Praise be to Allah alone. As for what follows,
One of the brothers sent me a question, and I thought it would be beneficial to share the answer on the page. I ask Allah to make it beneficial.
The questioner said: Peace be upon you, our Sheikh. I saw this statement and I hope for your response to it, may Allah bless you.
He says: If a natural disaster occurred that exterminated the current human species (Homo sapiens), except for one man and one woman, what are the chances of them mating and reproducing to sustain the species (Homo sapiens) again?
A: Zero percent… That is, they would be doomed to extinction along with the human species “Homo sapiens.”
This is due to a principle in biology and ecology called: MVP (Minimum viable population)
The gene pool, composed of the combined genes of a single male and a single female, is insufficient to create the genetic diversity needed to adapt to changing environmental conditions, which consequently means the extinction of this species.
For this reason, when the population numbers of a certain species drop below this minimum threshold, the remaining individuals are kept in (nature reserves) in an attempt to save them from extinction…
And this is one of the main reasons why it is scientifically impossible to accept the idea of independent creation based on the origin of each species starting from a single male and a single female… – “I am speaking here from a scientific (biological) perspective, not from religious narratives, of course”…
This concludes the question text.
In response, by the will and strength of Allah, I say:
Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah. All this talk, my dear brother, is conducted by its author according to the method of the naturalists in what is called methodological naturalism. He begins with a strict belief that the first occurrences of creation are necessarily “natural” events, meaning they proceed according to what physicists know of natural laws, on the basis that what today is a characteristic or inherent nature in a type of material existing in the observable world around us, or a causal law related to that nature, must have been so eternally without beginning in the same type of material existing eternally without beginning. This persists until his equations, used to model the reality under consideration, or the set of hypotheses obtained in his theoretical framework, compel him to restrict something that he had generalized or to specify something that he had made broad. An example of such restriction, as I often cite in discussions of these issues, is what the academy inclined towards in the past century regarding the formulation of the general relativity equation so that its application to existent entities has a temporal limit in the past which it does not exceed. Even though they made it so it does not apply to the past of the world eternally, they did not follow the same path with quantum mechanics equations. They continued in their conception of what is called the universal quantum field, claiming that quantum laws have been operating eternally without beginning on a field that, according to them, also exists in actuality eternally without beginning. Most physicists, as we mentioned, say that the material of the world is eternal, even if most of them lean towards the notion that its current form is recent! Those who said that the material of the world must all be recent and not ancient only did so following the same eternal method (methodological naturalism) in dealing with actual existence, as actual existence! In their view, the highest point is that they favored a certain mathematical model in describing the first moment in the alleged spacetime history, making it so it is not a specific point at all. Thus, it cannot be said that anything existed before it or that any event happened before it, making the world both new and not new, ancient and not ancient simultaneously. The mathematical nonsense they envisioned in their model becomes a beginning for everything in actuality and, at the same time, not a beginning for anything! The point is that the strict method they all adhere to is the absolute application of their hypotheses and assumptions in all directions of time and space without limit or restriction, except for what one of them may favor when collecting suitable hypotheses and relevant notions from his peers in the academy! Naturally, the theoretical model must be internally consistent, free from mathematical contradiction or disorder, and not contradict the acceptable interpretations of relevant observational and experimental outputs, regardless of the subject matter of the model and the material being examined! Everything in actuality at all times and places is, in their view, subject to natural examination initially. This is the first thing we disagree with them on, and our methodological stance on this must be strict and firm.
Because they adhere to that strict eternal method, they do not allow discussions on the occurrences of the origin of living species (the first origin without precedent) except by analogy with the known characteristics of living species as they observe them now and their relation to the characteristics of inanimate objects in the world! We do not actually know how Allah created the first pairs of each species, nor how their genetic and hereditary traits were (contrary to what they assume based on the same blind application of current observed rates of genetic change in the species they study), nor how the environment was that Allah spread them in when He spread them, and other matters they believe operate in the world by two things: the absolute natural law and pure existential randomness! If one is free from this belief, this talk you kindly relayed falls away, as does everything revolving around it and similar to it! This is something a student of knowledge must understand and grasp, to know where to place his hand when refuting the opponent’s doubt and demonstrating its falsehood! One learns how to strike the head of the snake and crush it, without paying attention to its tail! How to strike at the foundation of the building and bring it down on its occupants, without being distracted by minor details. Whoever follows the series related to empirical examination and the research of naturalists, which we are continuing to publish on this blessed channel, acquires this ability, by Allah’s grace and guidance. We ask Allah for soundness and success.
The author of the quoted text says: “If a natural disaster were to occur, wiping out the current human species (Homo sapiens), except for one man and one woman, what are the chances of them mating and reproducing to sustain the Homo sapiens species again?”
Answer: Zero percent… Meaning they would be doomed to extinction, as well as the extinction of the human species “Homo sapiens”.
