The Religion Of Darwinism

The Origins of The Religion of Darwinism

Although it is customary to credit the inception of this theory to Charles Darwin and his immediate predecessors, a rudimentary form of this notion can be traced back to the beginnings of written history itself. In fact, the belief that life had its origins in a single basic substance is so wide-spread among the various peoples of the world, primitive or civilized, that it can be considered one of the few universal themes in the history of ideas.(Ernest L. Abel, Ancient Views on the Origin of Life, Farleigh; Dickinson University Press, 1973, p. 15.)

If anyone was asked, "What is religion?" he might answer that religion is comprised of divine laws that guide man to Allah's way and to absolute good. But this definition does not apply to many religions in the world today. These can be divided into two main groups: those monotheist religions such as IslAm, Christianity and Judaism which are based on revelation from Allah to humanity through the agency of prophets, and superstitious religions invented by human beings, which are nothing more than a few old wives' tales.

Monotheistic religions invite people to believe in one God, in His prophets, holy books and the Hereafter, with the destinations of Paradise and Hell. Superstitious religions, on the contrary, alienate people from truth, draw them into totemism, idolatry and degenerate sects, filling their lives with innumerable strange doctrines and beliefs, charms and incantations, rituals and traditions. Some of those who espouse such religions worship totems, others worship the sun; some believe in aliens, others perform rituals in front of idols made of stone or wood, offering gifts to placate them and expecting to obtain benefit from them. When lightening flashes, they assume one of their deities is angry; when it rains, they think he is crying. The person who believes such things is called in the Qur’An an idolater, i.e., someone who associates an equal to Allah from among His creation; in western literature he is called a pagan. Such people have no place in their lives for reason, conscience, logic or the realities of the world.

The explanations they give for the formation of life and the existence of living species are an extension of the same ignorant approach. It has generally been believed that the universe and all living things are made of air, water and fire, or that they came from outer space. Another common belief is that the universe has always existed and will continue to exist forever. Pagan religions assert that the universe was brought into being by the gods of wood and stone that they worship. According to this misguided belief, every god has created a segment of the universe and rules over the part he has brought into being; one god rules the sky, another the sea, and another the earth and human beings.

The study of comparative religion shows that a large number of superstitious religions have been influenced by one another, and many similarities can be detected in their beliefs and doctrines. The ancient pagan religions of Greece and Mesopotamia formed the basis of many modern religions which adopted their beliefs and doctrines. One superstitious religion that grew out of them is the religion of Darwinism.

There are many similarities between Darwinism and other superstitious religions regarding their understanding of the formation of the universe and of living things and in their general beliefs and doctrines. Contrary to what a large number of people believe, Darwinism is not an established scientific theory based on facts, observation and experiment but merely a rationalistic attempt, based on a non-scientific foundation, to explain the universe. In the course of this book Darwinism will be compared with other manmade religions with regard to its origins, its founder, its scripture, its understanding of the world, and its missionary activities.

There is No Difference Between Darwinism and Other Manmade Religions

Darwinism did not begin with the theory established by the amateur observations and investigations of Charles Darwin and other scientists in the 19th century. Its origins go back to much earlier materialist philosophies. Darwinist beliefs were first encountered a few thousand years ago in the polytheistic and materialistic religions of Greece and Sumeria. Therefore, Charles Darwin was not the first person to put forward the idea of evolution; he was an amateur researcher who traced the main outlines of this basic belief, gave form to its doctrines, and later established a theory.

From the earliest ages there have been pagan peoples. In every era human beings have made idols for themselves. In the same way that Darwinists accept coincidence and lifeless matter as idols with creative power, in earlier societies with a misguided belief, similar things were worshipped as idols.
Top left: A Sumerian tablet describing the stages, according to their superstitious belief, in the creation of human beings upon the order of the water god.
Top right: Hammurabi praying before the Mesopotamian sun god.
Bottom: Representations of the Sumerian water gods.

