Dr Usama Hasan, a science lecturer and Muslim has resigned his position as an Imam at the Leyton mosque in East London because of death threats received after he dared to suggest, in a piece in the Guardian, that the facts of evolution may potentially be incorporated into Islam, just as they have been into Catholicism. What Dr Hasan was referring to is the idea that God created man via evolution, a delightful little brain fart first conceived by Catholics who were too embarrassed to continue pitching Adam and Eve as anything other than a fairy tale invented to try to explain to children something the authors of Genesis could not explain.
Of course this little deistic work-around isn't true either, one of the facts of evolution is that it's not a directed process, there is no pre-determination of the outcome of random genetic mutation (the clue is in the name) this has been shown by experiment. The improbability that God achieved this by purposefully tweaking every one of a googolplex of cell mutations over the period of the 14 billion* years that it took to get from big bang to the Pope doesn't seem to worry the faithful. The skeptic is left wondering why an omnipotent God would bother to do something this laboriously, however, would also recognise that this idea has got something very important going for it, however ridiculous, it's nicely unfalsifiable as all good religious ideas need to be these days.
*Approximate..
2 comments:
Interesting blog, mate.
Take a look at my blog and the one on belief and unbelief as we really have much in common. At times I lose faith and say, "perhaps we are all alone?"
at times you may say, maybe there is a God?" even if the thought very rare.
We humans are a "scatter-brained lot afterall.
Take care,
Hi Dave, you are right there, although sometimes I also say "maybe there are pixies" when I loose my keys, so much for what I say!
Regards,
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