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Introduction
When I posted an article on Talk Reason, in July 2002, on the peculiar brand of
old-style apologetics mixed with pseudo-science that is Harun Yahya, I did not
expect the response I would get. A flurry of appeals was made, however, to all
the sites I contributed to, in an attempt to get published a refutation of my article
by Harun Yahya himself. This was rather surprising at the time but, given the
level of hostility that Islamists manifest time after time towards my writings, I
should not have been surprised.
I have not, however, answered to that reply until now. The necessity, or lack
thereof, of this article is left to the reader's judgment. You can see for yourself, as
Mr. Yahya's reply is available at
A good example of this approach is his very first point, where he addresses my
remark that promoting God's wrath and peace at the same time is rather
hypocritical. In reply, he posits that:
After telling us this, he also says he finds it incredible that I cannot grasp such a
simple concept. How ironic: I find it incredible that Mr. Yahya dares to write such
arguments. He insults the very notion of justice itself by treating it as the tool of a
wrathful and impetuous god. As the maxim says, what is good for the goose is
good for the gander. If justice from our standpoint demands that we treat people
well, then a god, to be just, must also do this towards his creations.
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Miracles.cfm 2
Of course, theologians often use words in "divine" meanings that they do not see
fit to circumscribe or justify. Perhaps this is what Mr. Yahya is doing with
"justice". If that is the case, he should simply admit that he does not believe that
his god is infinitely just, but rather that his god's subjective appreciations are to
be considered infinitely just by fiat. Granted, such rationalizations taste flat to the
mind of a logical man, but the position that a god is justified to do anything by
virtue of being Creator is highly illogical to begin with.
He does, however, cursorily invoke both fine-tuning and the origins of life as such
evidence. Apparently Mr. Yahya is ignorant that there is an entire scientific
discipline -- abiogenesis -- that concerns itself with the study of the origins of life.
Surely he does not need my help to read up on it? There have been no reasons
found so far to reject natural law as the driving force of abiogenesis.
Even if we assume that it is possible, the argument from fine-tuning reduces itself
to an argument from design, in that it attempts to prove design from natural facts.
By doing so, it suffers from the same flaws: it is not sufficient to simply jump from
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Miracles.cfm 3
In his examination of Qur'an embryology, Mr. Yahya falls back to a "God did it"
position by saying that the embryology as described by the Qur'an only applied to
God's miraculous creation of the first man. He is going to have to discuss this
with his fellow Islamic theologians, who often use the verses in 23: 12-14 to
"prove" that the Qur'an is scientifically accurate.
Mr. Yahya also invokes the "spiritual effect" of the Qur'an, as well as the fact that
it "contains many miracles". If a book has a spiritual effect on someone, or even
many people, should we consider it divine? Surely not. Otherwise Mr. Yahya is
forced as well to accept the Bible and the Torah, which both have "spiritual
effect" and "contain many miracles". And of course any book can "contain
miracles": such argument is circular and proves nothing except that a book
claims miracles for itself.
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Miracles.cfm 4
Misrepresentations of Neo-Darwinism
Mr. Yahya answers to each of my points in turn, and I will continue doing so here.
Mr. Yahya also seems to concede that evolution is not based on chance, but
rather its "critical mechanism", mutations. Why he designates this mechanism, as
opposed to any other, as "critical", is not only arbitrary, but a misrepresentation of
the debate on this subject in the field. Most biologists would not agree with him
that the issue is settled -- some, like Richard Dawkins, say that natural selection
is more important; while others, such as Stephen Jay Gould, say that the process
of extinction is more important. Yet he makes it appear as if the issue is settled.
Finally, he concludes by pointing out that my listing of mutation types does not
prove that mutations are not chance:
But my point, as I stated clearly in my answer, was that we are quite aware of the
genetic processes that regulate mutations and their effects. We can explain when
and how these mutations occur, and we can associate the location of a mutation
with its effects. We can explain the kinds of mutations that take place. This show
that mutations are not "chance", but rather are a cause and effect of natural law.
Mr. Yahya's argument, once again, seems to rely on fundamental ignorance.
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Miracles.cfm 5
In my article, I pointed out that Mr. Yahya contradicts himself when he states
both that Allah created each species individually, and created them all at the
Cambrian Explosion. In this reply, he now contradicts himself even further by
acknowledging that some species did exist before the Explosion:
So which one is it? Did God create all species at once, or did he decide to create
some and then the rest, and where is this in the Qur'an?
