind when it indulges into the domains of it physical world to find answers to the question raised by our pure physical awareness, I mentioned. The answer to the question – where do we come from – in science so far is by chance and then through stages of biological evolution. But if asked – where does the matter that forms our physical evolvable biology comes form – science will not have any answer, but most humbly will accept the question as it is.