The inscriptions of pagan Sumeria, which deny Allah and assert that living things came to be through an evolutionary process, form the backbone of the religion of Darwinism.17 When Sumerian inscriptions were examined, they revealed a legend stating that first there was a watery chaos and out of that two gods emerged: Lahmu and Lahamu. According to this belief, the two gods first created themselves, and later as they evolved, brought other material and living things into existence. In other words, life appeared all at once from the lifeless, watery chaos. The evolutionists' belief that living things first formed from lifeless matter has much in common with the Sumerian belief that the universe developed through an evolutionary process.

In the picture above a human being worships a crocodile. As in the past, some societies today worship animals such as crocodiles, cows or lifeless things such as water or fire, believing that they are gods with creative power. There is nothing in this belief compatible with reason, logic or conscience. It is clear that a crocodile is too weak in mind to have any power or wisdom. However, Darwinists espouse a similar belief. For them it is not crocodiles or fire that has creative power but unconscious atoms and coincidences. They adhere to this belief as to a religion.

According to the unintelligent and antiscientific claims of the evolutionists, some chemical substances such as carbon and phosphorus in the primitive atmosphere happened to come together in the right proportions and, as a result of the effects of lightening storms, formed living things. There is really no difference between this belief and a pagan's worship of the storm god.

When ancient Egyptian religion is examined, the same beliefs are found; "snakes, frogs, worms and mice were said to be created from the mud deposited by the flooding of the Nile."18 In other words, denying the existence of a Creator, the Egyptians also believed that living things came out of mud at random. The creation myths of both the Egyptians and Babylonians include the concept of a "primordial sea from which the earth and life arose." 19

It is erroneous to think that this concept has now disappeared into the mists of history and perished along with ancient civilizations. Today evolutionists maintain the same idea; they would have the scientific world believe that first there was the sea, the watery chaos, or as they call it, "primeval soup." According to the theory of evolution, four billion years ago some inanimate chemical elements in the primal earth's atmosphere necessary for the development of life, such as carbon and phosphorus, by an operation of chance factors came together in water under the right conditions and in the right proportions. In the meantime there were lightening storms and quakes, and the first building block of life, amino acids, came into being. By the same operation these amino acids became proteins, the proteins formed cells, and through the continuation of this chain of random occurrences, human beings finally came to be...

However, the claim that lifeless matter can coalesce to form life has not been verified in any observation or experiment; it is an extra-scientific claim. Every living cell comes into existence from the division of another living cell. No one in the whole world, even in the most advanced laboratory, has succeeded in making a living cell from non-living material, which shows that the first cell was most certainly created with conscious intent.

Hinduism, which has found masses of adherents for itself in southern Asia with its complex rituals and pagan doctrines, is also founded on the belief that all living things emerged from the oceans. This belief is expounded in detail in the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda scriptures which illustrate Hindu doctrines with stories of legendary characters. Hinduism rejects the idea of a Creator; according to its philosophy, the whole of the universe evolved out of a huge, glob like mass of material substance, "prakriti." Everything, animate and inanimate, evolved from this primordial substance. At the end of each cosmic period all things are dissolved into their original elements, into prakriti, after which the whole evolutionary process begins again.20 That is, the universe is reformed from this primal lifeless matter.

One of the greatest impasses in the religion of Darwinism is the question of how living things first came into being. Evolutionists generally prefer to avoid this question because the most concrete answer they can give is no different from that given by religions of centuries ago. During the period in which Darwinism developed, false beliefs about the formation of living things were already prevalent; flies came from sweat, frogs from mud, and ants from sugar.

The Hindu river goddess.

