Perhaps the last entry wasn’t so different after all! A few days after attending the Francisco Ayala lecture, I attended another lecture concerning the intersection of science and religion. This second lecture was by T.O. Shanavas, a Muslim medical doctor who, like Professor Ayala, sees no conflict between evolution and his religion. Unlike Professor Ayala, though, I disagreed with Dr. Shanavas’ position pretty much from the get-go.
Dr. Shanavas spent the early part of his talk going over how obvious evolution is, as he put it, even to a medical doctor. He covered all the vestigial parts of the human body, from the tailbone through the appendix and up to that little spot in the corner of your eye (which I’d never heard about before). He didn’t spend 90% of his talk on the matter like Professor Ayala did, but he made it clear that he wholeheartedly accepts evolution. All well and good, but I had an ominous feeling that the other shoe was getting ready to drop. Maybe I’m psychic, because I didn’t have to wait long.
I didn’t write down Dr. Shanavas’ exact words, but I did record the gist of his next point. Here it is: “since evolution is true, it must be in the Qur’an.” If any statement I’ve covered thus far in my blog warrants Wolfgang Pauli’s famous epithet not even wrong, I’m sorry to say that it would probably be this one. We’ll get into why I’m sorry to say this at the end of this entry, but for now let’s go over the big problem with this opening statement.
Harpies Are Clearly a Transitional Form
Dr. Shanavas did not give a second thought to his bold assertion in italics above, and began outlining parts of the Qur’an that demonstrate evolution. Full disclosure: I know virtually nothing about the Qur’an, or even really Islam in general. I know that much of the scripture coincides pretty well with Judaism and Christianity, hence the whole Abrahamic religions term, but really not a whole lot else. So, I was pretty interested to see what verses (are they called verses?) he was going to pull out to exhibit pre-Darwinian evolutionary thinking. I was, to say the very least, quite disappointed.
The passages Dr. Shanavas cited simply did not demonstrate evolutionary thinking. Period. Most of the verses he selected were spectacularly vague, and some went so far as to outwardly assert creationism. Dr. Shanavas only arrived at evolution from these statements via remarkable extrapolation and byzantine reasoning. If you feel that I’m being way too hard on the guy, let me give you his most egregious example.
The Qur’an states that god fashioned man out of clay, and then breathed life into him. (It sounded more-or-less like the Book of Genesis, from what I remember.) Pretty cut-and-dry creationism, right? Not for the good doctor. According to Dr. Shanavas, this is just like how scientists think life began on earth. You see, scientists have shown that DNA won’t just spontaneously polymerize in water, but the surface of some types of clay can act as catalyst for this process. Thus, the Qur’an predicts modern evolutionary theory.
That’s the caliber of evidence we’re dealing with here. An explicitly creationist passage of the Qur’an sounds a little bit like a highly tentative and contentious hypothesis about abiogenesis that occurred four billion years ago. While the other “examples” of evolution in the Qur’an weren’t as bad as this clay business, none of them clearly or unambiguously indicated evolutionary ideas.
It was very clear to me that Dr. Shavanas just dug through the Qur’an looking for passages that he could twist around to make them sound like they’re related to the modern theory of evolution. This isn’t just cherry-picking and post-hoc reasoning,* it is preposterous cherry-picking and post-hoc reasoning.
*I’m using the phrase post-hoc reasoning as a substitute for continually saying that he assumed evolution was true and then dug through a book to find evolutiony-sounding stuff. I don’t think I’m correct in using the term post-hoc (“after the event”) to describe this, but I don’t know any other phrase to use describe this succinctly. It’s kind of like the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, where you shoot wildly at a barn and then paint bulls-eyes around the bullet-holes. In a way, Dr. Shavanas just went through the Qur’an and painted modern biology around certain passages.
I called Dr. Shavanas out on this during the Q&A segment. I told him that it sounded to me like he started with his conclusion: that evolution could be found in the Qur’an. I repeated his made-from-clay to clay-catalyzing-DNA leap, and said that if you’re going to accept that sort of link you could find anything in anything. With that lax of criteria, I’m sure that a diligent ufologist could find evidence of alien visitation in the Qur’an, or conversely I’m sure that a classicist could find evolution in the Iliad or Odyssey. (I doubt I was that elaborate out loud, but I was at least thinking all this.) In response, he obfuscated for thirty seconds or so, at one point lowering his voice and mumbling a bit. He eventually admitted my point, reiterating that he was just trying to find evolution in the Qur’an because he believes that both must be true. Just as with Professor Ayala, we have in Dr. Shavanas a religious man striving to reconcile his science with beliefs he did not arrive at scientifically. I can’t say I was surprised to learn that. I guess that makes me a gotcha journalist ... you betcha.
