Series announcement: Addressing the problem of human evolution

Project introduction

In a series of posts starting from this one, I'll be attempting to lay out a robust solution to the problem of human evolution (i.e. the putative conflict between what Islam and science say about human origins). This first post is meant to define my claims and provide appropriate disclaimers, as well as outline the overall strategy I'll be pursuing.

I should note at the outset that this series is not meant to provide a comprehensive answer to every question related to evolution. The problem, by its nature, requires discussion of a lot of different disciplines- not just paleontology and genomics, but also population genetics, linguistics, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and many others such besides. My readings in many of these fields is superficial at best. But in my opinion, tackling the most problematic brunt of the issue can be done without quibbling too much about a lot of the detail. For more clarity, of course, each argument I discuss in this series can be researched and developed to a greater degree of finesse.

The claims I'll be defending

Just this: Allah created humanity miraculously, in a way that cannot be explained on naturalism. The series will argue that this is the best explanation of all the relevant evidence (or at least: this is a better explanation of the evidence than naturalistic evolution). I will also defend the plausibility of humans emerging from a single original couple.

This is in stark contrast to other creatures on this earth, who, for the most part, came about through a process of natural evolution (so I'll be positing). Humanity, however, was a miraculous exception to this process, akin to how the clay birds made by Jesus (peace be upon him) were miraculous exceptions to regular birds. This claim that evolution is the "norm" and miraculous creation is the "exception", reserved for humans, will be important in defending the first claim above.

I think admitting that other creatures evolved is not theologically problematic at all. For a comprehensive defense of this, based on Qur'an, Sunnah and opinions of classical scholars, please see David Solomon Jalajel's book Islam and Biological Evolution.

This is one of the first books you should read about this issue

Note that I'm not claiming that Allah didn't supernaturally create (or otherwise intervene during the evolution of) any of the non-human creatures on earth. He could have, for example, supernaturally created the first life on earth, supernaturally caused the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago that brought about all of animal phyla, or became directly involved with other parts of creation. I'm not ruling any of that out, and that's a separate investigation that fits better under the Intelligent Design research program. I am, however, claiming that for most of the history of life on earth, natural evolutionary processes have been operational. Perhaps somewhat simplistically: most of biological complexity on earth was brought about by natural processes (simplistic because, how do you measure what "most" of biological complexity is?).

Realism about scientific data

In attempting to provide a solution to the problem, I'll be taking the relevant scientific data at face value. So for example, I'll be accepting the reality, dating and interpretation of fossils (except of course, the part where I say humans didn't evolve from any of its fossil ancestors), and the verdict of comparative genomics about how similar we are to chimps. This is not to say there hasn't been any reasonable challenge to this data, and I plan to dedicate at least one post to what I think have been valiant, commendable attempts. The reason I choose to take the scientific evidence at face value is: most attempts at challenging the data of biology has either shown to have been false, or the objections don't really do what their proponents think they do (non sequitur). I'll be discussing some of these failed attempts in this series as well.

To use another popular topic in apologetics as an analogy: consider the age of 'Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) issue. There has been two broad approaches to address it:

a) Accept that 'Aisha married the Prophet when she was nine, and then make sense of it on social, anthropological and moral grounds (this is a good example),

b) Argue, on the basis of scripture, that 'Aisha was married to the Prophet when she was much older (see this example).

My position about the scientific data on human origins is analogous to the first group's position about 'Aisha's age: I take the data at face value, and then attempt to make sense of it.

Outline of the project

So this is the general strategy I'd be pursuing.

1. Defining the problem

In the first post, I'll be laying out exactly why human evolution is a problem. This is just a statement of the putative evidence for human evolution, but I'll be framing this evidence in a way that I think really brings out why evolution is a problem that can't be ignored by Muslims. Specifically, I think most of the evidence for human evolution- fossils, genetics etc- can be summarized under what I call the problem of gratuitous similarity, and this set of phenomena is best explained on evolution. I think a lot of the confusion in addressing the problem stems from failing to understand the gratuitous aspect of the similarity between humans and non-humans, and the specific mode of reasoning used- inference to the best explanation. This will clearly delineate the burden of proof posed by human evolution, and help me frame my own solution down the line. There's also another argument which is not so much for human evolution as it is against Adamic origins: the claim that humans couldn't have originated from a single couple, based on population genetics considerations.

2. Unsuccessful solutions

To be honest, a large motivator for this project has been my constant frustration at seeing Muslims drop the ball on the human evolution issue.

As is standard practice in research, I'll begin by talking about a number of proposed solutions to the human evolution problem which, I think, all come up short in different ways. This is important because, as I'll show, there are lessons to be salvaged from these approaches, which would prefigure my own proposed solution. Also, engaging with the prevalent discourse would add to the comprehensiveness of this project.

