Denton, an Australian doctor and scientist, distinguishes a special (or micro) theory of evolution from the general theory. The former would claim only that closely related species can (and did in the past) evolve from others. But the general theory (the one that is widely accepted) claims to explain the origin and current diversity of all species as purely random mutations accompanied by natural selection over a very long period of time. While Denton accepts the special (micro) theory, he demonstrates so many flaws in the general theory that it must be rejected outright: its claims cannot be softened or modified in any way that could rescue the theory.

Chapter I traces the dramatic transformation of Darwin’s stance from a ‘fundamentalist’ acceptance of the Bible’s account of creation to outright rejection. Known facts about the geological age of the earth (the Bible implies 6000 years), fossil evidence of extinct species (Genesis states that all species were rescued from the flood), might justify a rejection of a literal reading of the Bible. But they do not justify a rejection of the concept of conscious design in the creation (implying a Creator). Yet, as Chapter 2 shows, this is just the position Darwin (and his followers) take: it is of the essential core of Darwin’s theory that natural selection is a blind process: ‘Darwin himself clearly stated that the mechanism responsible for … genetic variations [must] be entirely blind to the adaptive needs and requirements of the organism. Evolution by natural selection is therefore, in essence, strictly analogous to problem solving by trial and error, and it leads to the immense claim that all the design in the biosphere is ultimately the fortuitous outcome of entirely blind random processes – a giant lottery.’ This idea is frequently reflected in populist remarks like Carl Sagan’s: ‘given enough time, chance will work miracles’. But as anyone familiar with the relevant mathematics knows, ‘time in itself tells us nothing of the probability of achieving any sort of goal unless the complexity of the search can be qualified’. (Denton shows some of this complexity in Chapter 13, ‘Beyond the reach of chance’.) The universe simply isn’t old enough for even life, let alone life in all its diversity, to have arisen by chance.

Chapter 3 describes how Darwin’s theory turned into a general dogma largely because of the unacceptability as scientific theory of the alternative (conscious design implying a Creator). Yet, if stripped of the philosophical and metaphysical pretensions it so quickly assumed, the theory of evolution could be respectable as a ‘partial truth’. Denton explains in Chapter 4 that there is strong evidence (supporting the restricted claims of the special theory) for closely related animals or plants evolving from each other and forming distinct ‘species’, the term ‘species’ being understood as ‘a reproductively isolated population of organisms’.

According to Denton: ‘There are only two sorts of evidence for evolution which do not depend on actual observation of the process: finding a sequence of inter-grading forms leading unambiguously from one to another; or reconstructing them hypothetically by providing an entirely plausible genealogy including all the intermediate forms and thoroughly convincing explanation of how each stage of transformation came about.’ Example cases for the first sort of evidence are: the peppered moth, two species of European gull, and the droshopila species of Hawaii. Examples for the second sort of evidence include Mengels work on wood warblers of North America on Hawaiian honey-creepers by Amadon, and on small lizards of the Caribbean islands by Gorman and Atkins. How-ever, as Denton emphasizes, such evidence for special (micro) evolution in no way justifies the general theory. ‘However attractive the extrapolation, it does not necessarily follow that, because a certain degree of evolution has been shown to occur, therefore any degree is possible. There is obviously an enormous difference between the evolution of a colour change in a moth’s wing and the evolution of an organ like the human brain, and the differences among the fruit flies of Hawaii, for example, are utterly trivial compared with the differences between a mouse and an elephant, or an octopus and a bee.’

Denton gives good analogies and illustrative examples to argue the general principle that: ‘while sentences, machines and other sorts of complex systems can undergo a certain degree of gradual functional change, there is invariably a limit beyond which the system cannot undergo further gradual change. To cross as it were from one ‘type’ of system to another necessitates a relatively massive reorganization involving the redesign or respecification of all or almost all of the interacting component subsystems. Systems can undergo gradual micro-evolution through a succession of minor changes in their component structures but macro-evolution invariably involves a sudden ‘saltational’ change [i.e. non-gradual change by ‘leaps’]. Clearly, in all such cases, the extrapolation from micro- to macro-evolutionary change does not hold.’ Gradual random processes are incapable of producing ‘simultaneous highly specific correlated changes throughout [an] entire system’ which is precisely what they must be capable of if macro evolution is to work. (This argument is further elaborated in Chapter 13.)

Chapters 5 and 6 describe the ‘typological perception of nature which sees (and classifies) organisms as distinct groups separated by non-trivial, large gaps. There is abundant evidence for this approach and historically classification schemes were based on it. However, following widespread acceptance of the general theory of evolution, some felt the need to construct literally tree-like diagrams – many branches from a single trunk and root. Inevitably, such diagrams had many blanks, many wholly conjectural ‘branches’ needed to link known species through unknown transitionary species to alleged ancestors.