One of these nonsensical beliefs is that of the "hopeful monster" – the strangest theory in the history of evolution. Due to the fact that the hoped-for transitional fossil forms had not been found, some evolutionists were under a good deal of pressure. So they decided that there was no need for transitional forms because the transition from one species to another had happened suddenly. Consequently, they proposed the theory of the hopeful monster. According to this theory, the formation of living things is no different from the claim that ants came from sugar. The first bird emerged suddenly from a reptile egg; later, in the same way, another bird came by chance from another egg. These two birds came together, and a bird family formed. A similar theory, proposed by Charles Darwin, is that bears who spent much time in water changed into whales in the course of time. However, today's scientific facts clearly demonstrate how unscientific and deceptive is this claim.21

The Same Pagan Understanding Continues

One of the salient characteristics of pagan religions is the attribution of power to lifeless statues and other objects of wood or stone, which cannot speak or have any strength. Yet people expect favor from them and even believe that these lifeless idols created the universe and all living things, that they set the whole universe in motion, that they supply the needs of mankind and grant health and blessing. Interestingly, similar beliefs can be seen among modern evolutionists. As the pagans of ages past believed that lifeless statues had power to create, evolutionists believe that lifeless matter composed of unconscious atoms has creative power. They claim that lifeless materials came together by coincidence, organized themselves and formed living beings with flawless, highly complex characteristics. Most prominent among idols is one that has changed only in name since ancient times – "nature" or "Mother Nature."

Just as Darwinists regard lifeless matter as the creator of living things, pagans worshipped statues carved from stone.

Tornadoes, earth-quakes and floods are attributed to "the anger of Mother Nature" or are seen as "expressions of nature," but no one has any explanation for this power that is called "nature." This same belief was present in societies of the past but under a different name. In Greek mythology Mother Nature was called "Gaia" and in pagan religions was known as the goddess of plenty. What evolutionists have done is simply to change the names and symbols, attributing the same power to unconscious atoms.

Actually, evolutionists admit this openly. An evolutionist scientist by the name of James Lovelock proposed what is known as the "Gaia theory" according to which the planet earth is a living thing. This is an example showing that what the evolutionists put forward as "theory" is the beliefs of classical pagan religions.

To believe in the creative power of coincidence, inanimate matter or unconscious atoms is certainly a travesty of reason. Just as the pagans believed that lifeless idols created existing things, so evolutionists believe that lifeless material formed living things. The origin of this belief is in the view that everything is somehow divine, that inanimate matter is possessed of intelligence and will, and that it is capable of making decisions and implementing them.

In the Qur’An, Allah speaks of those who worship other than Him and make gods for themselves of idols. He describes the struggle between His prophets and such people. One of the pagan communities mentioned in the Qur’An is that of Abraham:

"[Mention] when he said to his father, 'O my father, why do you worship that which does not hear and does not see and will not benefit you at all?'"22

As stated in this verse, Abraham's father and tribe fashioned lifeless, powerless statues with their own hands and accepted them as gods. They worshipped them and supposed they could fulfill their needs, cure their illnesses, and give them hardship or blessing.

The evolutionist scientist Lovelock, who proposed the idea that the planet earth was a living thing, stated that he was inspired by Gaia, the earth goddess of Greek mythology.

Sun Worship

Another similarity between the beliefs of modern evolutionists and those of past pagan societies is that both are based on sun worship. Sun worship goes back to the earliest periods of history. People knew the sun provided them with light and heat, so they felt indebted to this celestial body and considered it a god. In the past this deviant belief kept many people away from Allah's true religion. The Qur’An touches on this subject telling how the people of Sheba worshipped the sun in Solomon's time:

"[The hoopoe said], 'I found her and her people prostrating to the sun instead of Allah, and Satan has made their deeds pleasing to them and averted them from the [right] way, so they are not guided. And they do not prostrate to Allah, who brings forth what is hidden within the heavens and the earth and knows what you conceal and what you declare.'"23

Several societies in the past believed in sun worship. Likewise, evolutionists of today think that the sun is responsible for the formation of living things. Some even go so far as to say that the sun worship of their ancestors was a highly intelligent belief.