Specifically, the approaches I'll be critiquing are:

a) Scripture can accommodate human evolution. The best case for this has been made by David Solomon Jalajel here.

b) Appealing to problems in the mechanisms in evolution (neo-Darwinism) to address human evolution. Many people consciously and unconsciously engage in this, including many proponents of the Intelligent Design movement.

Richard Owen was a contemporary of Darwin. He didn't buy Darwin's mechanism of how things evolved. That didn't stop him from accepting evolution

c) Appealing to scientific antirealism. This one, in my opinion, is probably the most grotesque, and yet somehow quite popular. Essentially, this involves undermining the epistemological basis for all of science to get back at human evolution. iERA's old essay on the topic is a good example of this approach, but I don't know if their methods have changed in recent years.

d) Addressing "talking points" of proponents of evolution, instead of the evidence itself. Just because evolutionist talking points are wrong, doesn't mean there's no evidence for human evolution (compare with this "climate denier" claim: "only" 93% of scientists believe in climate change, not the usually claimed 97%, so the problem is solved). Not to mention, a lot of the time- the criticisms of the talking points are themselves wrong. I'll be providing a lot of examples of this approach in my essay.

Of course, I won't be addressing the "meme"-esque refutations to human evolution based of blatant misunderstanding of the evidence (e.g. evolution is "just a theory", why are there still monkeys, etc).

3. Constructing an Islamic creation model

At this point, I'll take an important theological excursus to answer this general question: How does Allah create things? Or alternatively: Is there a general pattern to His action in the world? I think this is an extremely important question to answer, because that helps us address this other question: Assuming that the Islamic creation story is true- how would we expect the evidence to look?

It's absolutely essential we construct this model before we look at the actual evidence, because it's the tool which will help us interpret all of the evidence to follow. For this purpose, I'll first marshal some scriptural and theological considerations to construct and justify general expectations about Allah's creation. I'll then list a number of predictions which follow from this. The rest of this series would then just be holding up individual pieces of evidence, and assessing whether it confirms our predictions or not. My strategy would be to show that the evidence confirms all of the predictions of the Islamic creation model. On balance, then, Islam would be a better explanation of the human origin evidence than evolution.

I think this section is the most original aspect of this project. That said, this prediction-first-evidence-later approach was used by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross in their book Who was Adam? A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Humanity, even though I think some of their predictions were poorly thought out, contradicted most of the evidence, and almost all of their major conclusions were wrong. This goes to my earlier point about there being salvageable lessons even in an ultimately unsuccessful approach.

Funny story about this book: it first came out in 2005, and then in 2015- the authors added a new section to the book to account for all of the new data that had become available. As I said, the conclusions of the book are wrong, but it's very useful to read- especially when you're just starting to study this problem

4. Examining the evidence: fossils and genetics

This step onward would be looking at the putative fossil and genetic evidence for human evolution. To evaluate the fossil evidence, we would actually have to make educated guesses about when Adam might have emerged, and which fossil hominids can be considered his children, and which, in all likelihood, can't. On the genetics side, I'll be looking at different vestigial genetic elements like endogenous retroviruses and other mobile elements shared between humans and chimps, the putative chromosome fusion event, and the high degree of similarity between our genomes that can't be explained by functional constraints. I believe the responses I develop for vestigial genetic elements would apply to vestigial parts of our anatomy as well.

5. Examining the evidence: language and consciousness

Humans are so much more than just bones and genes. In order to evaluate predictions about human origins, we can't limit ourselves to just those two, but also consider other things that make us human, like symbolic thought, autobiographical memory, self awareness, and other such features. Here again the approach remains the same: assessing whether the existence of these features follow from predictions of the Islamic creation model.

This way of "expanding the evidence base" is essential to my approach, and is reminiscent of this essay by Yasir Qadhi and Nazir Khan. Of everything I've read from Muslims on evolution, this is probably the article I have the fewest number of issues with.

6. Population genetics issues

As alluded to above, there are some arguments based on population genetics which claim that humans could not have arisen from just an original couple. I'll be addressing this argument, mostly based on the work by Joshua Swamidass, Ann Gauger and Ola Hössjer, and Richard Buggs.

7. Alternative facts and loose ends

In the last parts of this series, I'll be discussing two things. First, as I said, I'll be mostly taking the scientific data on human origins at face value. However, there are a handful of researchers who have brought about some interesting reasons to doubt parts of this data. I'll be discussing some of this as promising research avenues to pursue. I'll probably also tie up any other loose ends in my argument at this point.

I'll end the series by talking about the future of all this. After all is said and done, I think (as the series would hopefully demonstrate) human evolution is a tractable problem in apologetics. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, when it comes to human origins, Islam has a very modest burden that it expects us to defend. I think that burden is altogether reasonable, and supported by the weight of the evidence. As such, I believe this problem can be solved conclusively within this generation, and we can move on to other things.