Showing posts with label Natural Selection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Natural Selection. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Evolution — Why Theory, Not Fact


An oft-repeated question by Muslim apologists who propound the case for creationism over Darwinian evolution is: "Why is it called the theory of evolution and not the fact of evolution?" Well, the very question itself is based off farcical suppositions that anything proven to be true in science is termed to be a fact.

The reason why we use the phrase "Theory of Evolution" is the same as why we use phrases like Theory of Gravity or Pythagoras' Theorem. The word "theory" in ordinary English and in scientific jargon has vastly differing definitions.

In the English language as used conversationally, the word "theory" equates to a hypothesis in scientific jargon which is basically an assumption predicting the end result of an experiment. If the prediction is proven to be true following numerous peer-reviewed experimentation or accurate to an acceptable level of probability,
the hypothesis is accepted as a theory. One such among them is the Theory of Evolution.



— Fahim Ferdous Kibria

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Beauty


There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion.
It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner.
Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers.
All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in
the first instance, but this rose is an extra. Its smell and color are an embellishment of life,
not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have
much to hope from the flowers.
~ Sherlock Holmes
The quote posits religion as a science of pure reason, without practical experimentation and hypothetical theorizing – a science based completely on armchair observation and deduction, everything occurring within the mind
as it analyzes the data without the use of tabletop tinkering involving gadgets and contraptions.


The observation notes that beauty is the ultimate reason vouching for the existence of God, a good One at that, for everything else in the world can be explained away with the reason of necessity but beauty is something that exists as a bonus in reality serving no other purpose than to provide aesthetic pleasure to the soul without ensuring survival of any sort in and of itself though attraction to beauty may beg to differ but this attraction itself cannot be rationally explained for why be attracted to a feature that does not provide you with any sustenance? Attraction to food and water may appease hunger and thirst for one to nourish themselves, but what purpose does attraction to color and symmetry serve other than to appease the eyes? Yes, beauty is truly an enigmatic feature of the universe.


Beauty is not a mechanism of cold, unfeeling evolution as presented by the ideology of naturalism. It is an extra – something existing beyond natural selection; a product of the unconditional goodness of a caring, loving God. Perhaps, it is why the Prophet Muhammad said:

Verily God is Beautiful and They love Beauty.
[Sahīh Muslim, Hadith 131]




— Fahim Ferdous Kibria

Flowers


There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,
He said, leaning with his back against the shutters.
It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner.
Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers.
All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in
the first instance, but this rose is an extra. Its smell and color are an embellishment of life,
not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have
much to hope from the flowers.