In support for his assertion of a "fossil fiasco", he can only produce one quote
from Robert Carroll, which tells us that Darwin expected more transitional forms
than we have today. What does Darwin's expectations have to do with Mr.
Yahya's supposed "fossil fiasco"? The fossil record is detailed enough to permit
us to draw the inevitable conclusion that the changes in phenotype (and
therefore genotype) tend towards greater adaptation.
3. Order = Creation.
Mr. Yahya claims that I am using evolutionist presuppositions when I state that
there is no design in living things. He fails to grasp the fundamental issue once
again. As I explained:
Mr. Yahya also did not answer the lack of specificity of his argument, as I pointed
out in my article.
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Miracles.cfm 6
Mr. Yahya has no answer to this point, preferring to claim that he uses science to
prove his arguments -- when in truth all he does is use disparate facts and
calculations to jump to assertions of design with no evidence whatsoever to do
so -- and that I should abandon the idea that science is the same thing as
materialism. Yet I never stated that science was materialism, I stated that
science was based on materialism.
To support his assertion that instincts have a divine creator and sustainer, Mr.
Yahya proposes two arguments. His first argument is to circularly assume design
and conclude that animals do not have the intelligence necessary for such
design:
Of course the animal has no intelligence with which to design such behaviour. It
is an instinct, and thus a product of selection instead of a product of intelligence.
The only way that Mr. Yahya could even begin to prove his objection would be by
pointing out instincts with no evolutionary advantage. Camouflage behaviour has
obvious evolutionary advantage, and therefore there is no question at all that
such instincts evolved.
His second objection is that the building of genetic information has never been
observed. This is false. Both the fossil record and laboratory experiments are
sufficient evidence of this process.
Since Mr. Yahya fails miserably at this simple task, bringing up the numerous
beneficial mutations in micro-organisms, which he should have read about if he
had any real interest in evolution at all, would be unsporting.
7. No vestigial organs.
quotes Darwin. How does that answer the point? What Darwin thought has no
relevance to Neo-Darwinism today, except as historical basis.
Evolution does not state that proteins, cells or DNA arose by change, since it
works by small successive changes. Rather, the real issue is what entities come
prior to proteins, cells and DNA. His answer consists of this:
I fail to grasp what this is supposed to prove. Obviously 50% of the protein
Cytochrome-C fulfils half of the evolutionary advantage than Cytochrome-C
provides, and therefore does "serve a purpose". As for his point about DNA, I
repeat that no theory of evolution proposes that DNA sprang from chance. That
is simply not evolution at all, and Mr. Yahya is therefore mounting a straw man in
his answers.
Social issues
Mr. Yahya ends his article with some bold claims:
He did not, however, address the point that belief in the afterlife and salvation are
fatal to the "religion is moral" position, as well as answer my other moral
arguments.
He also fails to do anything here except assert that religion teaches us to rein in
passions. The empirical data simply does not support it -- Christians, for
example, have been proven to indulge in criminality, divorce, drugs, illicit sex,
cheating, overeating, and other such "passions". But we also observe that
religious moral rules, due to their amoral, inhuman and contradictory nature, are
followed or not according to social trends, thus failing to rein in people's
"passions".
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Miracles.cfm 8
For a full account of the subjectivity of Christian morality, which is beyond the
subject of this article, see my opening case against Jason Gastrich at
http://www.objectivethought.com/debates/gastrich1a.html. These arguments
apply to Islamic morality as well.
Finally, Mr. Yahya posits that Social Darwinism is indeed alive and well, in the
form of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology today. Yet these topics do not
propose a "necessary relation between the behaviour of lower animals and ours",
or as he says, "account for human behaviour in terms of animals' behaviour",
which was my objection in the first place. Sociobiology and evolutionary
psychology are purely descriptive studies, while Social Darwinism is inherently
prescriptive.
Insofar as Mr. Yahya has replied to my objections, he has proposed that miracles
explain away inconsistencies. But "God did it" is a non-explanation. It does not
help us discover new facts, but rather stops the discovery of facts by pushing all
causality on a transcendent, unknowable being. Furthermore, positing miracles is
unwarranted unless one can reject the power of natural law in some way;
something that Mr. Yahya has been unable to do in all his work.
Unless he can give a rational basis for his belief in divine creation and divine
design, based on a scientific criteria of design, we cannot take his arguments
seriously. The power of natural law stands untouched, indeed rather enhanced,
by Mr. Yahya's arguments.