Chapter 7 discusses homology which, once thought to provide supportive evidence for evolution, turns out to be evidence destructive of the theory. 1-lomologous organs cannot be traced back to embryological development and there exist homologous limbs which, according to the theory, must have evolved from very different parts of the embryo. In short, homology does not imply common ancestry.

The subject of Chapter 8 is the key issue of fossil evidence. Darwin was expecting paleontological explorations to uncover the crucial missing ‘links’ predicted (and required) by his theory. However, as the evidence from fossil records has grown, so too has the untenability of Darwin’s theory.

To begin with, we need to know that fossils are a record only of skeletal remains: 99% of any organ ism is soft tissue which is not preserved in fossils. The coelacanth (a favourite with evolutionists) had been presented as a ‘link’ between fish and amphibians. Yet, its skeleton is identical to that preserved in aneien fossils which are as far from having been amphibians as are any other fish, The lesson is that conclusions based on skeleton forms alone do not count for much. Insects preserved in amber from hundreds of millions years ago, identical to modern insects, provide further examples of ‘living fossils’ which somehow evaded evolution.

Mother fossil record favourite with evolutionists is the horse series. Denton writes: ‘The difference between Fohippus and the modem horse is relatively trivial, yet the two forms are separated by sixty million years and at least ten genera and a great number of species. The horse series therefore tends to emphasize just how vast must have been the number of genera and species if all the diverse forms of life on earth had really evolved in the gradual way that Darwinian evolution implies. If the horse series is anything to go by, their numbers must have been indeed the infinitude’ that Darwin imagined. If ten genera separate Bohippus from the modern horse then think of the uncountable myriads there must have been linking such diverse forms as land mammals and whales or molluscs and arthropods. Yet all these myriads of life forms have vanished mysteriously, without leaving so much as a trace of their existence in the fossil record.’

The appeal by evolutionists to the incompleteness of the fossil record as an excuse for clinging to their theory might he worth attending to if the gaps, the incompleteness, were unsystematic or random. But the facts are otherwise: ‘The fundamental problem in explaining the gaps in … is their systematic character – the fact that there are fewer transitional species between the major divisions than between the minor. Between Eohippus and the modern horse(a minor division) we have dozens of transitional species, while between a primitive land mammal and a whale (a major division) we have none. And this rule applies universally throughout the living kingdom to all types of organisms, both those that are poor candidates for fossilization such as insects and those which are ideal, like molluscs. If the gaps really were lhe result of an insufficient search, or the result of the imperfection of the record, then we should expect to find more transitional forms between mouse and whale than between dog and cat.’

The hard evidence should make any objective inquirer ask, not whether we may one day fill the gaps in our record, hut whether gradual evolution ever occurred at all: ‘If the gaps cannot he adequately explained by appealing either to an insufficient search or the imperfection of the record, then this leaves a more or less saltational model of evolution as the only explanation of the gaps.’

In Chapter 9, Denton begins to draw the argument towards the conclusion that: Ultimately there is… absolutely no reason why functional organic systems should form the continuum that evolution by natural selection demands. In the world of physics and chemistry many phenomena are discontinuous. One cannot gradually convert one molecular species into another, neither can one convert gradually one type of atom into another. Between such entities there are jumps. Might not functional organic systems be similarly separated by discontinuities?’ He goes on: ‘It is possible to allude to a number of species and groups such as Archaeopteryx, or the rhipidistian fish, which appear to be to some extent intermediate. But even if such were intermediate to some degree, there is no evidence that they are any more intermediate than groups such as the living lung-fish or monotremes which… are not only tremendously isolated from their nearest cousins, hut which have individual organ systems that are not strictly transitional at all.’

The frustration at the failure to find intermediate forms and the difficulty of conceiving of gradual functional transitions led some scientists to an alternative to gradualism, namely ‘the concept of evolution by saltation, the idea that new organs and types emerge suddenly following some sort of massive macro-mutation.’ Advocates of the idea include the popular contemporary writer Stephen Jay Gould and his predecessor Goldschmidt who introduced the notion of the ‘hopethl monster’ in his the Material Basis of Evolution (1940) as a ‘means of getting from one type to another suddenly in one jump’.