I said: There are several fallacies here, not just one. The first fallacy is known among statisticians as the Base Rate Fallacy. Here, he wants to estimate the probability that Adam and Eve’s descendants could reproduce and proliferate on earth from a single man and woman. How does he estimate that? By assuming that today, in our time, all humans except one man and one woman are extinct, and then this man and woman meet and reproduce. Can their offspring spread and adapt to different environmental conditions across the earth as it is now or not? He compares the state of Adam and Eve and their early descendants to what he imagines would be the state of this one man and one woman in the hypothetical scenario he envisaged, and then transfers the estimated probability from the mentioned case by analogy to make it the same probability! So, what is the fallacy? I never agree that the state of Adam, peace be upon him, and his creation (as mentioned in authentic traditions that he was sixty cubits tall and was greater in stature than all his descendants, with creation continually decreasing from him to the time of Muhammad, peace be upon him) is similar to the state of the male survivor in the hypothesized scenario from the people of this world. Nor do we equate Eve with other women. Furthermore, we do not know the state of the world and its natural and physical systems at that time to judge that it is similar to the current state of the world! It must necessarily have been a different state, suitable for a human like Adam in height and stature, all of which is absolute unseen knowledge known only to Allah! Therefore, this statistical comparison has no basis and is unacceptable.
The second fallacy is within the domain and scope of statistics from the beginning. The field of statistics and its subject is the study of observable, tangible, and customary events in the world. Is the origin of the human species, in its initial creation, or the origin of other living species without a prior example, of the same type as the observable customary events for us? Never! The same can be said for the origin of the earth as a whole, the origin of the heavens and what is between them; all of this we did not witness nor did we see a comparable example that we know with a reasonable certainty that it must be similar! How do we make judgments based on analogies among common events gathered together in every correct induction? We do so through repeated handling, observation, and collecting similar instances to each other, observing and seeing that this resembles that, and this parallels that. When similar conditions repeat, and the event under observation and follow-up repeats alongside them, this is how induction occurs! But the first occurrences of creation are excluded from the proposition, and given their very nature, they are not subject to repetition and thus not subject to induction!
Moreover, the very scenario the man proposes, we do not concede that statistics can be correctly applied to it! Such a situation has never occurred in human history so that we can judge the likelihood of its repetition as its analogs have occurred before! This brings us to the third fallacy, which is the arbitrary choice of the analogy! He imagines a scenario where only one man and one woman remain from humanity, and likely imagines that each one of them remains in such a way that the probability of them meeting is greatly diminished no matter how each one moves in different directions of the earth around them! The probability here involves a man moving randomly on foot, wandering aimlessly, searching for other living beings, as such stories are often repeated in some science fiction narratives, in what is called post-apocalyptic fiction. He will likely have to elaborate on this imagined scenario by assuming that there are no humans left to manage airports, ships, transportation means by air, land, and sea, or wireless communication devices, etc. The entire human civilization has collapsed and ceased! We humans in this era cannot imagine connection or movement without that civilization! So why assume that Adam and Eve, whom Muslims and the People of the Book believe in, were first created on this earth in a way that Allah did not facilitate their meeting, as in this miserable imagined story, and arbitrarily choose to compare to it?? This arbitrary choice of what to compare in theory building is a legacy of the ancient philosophers and their Greek method of formulating metaphysical theories to explain existence and beings! Everything in existence, the reason it is as it is and not otherwise, is this specific detailed manner chosen by the philosopher as he lounges on his couch, deciding by analogy that it must be the nature of every existing being! Everything must be composed of two existential abstract elements, existing in actuality in their entirety (which in itself is a major fallacy) in the way the philosopher claims to know, even though it is only an analogy or at best an analogy completion! I say “completion” because the philosopher sometimes uses it to build mathematical models to simulate this aspect of observed reality under study, thereby enabling prediction of the phenomenon under study by applying that model and extending it mathematically. Otherwise, in many cases, it is not useful for either prediction or application, as is the case with cosmological models and the like. And the people have a sophistry regarding the issue of prediction and its application in cosmology, which cannot be elaborated upon in this place. So why must we measure, if we are to measure, on a scenario where the man and woman are such that their meeting is unimaginable, or if they meet, their offspring would not be helped by the environmental conditions they live in to reproduce and proliferate, and where they do not experience the “random mutations” that they believe in, which they themselves assume must have happened to the first single-celled organism that supposedly reproduced even by fission? Their entire theory is based on the assumption that the random natural events that the earth has supposedly witnessed over billions of years have never been enough to wipe out all life on earth completely, but the mutations always brought about not only what keeps the first species (which is subject to the same hypothetical scenario of a narrow gene pool and low diversity) spreading on earth where it is and capable of reproducing and proliferating and further spreading, but also always brought about what caused the number of living species to reach millions, on land, sea, and air, all in complete biological and ecological balance with each other, as the living biomass is now! This is Richard Dawkins’ fallacy in his concept of what he called in some of his books “Mount Improbable”! He said there is no doubt that the probability of having a living creature as complex as a human, in terms of genetic complexity and organic structure and such, arising purely randomly from the primary materials composing its body, is an improbability that makes it one of the impossibilities! But the theory does not say this; rather, it speaks of extremely minute random events and extremely minute genetic changes, continuously following each other over millions of years, which resembles a very slow ascent up a mountain slope! This is considered probable, with no problem, that the world is immersed in pure existential randomness and absolute lack of purpose and remains so for millions of years, thus increasing the probability that life arises from dead matter, and then that life advances in minute steps over billions of years!! Billions of years of what? A pre-arranged system defining functions appropriate to the natural environment in existence, with causal definition for lock and key (as Dawkins expressed in some of his words)?? Never! Rather, it is a purely random material system, a blind world where nothing occurs for a purpose or happens by preference, at all! This imaginary, fundamentally impossible reality, inherently contradicting the very meaning of “system” from its original application and foundational principle, is claimed to remain consistently in its order for millions of years, until purely random events, without any system or order and nothing preserving its ecological equilibrium in its entirety and detail, make it become what we see now! This is pure contradiction, no doubt, and corruption in the application of probabilistic logic, which we have elaborated on in its relevant places.
