Episode 42 – Is Evolutionary Theory Useful to Humanity?

Introduction: the fallacy of ‘with it, therefore because of it’

Peace be upon you. Flattering media habitually attribute every merit in a country to its leaders. If the land yields crops and roads are built, the credit goes to His Excellency the President. If a building is erected and a project is completed, the credit goes to His Excellency. He must come after everything has finished, cut the ribbon, and inaugurate the project. This is so even if he has not contributed a single millimetre to his country’s progress—or even if his corruption and that of his entourage have obstructed progress and smothered many projects at birth.

Yet because good things happened during His Excellency’s tenure, the flattering media insist that he deserves the credit. No one is allowed to ask: if the President had not been there, might the country and its people not have advanced much further? Are these achievements not simply to be expected from the passage of time and the accumulation of human experience?

All of this rests on what logic calls the fallacy of ‘with it, therefore because of it’: the claim that because two events occur together, one must be the cause of the other. In its silliest form it is laughable: someone says, ‘I noticed that whenever I drink a glass of milk, the sun rises; therefore my drinking milk causes the sunrise.’ This is why people always stress that correlation, or the existence of some relationship, does not imply causation.

How this fallacy relates to the myth of evolution

What does this have to do with the myth of evolution? In exactly the same way, its followers affirm the importance of their myth, credit it with discoveries, and insert its name in a comical fashion although it has no value at all—and has even harmed scientific research, as we shall see.

Let us look at (6) prominent examples for which the myth of evolution is said to deserve immense credit. We will take them from leading scientific outlets: the American National Academy of Sciences, Scientific American, and the Nobel Prize website.

These six examples are:

1. Vaccines against the SARS virus.
2. Mules and wheat.
3. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
4. The price of fish.
5. Fettuccine meals.
6. The (2018) Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Alleged examples of evolutionary theory’s merit

1. Vaccines against the SARS Virus

On the website of the American National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, one finds a book entitled Science, Evolution, and Creationism. It asserts that evolution has become a fact and that creation is not science. It then begins to set out evolution’s importance for science: the book names two achievements of the theory, while its summary edition briefly adds a third. Let us examine these achievements and whether they can truly be credited to His Excellency the President.

Under the heading [Evolution in Medicine: Combating New Infectious Diseases], the book tells the story of the SARS virus, which appeared in China, spread elsewhere, and killed hundreds. It says that by using a new technique called DNA microarray, researchers identified the virus within (24) hours as a previously unknown member of a particular virus family; other researchers confirmed this with other techniques. Work then immediately began on a blood test to identify and isolate infected people, treatments for the disease, and vaccines to prevent infection.

Up to this point, that is excellent scientific work. But now His Excellency the myth must be brought in to have a photograph taken with the discoverers. (Camera sound.) The book continues: understanding evolution was essential to identifying the virus because the virus’s genetic material resembled that of other viruses, having evolved from the same common virus.

We may ask: what does His Excellency have to do with the discovery? The virus resembles other viruses, and this allowed researchers to develop treatments and vaccines adapted on the basis of that resemblance. What has any of this to do with one’s belief about the distant past? Whether one believes these organisms evolved from one another randomly and by chance, as the myth says; that a Creator brought some from others with knowledge and measure; or that the Creator made each one independently—one is now faced with organisms that share features, and can use that similarity for human benefit. What does the cause of the similarity have to do with the matter?

And do not forget, brothers, that previous episodes have, by God’s grace, completely demolished the claim that similarity means common ancestry—the claim the book treats as a settled fact when it says that the virus’s genetic material resembled that of other viruses because they evolved from the same common virus. We showed the comic nature of such claims in the episode Your Tail: What You May Not Know. Or do His Excellency’s followers suppose that he deserves credit for the very concept of vaccination? History does not help them: the first known vaccine, the smallpox vaccine, was made by Edward Jenner in (1796), meaning (60) years before Darwin’s myth.

2. Evolution in agriculture: domesticating wheat and mules

The book then moves to His Excellency’s second achievement, under the heading Evolution in Agriculture: domestication of wheat—that is, cultivating it and improving its traits rather than merely gathering what grows wild. It explains how farmers since ancient times improved wheat and other crops and crossed related animal varieties, and how researchers later identified genes responsible for desirable traits. Fine—but what does this have to do with His Excellency?