It is true that the sun provides the world with light and heat, but the one who deserves credit for this is Allah, who created the sun. The sun is a material mass without consciousness; there was a time when it did not exist, and there will be one when its fuel will be exhausted and it will be extinguished. Perhaps Allah will destroy it even before that day. For He created the sun from nothing, like all heavenly bodies, and therefore it is Allah who should be praised and glorified for their existence. In one verse the reality is expressed in these words:

"And of His signs are the night and day and the sun and moon. Do not prostrate to the sun or to the moon, but prostrate to Allah, who created them, if you should worship Him." 24

Carl Sagan and his book Cosmos, in which he commends sun worship.

It is interesting that modern evolutionists recapitulate the basic beliefs of the old sun worshippers by proclaiming that they owe their existence to the sun. When the beginnings of evolution are considered, the sun is acknowledged as the source of every living thing in the world. According to evolutionists, light from the sun caused the appearance of the first living things on the earth. Later it was the sun's energy that caused the formation and mutation of living species. The approach of evolutionists in this regard was best summed up by the American atheist evolutionist and enemy of religion, Carl Sagan. In his book Cosmos, Sagan said, "If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the sun and stars?" In the same book, he wrote, "Our ancestors worshipped the sun, and they were far from foolish." 25

Carl Sagan's teacher, the evolutionist astronomer Harlow Shapley, is known for saying, "Some piously record, 'In the beginning, God...' but I say, 'In the beginning, hydrogen.'" Shapley believed that the first element that existed was hydrogen and that this gas, in the course of time, developed by itself into human beings, animals and trees.

At the root of all these nonsensical evolutionist ideas lies the divinization of material things and of nature; evolutionist religion worships material things and nature. But anyone using his intelligence can understand that the universe is not a product of lifeless and unconscious matter; on the contrary, he will see in every de­ta­il ext­ra­or­di­nary in­tel­ligen­ce, artistry and intent. He perceives the existence of Allah through His perfect and precise creation. But today some people are blind to this reality and continue to worship material things as did the people of Sheba.

"And Satan has made their deeds pleasing to them and averted them from the [right] way, so they are not guided." 26

The Perversity of All False Religions: Denial of God

Buddhists worship Buddha statues that they make with their own hands supposing that they hear and see them.

Among the religions with an evolutionist mentality are Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Like other pagan religions, Buddhism rejects the concept of a Creator, believing that the universe is uncreated and eternally evolving, and today's Buddhism accepts the same idea. 27

All such beliefs have noticeable parallels with the religion of Darwinism: the denial of a Creator, the belief that water was the first material substance that brought living things into being, the belief that living things evolved from lifeless matter and developed to form other living species, and the belief that they were not formed by intelligent design but by random chance.

Today, no scientist with an objective mind can defend the above list of beliefs because science has demonstrated that living things were created according to a magnificent design with intelligence and plan. One of the most prominent names in the increasingly widespread "intelligent design" theory is the American biochemist, Michael J. Behe, who writes:

The dilemma is that while one side of the [issue] is labeled intelligent design, the other side must be labeled God. 28

The reality that the evolutionist mind can never accept is that Allah exists and that He created the universe perfectly and with a purpose. However, it only takes a moment's thought to understand this obvious reality. In a number of verses in the Qur’An, Allah invites human beings to think about the things He has created:

Michael Behe giving a lecture in which he demonstrates with scientific evidence the existence of an intelligent design in nature, demolishing the claim of coincidence.

"Have they not looked at the heaven above them – how We structured it and adorned it and [how] it has no rifts? And the earth – We spread it out and cast therein firmly set mountains and made grow therein [something] of every beautiful kind, giving insight and a reminder for every servant who turns [to Allah]. And We have sent down blessed rain from the sky and made grow thereby gardens and grain from the harvest and lofty palm trees having fruit arranged in layers – as provision for the servants, and We have given life thereby to a dead land. Thus is the emergence [i.e., resurrection]." 29

When examining the countless proofs of creation around them, scientists who listen to their consciences and escape the dogmatic frame of mind that denies Allah can readily accept the existence of a Creator. But the Darwinists, who have not been able to remove themselves from this way of thinking, continue to honor strange beliefs from pagan cultures, and moreover, try to present them as a basis for scientific and rational thinking.