The possibility of such a ‘hopeful monster’ had been likened to a ‘miracle’ by Darwin. The great majority of biologists have followed him in that judgement ever since. So-called freaks of nature do, of course, occur but they have little chance of reproductive survival given that they are horn into an environment where the non-freaks (the normal) survive to reproduce. Denton sums up by saying that: While it might he theoretically possible to avoid the impasse of gradualism by opting for saltation it seems unlikely that purely random processes would ever throw together suddenly adaptations like a feather or the avian lung or the amniotic egg.’

In Chapter 10, the process of DNA replication and protein synthesis is explained for readers unfamiliar with the subject. Equivalents of concepts like ‘universal Turing machine’ and ‘fault tolerant computing’ can be observed in perfectly economical design in the world of molecular genetics.

‘The Enigma of Life’s Origin’, the title of Chapter Il indicates the enormous conceptual and empirical difficulties evolution theory has faced in yet another once-promising area. It was hoped that as the nature of living organisms was more fully understood, the gap between them and inanimate forms would he narrowed. Exactly the opposite happened. The gap that separates the simplest living systems from inanimate systems seems unbridgeable: there is not a hint in inanimate systems of the DNA, messenger RNA, and the protein synthesis mechanism (implying self-replication), found in living forms.

Attempts to explain the origin of life through evolutionary means come up against two other major hurdles. The first is the so-called ‘oxygen-ultraviolet conundrum’. One has to assume that there was no oxygen in the early atmosphere because otherwise any organic compounds would rapidly oxidize. However, this assumption implies that there was no ozone to shield these compounds from deadly doses of solar radiation. In other words, this is a ‘catch 22: If we have oxygen we have no organic compounds, hut if we don’t have oxygen we have none either.’ The second hurdle is the shortage of time for the first life forms to evolve: ‘An Australian group reported the remains of a simple type of algae in rocks at least 3.5 billion years old… So life had to form between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago. Just a few hundred million years from nothing to organic compounds to the whole DNA, M-RNA, protein system.’

These and other apparently insoluble difficulties led the Nobel-prize winning scientist Crick to comment:

‘An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to he almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.’ The problem of the origin of life is an example of what Denton calls ‘the universal principle that complex systems cannot be approached gradually through functional intermediates because of the necessity of perfect co-adaptation of their components as pre-condition of function.’ Crick is also famous for running away from the problem by suggesting that life must have originated somewhere outside the galaxies known to us and been cast down amid cosmic dust as a ‘seed’ – his so-called panspermia’ theory.

The subject of Chapter 12 is the modern molecular biological techniques which have provided biologists with an entirely new way of comparing organisms at a biochemical level (as opposed to the classical anatomical comparisons). Again, the comparisons established that: ‘the pattern of diversity at a molecular level conforms to a highly ordered hierarchic system. Each class at a molecular level is unique, isolated and unlinked by intermediates. Thus molecules, like fossils, have failed to provide the elusive intermediates so long sought by evolutionary biology.’

The gaps in the ‘chain of being’ are seen at both empirical and theoretical level: wherever we find significant empirical discontinuities in nature we invariably face great, if not insurmountable, conceptual problems in envisaging how the gaps could have been bridged in terms of gradual random processes. We saw this in the fossil record, we saw it in the ease of the feather, in the case of the avian lung, and in the case of the wing of the hat. We saw it again in the ease of the origin of life and we see it here in this new area of comparative biochemistry.’

In Chapter 13 (‘Beyond the Reach of Chance’) Denton illustrates the impossibility of reaching functional complex systems via blind random processes.

In Chapter 14, we imagine ourselves in a cell magnified a thousand million times and try to grasp the wonderful reality of life. What we see is a system much more complex and perfect than any human artefact built so far. The elaborate Soviet lunar exploratory machine, the Lunakod, which moved on articulated legs, highlights by comparison the sheer ease of solutions provided in nature for such problems as self-location, stability and locomotion. The amazing storage capacity and efficiency (size and energy economy) of biological information storage and retrieval is another striking example of the ease of nature and the hardship’ humans face to match it even crudely by artifice.

Denton comments: ‘According to Paley, we would never infer in the case of a machine, such as a watch, that its design was due to natural processes such as the wind and rain; rather, we would be obliged to postulate a watch-maker. Living things are similar to machines, exhibiting the same sort of adaptive complexity and we must, therefore, infer by analogy that their adaptive complexity is also the result of intelligent activity.’ And he adds: ‘The conclusion may have religious implication but it does not depend on religious presuppositions.’

Chapter 15 (‘Priority of Paradigm’) gives Denton’s explanation of why the theory of evolution has been so pervasive in our age despite overwhelming contrary evidence.