The book says that people were thereby using evolutionary change, and concludes that these advances depend on understanding evolution in order to analyse relationships among plants and seek traits that can improve crops. Wait: when our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, before Darwin was born, grafted pear trees onto apple trees and bred similar animal varieties to obtain improved offspring, were they acting from Darwinian convictions about random changes and blind selection? Did the first mule not result from crossing a donkey and a mare before Darwin’s myth was born?

And what does His Excellency have to do with identifying genes responsible for desirable traits in wheat and crops? Precisely what service did he provide to this achievement? What does my belief about the origin of genes have to do with exploiting and applying them for human benefit? Nothing. Yet His Excellency must again have his picture taken with this achievement. (Camera sound.)

3. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics

Third: antibiotic resistance. Many bacterial types have undergone genetic changes that made them more resistant to antibiotics and therefore more dangerous to people. True—but what does that have to do with His Excellency? They say: ‘Knowing how evolution leads to increased bacterial resistance is important for limiting infectious disease.’ Evolution? What does evolution have to do with it? What does evolution have to do with bacterial resistance? What do random mutations and blind selection have to do with mechanisms that amazed you yourselves and led you to describe bacteria as intelligent and to assign them godlike attributes such as knowledge and will, as we explained in the episode Worshippers of Microbes?

Take, for example, bacteria’s ability to resist the first known antibiotic, penicillin. How can bacteria do this? By numerous means, each extremely complex and precise. One is the production of beta-lactamase. This enzyme consists of hundreds of amino acids arranged in a precise order, with no place for randomness; at the final stages of its production it undergoes modifications at very specific sites, takes a three-dimensional form, and performs a specific task: targeting the weakest point in the antibiotic to neutralise it. Where are randomness and chance in all this?

One scientific paper, for example, discusses a beta-lactamase type composed of (263) amino acids. Have you seen bacteria make failed random attempts by producing chains longer and shorter than this—(50), (100), (200), (300)—and with random amino-acid arrangements before they happened, by chance, to reach this enzyme? If the matter were left to randomness, as you say, land and sea, earth and sky would be filled with such failed attempts before bacteria reached the production of this enzyme. Did bacteria reach precisely this enzyme through random evolution, repeatedly, without our seeing countless random failures alongside it?

Researchers then produce a new antibiotic that resists this enzyme; bacteria produce another beta-lactamase type. They produce another antibiotic, and bacteria produce a third, fourth, and fifth beta-lactamase, until one feels one is dealing with an organism that has vast research centres rather than microscopic creatures, millions of which gather on a pinhead. This is only one mechanism among many mechanisms of bacterial resistance. What has this to do with randomness or chance?

Incidentally, a number of leading workers in antibiotics have objected to inserting His Excellency into photographs of discoveries in this field. Dr Ernst Chain, one of the three who produced penicillin and who won the Nobel Prize with Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey, described the myth of random mutations as a hypothesis unsupported by evidence and irreconcilable with the facts, and wondered that scientists would swallow it without criticism.

Likewise, Dr Selman Waksman, discoverer of streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis and also a Nobel laureate, described applying Darwinian principles of struggle for survival to the world of antibiotics as a figment of the imagination.

Professor Philip Skell, who also contributed to producing antibiotics and is described as the father of carbene chemistry, wrote an article in The Scientist in (2005) entitled Why Do We Invoke Darwin? He said: ‘There is no question that my own research on antibiotics during the Second World War received no guidance from Darwinian evolution, nor did Alexander Fleming’s when he discovered penicillin inhibition of bacteria.’

Skell says: ‘I recently asked more than seventy eminent scientists whether they would have carried out their work differently if they thought Darwin’s theory false. Their answers were all the same: no.’ He says he examined the distinguished biological discoveries of the last century and found that, as always, Darwin’s theory had provided no tangible guidance; it was brought in after discoveries as an attention-grabbing literary gloss—just as His Excellency the President is brought in to cut the ribbon. Skell also says: ‘From my conversations with distinguished researchers, it has become clear that modern experimental biology gains its power from the availability of new tools and methods, not from immersion in historical biology.’

Professor Skell was bold in criticising Darwinism. When the National Academy of Sciences issued the book we are discussing, Skell—who was himself an Academy member—answered with an article in Politics and the Life Sciences. Note its title and what it said: people should look with great alarm at the unnecessary and misleading insertion of speculative historical, philosophical, and religious ideas into the realm of experimental science, coming from various sources, including that recent National Academy of Sciences publication. Recall, brothers, that we explained the relationship of religion to experimental science in the episode The Kidnapped Child. Naturally, after this bold criticism Skell was not spared attacks from the myth’s enforcers, who called him a cowardly creationist and a liar or an ignoramus. In short, that is the claim that achievements in bacterial resistance belong to His Excellency.