Pagan Greek Thinkers Sowed the First Seeds of Darwinism

Empedocles

The precursor of Darwinist ideas was presented by Greek Milesian philosophers who had no knowledge of the laws of physics, chemistry or biology. One of the most important assertions of these philosophers, among whom were Thales, Anaximander and Empedocles, was that living things (animals, human beings and plants) were generated spontaneously from inanimate elements such as air, fire and water. According to this theory, the first living things came into being suddenly and spontaneously in water, and after a while some creatures left the water and adapted to living on land.

The first of these Milesian philosophers was Thales. He lived in a coastal city and spent a long time in Egypt, where he was influenced by the importance of the Nile river in the lives of its inhabitants. He became obsessed with the idea that living things could generate themselves from water, a conclusion he had reached by the use of simple logic and inference but with no experiment or scientific observation. Later, other Milesian philosophers established theories on the basis of the same logic.

Top: Thales claimed that living things could generate themselves from water.
Bottom: The imaginary god that Egyptians believed protected the Nile.

After Thales the most important thinker was his pupil Anaximander, who contributed two important materialist doctrines to the annals of western thought. The first of these is that the universe has always existed and will continue to exist into eternity. The second is an idea that had begun to take shape in the time of Thales: that living things evolved from one another. Anaximander even wrote a poem called "On Nature," which is the first literary work to contain a theory of evolution. In this poem he wrote that creatures arose from slime that had been dried by the sun. He assumed that the first animals were covered with prickly scales and lived in the seas. As these fish-like creatures evolved, they moved onto land, shed their scaly coverings and eventually became human beings.30 Philosophy books explain how Anaximander shaped the foundation of the theory of evolution:

We find that Anaximander of Miletus (611-546 B.C.) advanced the traditional evolutionary idea, already quite common in his day, that life first evolved from a type of pre-biotic soup, helped along a bit by the rays of the sun. He believed that the first animals developed from sea slime which had been evaporated by the sun rays. He also believed that men were descended from fish. 31

We meet an explanation similar to that of Anaximander in Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species. There is basically no difference between the theory of evolution proposed there (in spite of its pseudo-scientific claims) and the account of the Milesian philosophers who lived in the pagan culture of ancient Greece.

The most important element of Darwin's theory, the concept of "natural selection," also has ancient Greek roots. The thesis that natural selection is due to a struggle for survival among the species is first encountered in the work of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. According to Heraclitus' thesis, there is a constant struggle among living things. In a sense this is the origin of Darwin's theory of natural selection 2,500 years later.

Empedocles (495-435 BC), who lived later than Thales and Anaximander, believed that everything present on the earth came to be through random intermixtures in varying proportions of water, air, fire and earth. The writer David Skjaerlund, who has investigated the philosophical roots of the theory of evolution in his book Philosophical Origins of Evolution, states that Empedocles had some interesting ideas; he "believed that chance alone was responsible for the entire process and that man had developed from prior plant life."32 The concept of chance in ancient religions forms a basic belief and is also the most important idol of the religion of Darwinism.

Democritus is another Greek philosopher who contributed to the theory of evolution and to those materialist philosophies that take the theory for their foundation. According to Democritus, the universe is composed of small particles called atoms and apart from matter nothing exists. Atoms have always existed – uncreated and indestructible. Hence, matter has always existed and will continue to exist into eternity. Democritus rejected any kind of spiritual faith and claimed that spiritual values, even morality, can be reduced to atoms. Thus, Democritus has been called the first true materialist philosopher; to him the universe has no purpose, everything moves according to a blind necessity, and everything came into being spontaneously by itself. One is reminded again of the false gods of modern evolutionists – unconscious atoms.

