15. Why Is It Mistaken To Think That God Could Have Created Living Things By Evolution?

While it has been scientifically proven that the magnificent design apparent in all living and non-living things in the universe could not have come about by the blind forces of nature and chance, some people nevertheless claim that there is indeed a Creator, but that He created life through an evolutionary process.

The Qur'an contains not one verse about creation being based on evolution.

It is evident that God, the Almighty, created the whole universe and life. It is His decision whether creation should be instantaneous or by stages. We can only understand how it happened by means of the information God has given us (in other words, from the verses of the Qur'an), and the scientific evidence apparent in nature.

When we look at these two sources, we see no case for "creation by evolution."

God has revealed many verses in the Qur'an which deal with the creation of man, life, and the universe. None of these verses contains any information about creation through evolution. In other words, not one verse indicates that living things came about by evolving from one another. On the contrary, it is revealed in those verses that life and the universe were brought into being by God's command "Be!"

Scientific discoveries have also revealed that "creation by means of evolution" is out of the question. The fossil record shows that different species emerged not by evolving from one another, but independently, suddenly, and with all their individual structures. In other words, creation is different for every species.

If there were such a thing as "creation by means of evolution," we should be able to see the proof of it today. God has created everything in a particular order, within a framework of causes and laws. For instance, it is most certainly God Who makes ships float on water. However, when we look for the cause of this, we see that it is the creation of the supporting power of water. It is nothing other than the might of God that allows birds to fly. In fact, when we examine how it happens, we find the laws of aerodynamics. For this reason, if life had been created by a process of various stages, there would obviously be systems that provide the laws and advances in genetics to explain it. Furthermore, other physical, chemical, and biological laws would be known. There would be proof from laboratory research to show that one living species could turn into another. Yet again, it should be possible thanks to that research to develop enzymes, hormones, and similar molecules that a species lacks in order to bring advantages to it. In addition, it would be possible to create new organelles and structures that the living thing in question had never possessed before.

Lobster fossils from the Ordovician Age: they are no different from living lobsters.

Laboratory studies would be able to show examples of creatures that had been mutated and actually benefited from the process. We would furthermore see that these mutations could be passed on to subsequent generations and actually become a part of the species. Then again, there would be millions of fossils of intermediate forms that had lived in the past, and there would be living things in our time that had not yet completed their transition processes. In short, there should be countless examples of such a process.

However, there is not a single piece of evidence that one species transmutates into another. As we have already seen, fossil data show that living species emerged all at once, with no ancestors behind them. In the same way as this fact destroys the theory of evolution, which claims that life came about by chance, it also shows the scientific invalidity of the claim that God brought life into being and then it evolved by stages.

110-million-year-old fish fossils from the Santana fossil bed in Brazil.

God created living things in a supernatural way, by the single command "Be!" Modern science confirms this fact, and proves that living things emerged suddenly on the Earth.

Those who support the idea that "It is possible that God created living things by means of evolution" are actually trying to build "reconciliation" between creation and Darwinism. They are making a fundamental mistake, however. They are missing the basic logic of Darwinism and the kind of philosophy it serves. Darwinism does not consist of the concept of the transmutation of species. It is actually an attempt to explain the origin of living species by material factors alone. To put it another way, it tries to gain acceptance for the claim that living things are the product of nature, by giving it a scientific veneer. There can be no "common ground" between that naturalistic philosophy and a belief in God. It is a grave error in an effort to seek to find such common ground, to cede ground to Darwinism, and to agree with the false claim that it is a scientific theory. As 150 years of history have shown, Darwinism is the backbone of materialist philosophy and atheism, and no search for common ground will ever change the fact.