This is the third achievement cited by the book of a major American organisation, NAS—reminding us of the saying: the mountain laboured and gave birth to a mouse.

4. The price of fish

Let us turn to another outlet, Scientific American, concerned with educating Americans about scientific issues. There one finds an article entitled Why Everyone Should Learn the Theory of Evolution. Yes, please explain why. It says evolution should be taught as a practical way of understanding drug resistance and the price of fish. It continues: more importantly, Darwin’s legacy is directly relevant to how society frames public policy and sometimes to how we choose to run our lives. Overfishing large adult fish will reduce their numbers and cause smaller fish to reproduce instead, thereby raising the price of fish in the market.

Wow! What a great achievement! What a great achievement for His Excellency! If we keep catching large fish, their numbers decline and small fish become more numerous. We could never have known this unless we believed in evolution and called the process selection. The inhabitants of Eskimo regions and African jungles, who have never heard of His Excellency, do not know this fact. (Camera sound.) Of course, brothers, human selection in dealing with foodstuffs was recorded historically more than (800) years before the myth’s birth, in the Muslim scholar al-Biruni’s book on India, where he observed farmers selecting the better seeds and branches and excluding the weaker ones.

5. Fettuccine meals, obesity, and diabetes

The Scientific American article moves to His Excellency’s second achievement, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and we have already answered that. It then mentions the third and final achievement in the article. Come, brothers, listen with us. Scientific American says: ‘Many modern diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, arise partly from a mismatch between our genes and an environment that changes more rapidly than genetic material can evolve. Understanding this mismatch may help persuade a patient to make dietary changes suited to his genes’ inability to adapt to the large amounts of refined carbohydrates and saturated fats from continual consumption of linguine Alfredo and the like.’ Linguine Alfredo, for those who do not know it, is a meal similar to fettuccine; and fettuccine, for those who do not know it, is a meal similar to linguine Alfredo. In any case, according to Scientific American, if you come to an obese diabetic patient and say: do you know the cause of your problem? Alfredo meals and doughnuts—or kunafa and mansaf if you are Arab—are environmental changes, while random mutations in your genetic material, even though they brought you from animal ancestry, have unfortunately not been fast enough to produce mechanisms suited to dealing with these environmental changes. The solution is to adjust your diet to match your genetic material.

If you tell him this, he will be convinced, change his diet, obesity and diabetes will be solved, and His Excellency will come to take photographs with them after they enjoy health and well-being. Then we shall live in a happy world. Have you understood Why Everyone Should Learn the Theory of Evolution? Honestly, brothers, if I came to write a satirical symbolic article in the voice of the myth’s supporters, I could not produce something more comical than this.

6. The 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: ‘controlling the power of evolution’

We are left with the sixth achievement attributed to His Excellency: the (2018) Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded about a month and a half ago to three researchers. What exactly did they do? Let us first explain what Frances Arnold did. Arnold wanted to improve the properties of enzymes found in nature. Enzymes are proteins produced by living cells to accelerate particular biological reactions. Arnold’s best-known research in this field concerned subtilisin, produced by a type of bacterium. The aim was to alter its structure so that it could work at higher temperatures and in organic solvents, enabling its use in cleaning and many other processes.

Fine—what did Arnold do? She could not produce an improved enzyme from its basic components. So she extracted from the bacterium that produces subtilisin the genetic material translated into this enzyme and exposed that genetic material to specified agents, in specified quantities and for specified periods, to cause mutations—that is, changes in its basic components. She then placed the altered genetic material in living bacterial cells equipped with mechanisms for reading it, so that these cells would produce new enzymes from it. She compared the resulting enzymes in their ability to perform the specified required task, selected those that worked in the organic solvent and at high temperature, excluded those that did not, and discarded enzymes damaged by the changes so that they performed no task at all. Arnold then made further improvements to the successful enzymes, and so on. This is a fine achievement of genetic engineering. The other two researchers worked through the same main principles: making changes to improve the efficiency of proteins—antibodies in this case—and selecting them by defined criteria to improve their binding to their targets.