Democritus, like modern materialists, believed erroneously that matter is eternal and that nothing exists but matter.

Unconscious atoms composing the universe – the world, the air we breathe, what we eat and drink, our bodies – in short, everything we perceive, are central to the Darwinian theory. It is well known that every living thing, human beings included, is made up of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, calcium, magnesium, iron and other elements. Darwinism claims that these atoms came together randomly by chance. According to this nonsensical claim, the various atoms that were formed by some unknown impulse later came together incidentally to form stars, planets and all heavenly bodies. After a time atoms again came together by chance to form a living cell with a highly complex structure. Then this living cell underwent a process of evolution to form living things with extraordinarily elaborate systems, and finally, human beings with a highly developed consciousness. Moreover, the human being who is totally the result of chance, with the aid of instruments developed by chance (such as the electron microscope), has discovered the atoms from which he is formed! This is passed off as a scientific thesis!

Evolutionists claim that atoms came into being as a result of chance and gave rise to the whole universe. That is, that one group of unconscious atoms formed the stars, the planets and the earth; another group formed living things. Then, another group of unconscious atoms formed the eye, the heart, the nervous system, the brain and the whole perfect anatomical system of a human being. Later, this human became a professor and started to investigate the atoms that created him. It is obvious that such a claim is unconvincing and far removed from intelligent scientific methods. The whole universe and every living thing in it was perfectly created with the sublime knowledge of Allah.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle: His thesis, Scala Naturae, was a source of inspiration for modern evolutionists.

Thus, the theory of evolution accepts as a fact that every atom is a god with creative power and intent. But the atoms that form a conscious, intelligent human being are themselves without consciousness or will. Nevertheless, evolutionists claim that these lifeless atoms came together, created a human being, and later this amalgamation of atoms decided to go to college and have a career. However, every experiment and observation has shown that without conscious organization, matter is never able to organize itself; on the contrary, it advances towards disorder and chaos. For this reason it is obvious that nothing in the universe results from chance but has been brought into existence by a being with consciousness and will, knowledge and intelligence. These are attributes of Allah, Lord of the earth and the heavens.

Along with the aforementioned philosophers, another important contributor to the religion of Darwinism was the Greek philosopher Aristotle. According to Aristotle, species can be arranged in a hierarchy from the simplest to the most complex and aligned in a linear form like steps in a ladder; he called this thesis theScala Naturae. This idea of Aristotle would deeply influence western thought until the 18th century and was later to become the origin of belief in the Great Chain of Being, which, in turn, became the theory of evolution.

The Influence of Materialist Greek And
Roman Pholosophy On Astronomy

The materialist views of pagan Greek and Roman philosophers gave rise not only to the theory of evolution but also to a materialist understanding of the universe and to astrology. The false belief of 19th century astronomy that the universe has always existed is a materialist dogma that goes back to Greek and Roman mythology.However, with the acceptance of the Big Bang theory in the 20th century, it is now understood that the universe had a beginning: that is, it was created from nothing.

The influence of ancient Greek and Roman pagan culture on astronomy can easily be understood with reference to a few of its symbolic names. The names given to planets and other heavenly bodies all come from Greek and Roman mythology. Mercury in pagan Greco-Roman religion was the god of commerce; Venus was the goddess of love, Mars was the god of war, Jupiter was the supreme god,Saturn was the god of agriculture, Uranus was the earliest supreme god and a personification of the sky, Neptune was the god of the sea, and Pluto was the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld. The name of the Andromeda galaxy comes from the story of Andromeda in Greek mythology. She was an Ethiopian princess whom the so-called sea god Poseidon tried to kill.