Those Amazing Islamic Scholars!
The most interesting part of Dr. Shavanas’ lecture came after his highly biased reinterpretation of Qur’anic creationism. He argued that Islamic scholars had described evolution centuries before Darwin, providing and interpreting quotations from famed Muslim thinkers from the Islamic Golden Age. I found this section of the talk interesting because many people feel that Islam does indeed have a great history of scientific inquiry, in stark contrast to the current situation in many Islamic theocracies. My understanding is that they certainly have a point; we’ve all heard about Islamic scholars inventing algebra and Arabic numerals, and my limited knowledge is that these claims are more-or-less true.
None of the examples of pre-Darwin evolutionary thinking Dr. Shavanas provided compared to the clay issue discussed above, but neither were any of the examples worth writing down and recounting here. He once again clearly had just mined huge bodies of text for passages that sounded compatible with evolution. However, this exercise was much more compelling than his Qur’an-mining for one simple reason: an Islamic scholar may well have had some evolution-type ideas during the Middle Ages. The Islamic world was indeed pro-science during its Golden Age, acting both as a repository for Ancient Greek knowledge and as a proficient originator of new science and technology. It would be spectacular and unexpected if an Islamic scholar truly did have some ideas about natural selection or common descent centuries before Darwin, but it’s not inconceivable.
All that having been said, I don’t think Dr. Shavanas actually has any convincing evidence that an Islamic scholar beat Darwin to the theory of evolution. He’s especially off base in his accusation that Darwin almost certainly knew about these purportedly proto-evolutionist Islamic scholars before publishing the Origin. (He’s venturing dangerously close to proposing a conspiracy theory with that little tidbit.) I’d hesitate to call him a historical revisionist, because that’s a pretty ugly word in my book due to its association with holocaust deniers, those lowest of the low pseudoscientists. I think he’s approaching, if not already among, the folks who try and promote the ancient knowledge and technology of their favorite non-European ethnic group. I see the appeal and the optimistic reasons for adopting such a stance, but, hey, pseudoscience is pseudoscience.
I Keep Feeling Like a Jerk ... Maybe It’s Me?
Even before the situation I’m about to describe, I felt a little bad about disliking Dr. Shavanas’ talk. Just as with Professor Ayala, I take no joy from denigrating someone that’s striving to mediate the conflict between science and religion. Compared to your average fundamentalist’s position on evolution or science in general, Professor Ayala’s and even Dr. Shavanas’ position on the matter is clearly superior in every regard I can think of. They both fully accept the reality of science (particularly evolution), which is more than can be said for an alarming percentage of people.
My doubts about the value in criticizing someone like Dr. Shavanas were crystallized by a question asked by an audience member soon after my question. If my question was confrontational, then this person’s tirade was an out-and-out assault on Dr. Shavanas’ reconciliatory position. He opened by attacking evolution itself, referencing a book I now know to be the infamous Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya (a.k.a. Adnan Oktar). Dr. Shavanas interrupted the questioner and laughingly dismissed the book as creationist propaganda, and rightfully so; Richard Dawkins famously found a fishing lure, complete with metal fishhook, presented as species of insect in this catastrophe of a ‘biology textbook.’
The questioner did not see the humor in this, and was visibly angered by Dr. Shavanas’ glib dismissal of his ‘evidence’ for creationism. He abandoned his brief evidence-based line of attack, and righteously began arguing religiously. Calling his diatribe scary would be too dramatic, but it was definitely unsettling. He told Dr. Shavanas in no uncertain terms that the Qur’an ought to be read literally, reciting a number of relevant passages from memory. When done ranting, the man received something of an ovation from the crowd, with a few older gentlemen even standing to applaud him. A number of the younger people in the crowd didn’t go so far as to applaud the questioner, but they did tentatively nod in agreement. It was a fine microcosm of the phenomenon of religious moderates enabling fundamentalists; many of these people wouldn’t say or do what this more radical person did, but they did tacitly approve of his actions.