Do you know, brothers, what the researchers did with these experiments? It is as if they brought in His Excellency the myth and asked, ‘Why are you sad?’ He replied, ‘People are mocking me; they do not believe that all the living creatures in the universe are my achievements.’ ‘Then prove it to them practically.’ ‘I need time.’ ‘How much time?’ ‘Well… a thousand million years.’ ‘Only that? No problem, we will help you. Are you not, Your Excellency, random mutations and blind selection without purposes over billions of years? We will help you at every point of weakness. We will not leave you to randomness, waiting for a random mutation in genetic material from ultraviolet radiation and then another mutation years later from a chemical. No: we will expose specified places in genetic material to batches of simultaneous mutations at extremely high density, up to a million times the rate expected in nature. We will not leave your selection blind; we will take you by the hand and lead you with our own eyes. We will not leave worthless proteins to accumulate in cells from mutations; we will remove them. We will not leave you without a purpose; we will set the purpose and design experiments around it. In other words, Your Excellency, we have emptied you of your content and solved all your problems: the mutations are not random, selection is not blind, and the goal is not unknown. With all this, you will not need billions of years; what you say happens in billions of years can be done in a few weeks or, at most, a year,’ as Professor Sara Linse, a member of the committee awarding this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said during the ceremony: ‘What they did was accelerate evolution. Nature had billions of years, but now we want the process to be possible in a few weeks or a year in the laboratory.’

Show us your strength, Your Excellency! Could you please produce the billions of forms of living creatures that exist today, to silence those mocking you? His Excellency tried and could not. Could you create one fly? He tried and could not. Could you turn one kind of organism into another? He tried and could not. Could you create one cell? Could you produce one enzyme, knowing that a single living cell contains millions of enzymes? What a failure, Your Excellency. Then can we, researchers, try on Your Excellency’s behalf? They could not. Thus, when Professor Sara was asked why researchers did not manufacture the enzyme themselves rather than alter enzymes already found in nature, she said: ‘So far, with our knowledge, we cannot produce an enzyme from scratch.’ Thus she tells you: “So far, with our knowledge, we cannot produce an enzyme from scratch”—that is, from its basic units.

The utmost the researchers did was change properties of proteins existing in nature. Subtilisin remained subtilisin, though with different properties; antibodies remained antibodies, though with different properties. According to Professor Sara Linse, this was done in a time that compresses billions of years of evolution. Therefore, we might expect the title of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry to be: the prize for demonstrating evolution theory’s failure and closing its file after its long farce. Professor Sara Linse herself also explained the differences between what was done and evolution: ‘In nature it is a random process, because mutations happen by chance from UV rays or something, whereas in the laboratory the process was based on knowledge; you need to have an idea which positions to change in the genetic material, then we add some randomness.’ She likewise explained the difference in purpose: ‘In nature there is no goal, whereas in directed evolution the scientist defines the goal.’ All this was in her answers to the journalist’s questions.

Despite all of this, the outcome was only to change protein properties, not to transform one kind into another or create something from nothing. What then if the matter had been left to His Excellency? For all these reasons, we naturally expect part of the prize to be for the researchers’ demonstration of His Excellency’s inability. Let us see how the Nobel Prize was announced: the Nobel website titled it They Controlled the Power of Evolution and used an image to express that year’s prize. Arabic-language outlets likewise carried the news; the Al Jazeera-affiliated Meydan site titled it Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018: Evolution Theory Treats Humans. Thus experiments that demonstrate His Excellency’s incapacity become one of his achievements. Achievements full of design, conscious selection, and defined goals are made into the achievements of randomness, chance, and blind selection without a goal or an agent. No problem—the important thing is that His Excellency appears in the picture.

This is a cheap, laughable insertion of His Excellency the myth, rejected and criticised by a group of leading researchers, including scientists in prominent American posts such as Dr Matti Leisola, Dr Douglas Axe, and Dr Anne Gauger. One can find strong scientific statements from them, in addition to those we have mentioned, in this article by our brothers at Muslim Researchers. Did His Excellency contribute anything to this research? Did the researchers need him in any way? Arnold, one of the Nobel winners, was asked by the British Guardian: ‘The Nobel Prize was given to you for directed evolution of enzymes. What is this concept?’ She answered: ‘It is simply breeding, like crossing cats—different types of cats—or dogs to obtain desired traits, but we did it at the molecular level.’ Arnold therefore drew inspiration from breeding occurring before her; the matter has no connection with what happened in the distant past or with His Excellency the myth.