Because materialist philosophy has its origins in ancient Greece, the materialist scientists who founded the science of astronomy took their inspiration from Greek and Roman myths. The "infinite universe" model, defended so vehemently in the 18th and 19th centuries, has been invalidated by 20th century scientific discoveries. It has been shown that the idea that the universe has existed forever is just as false as the belief in the so-called gods of Greco-Roman mythology. In reality, AllOEh created the whole universe – from the heavenly bodies to the smallest bit of matter – from nothing.

Another Belief from Ancient Pagan Cultures: The Great Chain of Being

The underlying idea of Darwinism – that every living thing evolved from matter – is first encountered in the conception of the Great Chain of Being by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. This is an evolutionary belief still popular with those philosophers who deny the existence of Allah.

The originally Greek idea that the first living thing spontaneously produced itself from water in the course of time became the doctrine of the Great Chain of Being. According to the Scala Naturae which had been accepted for 2000 years, living things formed by themselves evolving from minerals to organic matter, from living organisms to plants, animals, human beings and finally to "gods." According to this belief, new organs formed by themselves conforming to the needs of nature. Originally, the idea was proposed only as a philosophical view. According to this specious reasoning, small living things became larger living things stage by stage; every living thing has its place in the chain. It asserts also that stone, metal, water and air became living organisms, living organisms became animals, and animals became human beings without any interruption in the process. The reason this belief (which has no scientific foundation, contradicts all scientific facts, and stands only on abstract logic) has won acceptance for so long is not a scientific but an ideological one. What allows this false belief to endure is a dogmatic approach that denies the existence of Allah. This belief periodically changed its name, was elaborated, and finally became known as the "theory of evolution."

But it must be repeated: the alleged serial arrangement takes no account of science. There is no consideration of the physical characteristics of living things or about how life could come into being from lifeless materials or how water-dwelling creatures could adapt to life on land. Transitional forms, which are supposed to represent links of development between species constitute one of the most serious impasses in the theory of evolution today because they are not found in the fossil record. How creatures change into others remains a great mystery because the chain is merely the product of a superficial abstract logic invented by ancient philosophers around a table.

Aristotle rejected the existence of a Creator who created all things from nothing and instead presented the view of gods having evolved from human beings. With this unsound deduction Aristotle greatly influenced Greek materialist philosophers. The period in which the Scala Naturaecame into western thought coincides with advent of humanism and the Renaissance. At the beginning of the 15th century Greek and Latin works were brought into Europe and entered the current of western thought and philosophy. Foremost in these texts was the concept of materialism and denial of the existence of a Creator.

In the godless way of thinking, human beings have full capacity to control themselves and the world they live in, and it denies that there is another life after death. So the Great Chain of Being formed the basis of this belief by stating that human beings had come into being by chance as a result of an evolutionary process and were essentially nothing more than a lump of matter. Thus, moral values and human feelings have no importance; a person should simply enjoy each day he lives and feel responsible to no one. In time, Aristotle's concept of divinity at the top of the Scala Naturae was replaced by the humanist idea of man as the highest being.

 

Facing: According to the idea of the Great Chain of Being, which goes back to Aristotle, living things evolved from the smallest creatures to larger ones. However, modern science has shown that this claim is invalid; that the similarities among living things is not proof of evolution; that the creatures illustrated in the picture did not evolve from other creatures but every one was created in its present form.

Bottom: A picture illustrating the evolutionist story of the supposed transition from water to land.

The Great Chain of Being was quite popular from the Renaissance until the 18th century and exerted much influence on the materialist scientists of that era. French scientists Benoit de Maillet, Pierre de Maupertuis, Comte de Buffon and Jean Baptiste Lamarck, among others, who had a strong influence on Charles Darwin, were men who had appropriated the Greek notion of the Great Chain of Being. They based their scientific research on this evolutionist view. The common tenet of these men was that the various living species were not created individually but came into existence spontaneously through a process of evolution dependent on natural conditions a model similar to Darwin's. For this reason it can be said that modern evolutionary thought was born in France.

