In 1987 an invitation was extended to Dr. Maurice Bucaille by the Institute of Islamic Information and Education to deliver a couple of lectures in Chicago. Dr. Bucaille’s books, on which his lectures are based, were already in bookstores a few years earlier. Yet his input and interacting audience add to the value of the information contained in his lecture.
Man questioning himself on the origin of its spices, initially had on his disposal reflections, traditions and superstitions passed on generation from generation of which the source material was lost in the darkness of time. In the second stage, before the science was in a position to shed some light on this problem, various philosophical systems brought elements of reflections about the creation of the man. We must emphasize on the influence on the human mind by the teachings of the scriptures of three monolithic religions. For many centuries the source of ideas consisted of notions drawn from them. Divine revelation was initially communicated by word of mouth and than in written form. One can only stipulate the date at which man became aware of the first revelation. We don’t know the manner in which it came to him but we suppose that Noah was the first to bring this subject to the attention of his people. The Bible make a reference to it and we also take from the Quran the idea that first call to man to meditate on his origin was made by Noah. The most ancient text of Holy Scriptures we have which deals with the human origins as the creative work of God is no doubt the Yahvist and Sacerdotal narratives of the Bible. The Yahvist version of the Bible, which is considered to be most ancient one, is considered to be written in 9th or 10th century before Christ. Whereas, the Sacerdotal version of the Bible is work of a priest in 6th century before Christ. It contains lengthy narratives of the creation which are now placed on the beginning of all the copies of the Bible. Christianity naturally took up these ideas of creation and repeated the biblical teaching concerning the origin of man without offering more details than those contained in the old Testaments. Never so less there are some exceptions especially in the Gospel of Luke tracing back to Adam and showing Jesus preceded by 76 generations of human being. This is today unacceptable.
Qur’anic revelation has considerably enriched man with knowledge about himself. The human minds in the west fed themselves on the question of origin of man with the biblical narratives. While in the Islamic world the Quran in the meantime brought not only the general idea of creation but also brought further teachings which were not existed in the Bible. I will come back to them later.
The next stage was during the 18th century of Christian era when science registered its initial progress. As soon as man came to possess scientific knowledge sufficient enough to arrive at a formal conclusion, it never so less enabled him to develop various speculations. During this era most of the scientists in their way of reasoning strictly applied to the man their findings which were not even of any significance to animal kingdom. They did it from pure analogy. This fault in the drawing of conclusion explains what will follow jointly with their fondness for ideologies. Thus the philosophers didn’t hesitate to construct theories which were founded on very fragile basis. This is a thing which is also observed today.
In the West, 19th century was the time of first disputes with religious teaching essentially with those of the Bible particularly bearing the fixity of species through ages that is clearly formulated in the old testaments. Lamakh (who introduced his theory of transformation in the beginning if 19th century) was the first contender of the biblical statements about the fixity of the species. But it is all about Darwin who in the second half of 19th century dealt serious blows to biblical data with his book “On the Origin of Species”. His book appeared in 1859. Darwin had supposed that the nature was spontaneously able to bring forth living beings like those whose appearance may be favored by cattle and horse breeders selected for inter breeding. But in his reasoning Darwin forgot that these breeders cannot produce animals of species different from species of their parents. Darwin was right when he said that he had observed variations within a species. At no time he found a change in a species which resulted in formation of a new species. In order to explain evolution in animal kingdom we need to know what gives rise to transformation of one species of one order into another. Darwin himself admitted in a letter that he had failed in explaining evolution. This letter is preserved in British Library in London. In this letter Darwin wrote and I quote Darwin
“But I believe in natural selection not because I can prove in any single case that it has change one species into another but because it groups and explain well, as it seems to me, a host of facts in classification embryology, morphology, rudimentary organs, geological succession and distribution”.
In this way Darwin confessed that evolution can’t be explained by his theory. All the problems of the value of the work of Darwin lie here. The century of Darwin’s death was commemorated in 1982 by a host of apology announcements absolutely out of keeping with the importance of his work in the history of natural sciences. In the section of answers of science and Holy Scriptures of my book “What is the Origin of Man” I have shown the deficiencies of Darwin’s theory and misuse of it made by modern commentators of his work. Today the evolution in animal kingdom is perfectly demonstrated. The evidence has been given in innumerable cases with many details concerning transformation in the course of time for example, from reptiles to mammals. But Darwin never proved that man descend from Apes. Moreover he didn’t even write it. Among his followers Hackle claim this without the tiniest of argument as no link has been ever found between man and animal lineages. We should come back to this topic later.