The real effect of evolutionary theory

This is how the myth is inserted, and how people are persuaded that their lives could not have been as they are without His Excellency the myth. Consider the laughable example of a lecture entitled Medicine Without Evolution Is Like Engineering Without Physics. Its speaker repeats logical fallacies and old falsehoods about useless organs and design errors, which we refuted in principle in the episodes Got You!, Wake Up, and The Cocktail. He suggests that if creatures had been created with knowledge, women would have a zipper to open during childbirth instead of suffering what they suffer. In English: ‘What do women really need? A zipper… I mean… this whole idea of pushing a baby’s head through bones… this is crazy!’ Have you seen the science of His Excellency’s followers?

After this, can the myth’s followers produce one beneficial scientific study founded on the conviction that creatures came by randomness and chance? Has His Excellency ever embraced a researcher and told him, ‘My son, this world you see is the product of randomness and chance, not the act of an agent or the will of a willing one,’ and inspired him through those ideas to make a discovery benefiting humanity? The scientific way is not to list names of scientists said to believe in evolution. The question is whether the myth deserves credit for any beneficial discovery. We explained in the episode The Kidnapped Child that any scientist who produces useful knowledge does so only after rejecting, in practical scientific work, the stupidity of materialism and the claims of randomness and chance. If they truly believed that phenomena came by randomness, that organs are useless, and that genetic material is junk, research would stop there and there would be no reason to investigate, as we explained in the episode The Atheists’ God of the Gaps.

Nevertheless, the myth’s followers, as usual, deceive people and trivialise their thinking in order to pass off the fallacy of ‘during His Excellency the President’s reign.’ The myth has no benefit of any kind; on the contrary, evolution’s myth has harmed scientific research and caused enormous waste of money, time, and effort in futile attempts to answer questions such as: when did humans and chimpanzees evolve from their common ancestor? What random mutations caused humans to evolve from primitive organisms? Search research databases such as PubMed; enter terms such as Human, Chimpanzee, Evolution, and Genome; look at the thousands of studies made on this, then bring me one benefit from research built on the illusion of the myth.

When you look at the alleged proofs of the myth, you see only lies and logical fallacies, which we detailed in previous episodes. Then you see His Excellency wandering through the streets of science, searching for a new discovery to run toward, insert himself into, and have his photograph taken with—though he had absolutely nothing to do with it. Then you realise the scale of his tragedy and misery. Yet you also find people from among us saying: [The theory has exercised—and still exercises—a vast and enduring influence across highly varied scientific fields: anatomy, histology, physiology, neuroscience and the brain, pharmacology and drug preparation, not to mention biology and natural history—its original, long-established domain—then psychology—especially evolutionary psychology—sociology, history, moral philosophy; moral philosophy, political philosophy, and other domains of science and art].

Indeed, its effect appears in all these sciences—but what is that effect? They say it is an important theory, and that a person today cannot engage with these sciences and arts seriously and with broad, flexible understanding without grasping it. I think, brothers, that after this episode you have understood that its real influence in these fields is simply ‘it happened during His Excellency the myth’s reign,’ not that one needs it to understand them. Yes, the myth has left a mark in many fields, but it is a corrupting and destructive mark. As we detailed in the episode Darwin’s Bullet Against Humanity, it led some people to believe they were more evolved than others, incited them to annihilate and enslave races they considered less evolved, and put them in gardens to display them like animals. It also justified crimes as the return of animal traits in people supposedly evolved from wild animals, and justified every moral corruption, as we explained in the episode Falsifying Science: Homosexuality as an Example. In return, the myth has brought no benefit of any kind, except one: when it caused doubt in people’s hearts, it gave lovers of knowledge a reason to uproot it and cleanse science of its falsehood.

When we extract it, we extract with it impurities attached to it that would otherwise not have appeared. Thus certainty in the visible and hidden signs of God grows in our hearts, and the pages of science are cleansed, in fulfilment of God’s saying: “But Allah abolishes that which Satan throws in; then Allah makes precise His verses.” [Al-Hajj 22:52] “Then Allah makes precise His verses. And Allah is Knowing and Wise.” [Al-Hajj 22:52] And His saying thereafter: “And so those who were given knowledge may know that it is the truth from your Lord and therefore believe in it, and their hearts humbly submit to it. And indeed is Allah the Guide of those who have believed to a straight path.” [Al-Hajj 22:54]

Conclusion and questions for the next episode

With this, brothers, we have discussed the fourteenth fallacy used to promote the myth: ‘with it, therefore because of it—during His Excellency the myth’s reign.’ A frequently repeated question remains: if the myth fails so badly, why do all these scientists show conviction in it? Why are they willing for it to be credited with their discoveries? Is it true that (99%) of scientists believe in evolutionary theory? These are questions we will answer in the next episode, God willing, so follow along with me.