Pierre de Maupertuis

The French evolutionist Comte de Buffon was one of the most well-known scientists of the 18th century. For more than fifty years he was the director of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Paris. Darwin based much of his theory on his works. In his 44-volume work Histoire Naturelle, it is possible to find most of the elements that Darwin was to use.

The Great Chain of Being was the base of the evolutionist systems of both de Buffon and Lamarck. The American historian of science, D.R. Oldroyd, defines their relationship in these words:

In his Histoire Naturelle, Buffon reveals himself as an exponent of the doctrine of the Great Chain of Being, with man being placed at the top of the Chain... Lamarck held a version of the ancient doctrine of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, ...it was not conceived as a rigid, static structure. By their struggle to meet the requirements of the environment, and with the help of the principle of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, organisms could supposedly work their way up the Chain – from microbe to man, so to speak... Moreover, new creatures were constantly appearing at the bottom of the Chain, arising from inorganic matter through spontaneous generation... Ascent of the Chain involved a continuous process of complexification, due to the so-called "power of life." 33

De Buffon and his 44-volume work Histoire Naturelle, which takes its inspiration from ancient pagan mythology.

As one can clearly see, what is called the "theory of evolution" is really a transferal to modern times of the ancient Greek myth of the Great Chain of Being. There were evolutionists before Darwin, and most of their ideas and so-called proofs were already found in the concept of the Great Chain of Being. With de Buffon and Lamarck, the Great Chain was offered to the scientific world in a new form which influenced Darwin.

Indeed, Darwin was influenced by this idea to the extent that he based his whole theory on its basic logic. In the book Darwin's Century, Loren Eiseley points out that Darwin made use of the 18th century concept of the scale of existence in his book The Origin of Species and that the idea that whole organic matter tended inevitably to "progress toward perfection" finds its origin there.34

Therefore, Darwin did not propose a new theory. What he did was nothing more than to give it new expression in contemporary scientific language. Based on a few deceptive observations, a religion going back to the pagan myths of the Sumerians and ancient Greeks was sustained. It was enhanced in the 17th and 18th centuries with new additions by many scientists. Later, through Darwin's book The Origin of Species, the theory gained a scientific veneer to become the greatest falsehood in the history of science.

Modern evolutionists still blindly believe that an illusory god called Mother Nature created them, showing the same ignorance as the ancient Greeks and Sumerians who worshipped imaginary gods created in their own minds. In order to understand just how inept false religions are, it is only necessary to look around, for everything in its smallest detail displays beauty, sublime artistry and design. It takes only common sense to perceive that this flawless precision could not have come into being by blind chance through powerless deities or a natural chain beginning with primeval soup and a stroke of lightening. The godless mind-bent of those who do not believe is described in the Qur’An:

Top: Jean Baptiste Lamarck
Left: Loren Eiseley

"And they said, No matter what sign you bring us with which to bewitch us, we will not be believers for you." 35

"And even if We had sent down to them the angels and the dead spoke to them and We gathered together every [created] thing in front of them, they would not believe unless Allah should will. most of them, [of that], are ignorant." 36

"And even if We opened to them a gate from the heaven and they continued therein to ascend, they would say, Our eyes have only been dazzled; rather, we are a people affected by magic." 37

As described in these verses, people who continue to deny the existence of Allah live in complete ignorance. They will accept every kind of falsehood but remain stubborn when it comes to the truth. They prefer not to believe in logical scientific facts but in illusions which their lower selves have made pleasing to them. Belief in evolution from earliest times has been the result of a godless mind-set. Moreover, this mentality will always exist, for it is part of Allah's decree. The Qur’An confirms this fact:

"And We have certainly created for Hell many of the jinn and mankind. They have hearts with which they do not understand, they have eyes with which they do not see, and they have ears with which they do not hear. Those are like livestock; rather, they are more astray. It is those who are the heedless." 38