I don’t recall Dr. Shavanas’ response to this outburst, probably because I was too lost in my own thoughts. (I imagine he just reemphasized the reality of evolution, and probably talked up what he viewed as the pro-science parts of the Qur’an.) I was busy questioning the utility in arguing with someone like Dr. Shavanas. While we disagree rather seriously, we’re worlds closer than I am to a religious literalist like the angry questioner. Should I stifle my criticism of pro-science moderates like Dr. Shavanas, and help them fight against our common opponents? Should I especially cool it with the likes of Professor Ayala, since their position is completely devoid of blatant pseudoscience?
Moderate Treatment of Moderates?
It’s a real dilemma. I’ve heard Richard Dawkins, currently the go-to New Atheist, speak about this issue during interviews a number of times. His general response to this critique is that he’s fighting the bigger fight: the fight against religion. In general, he doesn’t seem to agree with the tactic of promoting the liberalization of religion because he would rather see the abolition of religion. I’m sure he would agree that a liberal religious person who doesn’t have a problem with evolution is objectively better than a young earth creationist, but I suspect he would just disagree with both of them. I can see both sides of this argument.
Sam Harris, another prominent New Atheist, often raises the enabling problem I mentioned above. I witnessed this myself while researching Entry 09 and it disturbed the hell out of me. I’d read a news article about poor Kara dying in misery, and the comments section below the article would be full of people promoting the parents’ religious freedom. Two people watched their child die an agonizing death due to their demonstrably ridiculous religious beliefs, and people who would never dream of committing such a monstrous atrocity defended their right to do so. When you lie down with moderates, you might wake up with fundamentalists.
I don’t think there’s a single answer to this question, and I think we need a variety of people choosing and running with a variety of answers. It’s obvious that Professor Ayala and Dr. Shavanas have views that are much more pro-science than many religious people out there. On the other hand, I also have problems with many of their views. Some of Dr. Shavanas’ views are especially troubling, since he’s treating ancient texts as scientific documents and approaching bona fide pseudo-history.
I think that we ultimately need all the help that we can get while promoting the scientific outlook. As such, I think that we ought to reach out to people such as Professor Ayala and Dr. Shavanas when we’re trying to fight the anti-creationism fight. However, I think that it would be prudent not to completely stifle one’s worldview to cater to moderate religionists. The moment a moderate religionist defends fundamentalists’ right to commit barbaric acts like honor killings or child abuse, I think you have to throw the kiss-and-make-up routine out the window. I think we need (and want) moderate religionists, but we can’t sacrifice our own positions and wind up fully assimilated into their bloc.
Well, we’re onto page five in Word, which has been my stopping-point thus far. It’s not surprising that this topic took me to the limit, both because Dr. Shanavas’ talk was lousy with entry-able claims* and because these “tactical” considerations are a contentious and unresolved issues in the X** Movement.
*I didn’t even bother mentioning many of his gems, which included: the assertion that evolution is a progression towards perfection, that a medieval scholar’s passage about sperm becoming men is related to evolution, that giant monsters in the Qur’an might be Neanderthals, and that many of the supposedly proto-Darwinian ideas he championed sounded like Lamarckian evolution at best.
**Where X is atheism and/or skepticism and/or humanism and/or pro-science and/or ...
So, no conclusion this time. I wasn’t kidding about this issue being unresolved and contentious … I’ve seen profanity-laced tirades about how Richard Dawkins is so rude that he’s hurting science (hmmm), I’ve seen grown men with MD’s and PhD’s and Professorships throw e-hissyfits on their blogs about someone “siding” with creationists (stay classy, Doctors), and I’ve seen people use the phrase fundamentalist atheist without a hint of sarcasm (um). Truly, some srs bsns on teh interwebz. I love minor internet memes, by the way. You should be glad that I don’t know how to imbed pictures on this blog, or it would be chock full of LOLcats. I love those things; it’s inexplicable and not a little embarrassing. Let’s move on.
Random anecdotes from my time in the science blogosphere, followed by even more random references to internet phenomena? Yeah, that’s about where I want to end this entry. See you next time!