It is a modern example of a scientific community defending a theory just as tong as ii holds sufficient intrinsic appeal.’ He likens it to the defence by medieval astronomers of the Ptolemaic theory of the heavens, and by the eighteenth-century chemists of the phlogiston theory of combustion.

There is not space here to argue at sufficient length against the widely held stance of modern scientists that the concept of a Creator-God is of no relevance to a properly scientific understanding of how the natural world is or how it operates, that, in brief, it cannot he a part of any scientific explanation or theory. We must insist, however, that scientific knowledge cannot exist (any more than its dominant theories can com -about) in some sort of vacuum, isolated from the complex of human knowledge, attitudes and relationships. The social implications of the ‘central claim of Darwinian theory that humanity was not born by the intentions of a Deity hut by a completely mindless trial and error selection of random molecular patterns…’ have been, in general, very had. A theory so certainly false should never have imprisoned scientific imagination for as tong as it has. Ii could not have done so if the aspiration to scientific knowledge had been tutored in the humility that comes with a serious, religious consideration of our status as creatures and servants of God. Only a religious perspective teaches that all human curiosity – its perceptive faculties, its intelligence and the instruments it devises to extend its powers – exists as the gift of the One All-Merciful God who created us and the intelligibility of the world so that we might draw nearer to Him. At least in the field of biology, the alternative to believing in a Creator did not, as is claimed, offer freedom from dogmatism: the lasting value of Denton’s hook is to have demonstrated that reality with clear argument and a large body of hard evidence.

By answering this argument we shall show that we do indeed accept the same biological facts, but do not agree about the ‘laws’ which try to explain them, nor about the limits and qualifications for the operation of those ‘laws’.

Unlike other Scriptures which claim Divine authority, there is no proposition in the Qur’an which can be contradicted by established scientific knowledge as untrue. The Qur’an does not underestimate the importance of reflection and argument, but it does indicate that our suppositions about the origin of creation cannot explain the reality of it: we simply were not present there.

I called them not to witness the creation of the heavens and the earth, nor their own creation: Nor is it for Me to take as helpers such as lead (men) astray (al-Kahf 18.51).

This verse should not be interpreted to mean ‘Do not ask questions or do not research’, for the Qur’an encourages scientific research explicitly. It is, rather, a warning about those who vainly claim to explain the phenomena which happen outside the normal course of events and cannot be described in terms of material causes and effects. Since the creation is the great, inclusive miracle, human beings can neither imitate it (that is, they cannot create out of nothing) nor explain it. To attribute the creation to God makes everything plausible and saves scientific inquiry from fruitless uncertainties and insecure speculations. To understand the basic principles of the reality of creation is most important. If they are properly understood, useful and worthwhile aspects of the theory of evolution can be sifted out from pretentious and false interpretations of it. For, in every idea, even if it is against common sense in general, there are some elements of truth. The biological facts, rightly so called, such as variation, adaptation, natural selection and mutation, in evolution theory, should be differentiated from the ideological and metaphysical baggage they have accumulated.

In our approach, evolution may be described as the changes and variations in the form of creatures, especially in living beings, and the genetic and environmental factors associated with those changes. We do not assert that living beings are fixed and unchangeable in their forms. To claim that would imply a limitation upon the knowledge and power of God which is contradictory to His Names, the All-Knowing and the All-Powerful. The creation reflects His Names through its novelty within renewal, its prolific variety amid abundance. Individual diversity is programmed into the genetic mechanisms which, as they unfold and evolve under the prompting of environmental factors, display (for our admiration and understanding) the action in the world of Divine grace and power. The many hundreds of apples on a single tree are not identical, nor are they identical over different seasons-they are only similar. Thus, the first emphasis in our definition of the concept of evolution is change which is vital for the maintenance of ecological diversity and balance.

To paraphrase the Qur’an: God imposes the law of change and evolution as a basic principle in the universe. In the enforcement of this law, He creates pairs and opposites which, interacting according to subtle purposes, are placed in the core of every being. Thus, the change-dependent evolution and the dynamic balance in the universe, have been realized through the intersection of the opposites continually since the outset of creation. There are many verses in the Qur’an (for example in Chapter 55, al-Rahman) which indicate change and balance.

The ideologues of evolution theory, however, ignore the Divine wisdom, measure and purpose in the universe, claiming that the change they observe is an effect of coincidences-random variations, aimless mutations.

In the light of recent findings, we know the apparent causes of change to be mutations, which are the hereditary alternations in the genetic information; the differentiation of an isolated population from its ancestor through multiplying inside the population; adaptation and so-called ‘natural selection’, that is the decrease or extinction of generations which are weak and unable to reproduce in their immediate environment.

