I appreciate Ms. Farzana Hasan’s response. She has come across as a very candid intellectual who wants to weigh the evidence for evolution. She does not seem to have adamantly subscribed to one notion or the other as explanation for life on earth in her most recent response. She has clearly articulated her reasons that make it hard for her to look at ‘Evolution’ as a plausible scenario for origin of life on earth. In the first part I shall take evolution from scientific point of view and later few thoughts on creationism and Darwinism and its implications on religious thought also.

Let me sort out few questions from Ms. Hasan’s article:

•          Fossil record is incomplete

•          How man could descend from lower life

•          How intelligence could come by chance

•          Mutations are always bad

I am actually impressed by these questions. These are valid questions and I shall attempt to answer in the following:

I think the real point is that we understand scientific conception of ‘Evolution’ and the Theory of Evolution and the nature of ‘theory’ in scientific context. It will make it easy for us to talk.

First of all: Evolution or any other scientific theory does not ask that one should believe it. All that a theory does is to offer most logical explanation for observed facts or data. If at a later time a new explanation appears more plausible; the old one is either modified or discarded. It is important to know that theory does not try to prove or disprove anything. It tries to provide rational explanation of available facts of evidence. Theory of evolution should be looked at the same way.

What is Theory of Evolution? It is only a study of history of diversity of life on earth. It tries to explain how diversity came about. It does not primarily talk about the first origin of life. Science that is trying to decipher the origin may or may not lend support to the theory of evolution. The time will tell.  Most likely though, it will fit in well with this theory. There have been lots of experiments for past 50 years or so, convincingly alluding to origin of life from non-life or ‘Abiogenesis.

Fossil Record: It is easy to agree that fossil record is incomplete. It has to be incomplete for a number of obvious reasons. But the question is whether it point to diversity and more complexity along various periods of time or not? Or does it point to origin of species de novo as such? The answer is that it does point to an evolutionary process where complexity is apparent as we go along the continuum of various eras. The reality is it does not support the idea that all living organism appeared as such. Go to Bluffers Park in Scarborough (where some very old fossils were discovered), collect fossils and try to explain the evidence yourself. I am sure you will attest to evolutionary process.

How a man could descend from lower life: Through an evolutionary process as I noted above. There is as much biological complexity in horse, cat and dog as in human so forth. What we need to look at is whether the simplicity or complexity acquired by an organism adds to chances of survival or not. Cellular complexity is rather close in plants and animals etc. I hope when we ask question how man could descend from lower life; we do no mean whoever is on top of food chain (or perhaps biggest parasite) is the most complex. Let us not call our biological cousins as low-life.

There is no fossil record of Adam and Eve so far. So, it would be hard for any scientist to come to conclusion of creationism as the origin (Damn … incomplete fossil record again!). If we did find one; I can assure you that I would be the first one to agree with biblical and quranic notion of creationism.

How intelligence could come by chance: It remains to be defined what is intelligence. I think intelligence could be defined several ways. Nonetheless, intelligence is one of the functions of organism whereby they are better equipped to deal with the surrounding and hence increasing chances for survival. This takes us to statistics and idea of exponential growth (Statistics is somewhat boring even to me). If I pursue examples here it will become too long.

Intelligence (Whatever it is) did not come by chance. It is partly a learned behavior in response to stressors of various kinds. If we look at intelligence from psycho-social point of view, again I would refer to laws postulated by Babylonian king Hammurabi, and man-made-law: UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights . If laws are any clue to human social intelligence, you would note that intelligence evolved over course of time.

Mutations are always bad: I do not think that is the case. Bacteria mutate and increase resistance to antibiotics to improve their chances of survival. But let us find an example in human species.

Look at any street in Toronto and try to explain the facts there. Human beings do have mutation also and real good ones. For example: differences in skin-color are a result of mutations. Various environmental conditions favored some mutations over the other, which resulted in exponential growth in population of favored trait. The African genetic pool is most varied in human race. Caucasian and Asians have less variation. It is due to fact of antiquity of genetic pool. Asians have a low incidence of Multiple Sclerosis as compared with Caucasians. Please consider primary reason for low incidence of myopia in Africans and so forth.

I think it is enough with biology. If we as human race start to subscribe to Darwinism as a social methodology, I think we will have devastating social consequences. So I cannot agree with that idea at all. I am sure no sensible human does. But Darwin did not subscribe himself to Social Darwinism. He limited himself to biological data only and that is where we should limit it too.

Creationism: It came about due to religious thought in human history partly due to human desire to explain meaning of life and death. It is important that we concede that religion does satisfy psychological needs of some human beings and let it be that way. But it is irrational to make it the basis of scientific thought. I think human beings ought to figure out where to apply religious thought where to leave it. I think there are many good things about principles of social and personal living in religion. It is fine and possible to practice that and still being an evolutionist. I sincerely hope that we learn about theory of evolution from each other.

Tahir M. Qazi, MD
Clinical Neurophysiology
Neuromuscular Diseases
Physical Medicine & Rehab.