Believers in the One God affirm that everything, from subatomic particles to galaxies, is created by Him, that He is Omniscient and Omnipotent, and everything acts under His will and command. Causes are created by God in the appropriate time and space and the appropriate order and combination as a sort of veil for His dignity and might. He only says ‘Be!’, and all the material causes, such as heat, moisture, air, chemical elements, radiation, etc., are. If such causes are seen in this way, if their being brought together into an order is understood to be a response to their need (their prayer) to participate in a collaborative universe-and if their being causes is confirmed by observations and experiments-then, we may regard causes as a useful way to explain biological phenomena.

We know that diversity in a species is realized through mutations in the genetic program, arranged by Divine wisdom, not by coincidence. The evolutionist idea that the mutations are arbitrary, that useful changes can occur by sheer chance and lead to the development of a living being, or that a lot of random mutations can accumulate to enable a sudden leap from one species to another, has not been confirmed by experiments and observations. To accept that the mutations are arbitrary interferences in the genetic order is like accepting that a rocket can be generated out of a sound aircraft by raking it randomly with machine-gun fire. Certainly, computer-aided probability calculations show that it is impossible for thousands of random mutations to accumulate on a living being and change it into another species. Any such change is manifestly against that organism’s survival and would have to overwhelm it suddenly, not gradually.

Some bacteria can be given the ability to synthesize insulin by means of genetic engineering. This is a kind of planned mutation. Such a transfer of ability is, though remarkable, a relatively small change: it is, in any case, only possible because of the relevant ability being present in the genetic material being transferred. It is sheer arrogance to claim that living beings having millions of such able genes have evolved from each other by arbitrary, random mutations.

Adaptation is a biological manifestation of the flexibility coded into the genetic programs of living organisms; it carries the potential, within the limits of the species, for the organism to survive in changing conditions and to sustain that survival through reproduction.

When environmental conditions change, responsive adaptations occur- e.g. change of colour or density of hair, size of ears-in proportion to the flexibility of the organism’s genetic potential. If the organism cannot adapt adequately, the species does not mutate into some new species, it goes extinct. That is what happened, we presume, to dinosaurs and dodos.

The diversity of various human races can also be explained by the flexibility of their genetic potentials in response to different geographical, climatic and environmental conditions, provided, as before, that the changes are contained within species boundaries. Intermarriages between the various races add to the diversity within the species boundaries, they do not yield another species. The working of genetic potential can also be seen in the way that insects adapt to pesticides, and certain bacteria acquire a nearly invincible resistance to particular antibiotics. Insects or bacteria become more resistant, but they do not become different species. Their potential for adaptation is understood, by believers, as a power to survive given to them by Divine Wisdom.

We do not wholly reject the concept of natural selection. However, it is necessary to criticize the extreme interpretation evolutionists make of it. First of all, there is not an absolute ‘cruel competition’ in nature which the strong dominate absolutely, nor a pitiless ‘selection’ process of exterminating rivals in the struggle for food (survival). Rather, there is a dynamic balance among the great variety of creatures which is characterized, overall, by mutual collaboration and solidarity. The killing of weak creatures by the stronger ones is not random, nor characterized by a drive to exterminate and monopolize resources for survival. On the contrary, it is, overall, purposive and beneficial. Predators prey, generally, on weak and sick animals, and this ‘selects’ the fit and healthy for survival and, quite probably, prevents epidemics within and between species. Also, it is manifestly obvious that the apparent ‘competition’ in nature is the outward face of a subtle and complex feeding chain which is vital for the overall balance of the ecosystem, providing niches for great numbers of species, not least those which feed on the left-overs of others thus cleansing and purifying the food-chain.

Another factor affecting natural selection is the difference in rates of breeding. One bacterium multiplies by millions in one day, a fly by thousands in two days. Vertebrates, except fish and amphibians on the other hand, breed far more slowly. From the base of the food pyramid to the top, the production of food increases in quality but decreases in mass, and consequently a lot of tiny living organisms are the food of larger ones. The difference in breeding rates among members of the same species causes rapid multiplying of a certain group, but not the change of its species. An organism with many young has more opportunity to survive in changing environmental conditions, because when the number of its young increases, so too do the combinations of genetic characters. Even after drastic environmental changes, a few may survive.

The concepts used by evolutionists used to explain biological realities have a merely nominal reality, they are far from being ultimate causes. Attributing reality or, worse, Divine power to concepts which can be useful only for building mental models, and ignoring the knowledge, might and eternal wisdom of the Creator, means binding our hearts and minds to nature, like nature-worshippers and polytheists generally.