The overarching methodological fallacy in this approach, my dear brother, is that the author of this quoted text assumes from the outset that existence comprises only blind matter and its properties, which have coincidentally arisen and persisted, along with completely random motion devoid of any controller, will, or factor of preference behind it. Therefore, he presumes that all of humanity could one day perish due to some “natural event,” leaving only one man and one woman, then estimates the probability of their meeting under stochastic conditions that do not account for a God with foreknowledge of the destiny of the human species and the extent of death, destruction, and extinction among living creatures under the influence of various “natural” events. Not to mention that this God Himself created the first human couple on earth and ensured their progeny would not be subjected to the total extinction events imagined by this author! All events must, in his view, be purely “natural” so that his arrogant, corrupt mind can conceive them using analogies based on familiar natural properties! It is as if he requires the initial events of creation to be such that he himself could orchestrate the creation of a living species on earth if he so desired! We have explained elsewhere that philosophers are compelled to anthropomorphize divine actions and to analogize God to themselves because they fundamentally cannot conceive of an existent entity that is not subject to their theoretical metaphysical conditioning, which they use as the basis for all inquiry and foundation of all things! They demand that observable reality must be such that it can be comprehended by their minds, in some form of analogy or representation, which is a sign of their arrogance and self-exaltation with their intellects, following Plato’s conception of the relationship between philosophical intellect and the ideal or universal abstract existence, where the philosopher is like a prophet who receives revelations not accessible to everyone else!
The man argues that due to circumstances that can decimate a small population and lead to its extinction, researchers are compelled to preserve such species in natural reserves so they can reproduce away from those conditions! So why does it not occur to his brilliant mind that Allah might also have prepared a similar safeguard for the first couple of each species against the blind natural randomness that those holding the mentioned principle assert inevitably leads to extinction?? Because fundamentally he believes there is no purpose, no knowledge, no wisdom, no creation, and no God in the unseen at all?!! Whoever holds this belief should not engage in any study of origins, extinctions, or any science at all. Rather, they should adhere to the logical consequences of their corrupt creed and declare: the world is purely random, there is no law or system in existence, and it merely happens by coincidence that we rise from our beds each morning to see a world that “appears” to have consistent laws, as if the celestial bodies are steadfast on an unchanging, repetitive course!! This is indeed what their master Hume concluded after his atheism prevented him from deriving a necessary inductive basis for the persistence of causal order in the world and its continuity as we observe! For the persistence and continuity of such laws as we observe are among rational possibilities, just as their cessation, reversal, and total disappearance are among rational possibilities! No rational preference can be given to one possibility over its alternatives except by the will of a knowing, wise Creator who creates as He wills and chooses, glorified be He!!
Thus, this writer’s statement: “This is one of the main reasons why the scientific impossibility of accepting the concept of independent creation, which posits the origin of each species from a single male and female…. – I am speaking here from a scientific (biological) perspective, not from religious narratives of course…,”
I say: Whoever contemplates carefully what we have elucidated, I hope it has become clear that there is no “science” at all, according to this writer’s concept of science, to support any “scientific impossibility,” or even a slight improbability, or any comparison between rational possibilities by any means! Whoever reflects on his statement “I am speaking from a biological perspective, not from religious narratives,” will realize that this writer is confused in his belief! It appears that he identifies with the direction of the Muslims and thus feels the grave dilemma he faces if he openly declares disbelief in Adam (peace be upon him) as the sole progenitor of humans, from whose descendants the entire human race has sprung! The man trivializes what is necessarily known in the religion of Islam by saying, in the trite phrase often heard from modernists and rationalists and their like from contemporary philosophers, “religious narratives”! What do you mean by narratives, you? The story of Adam (peace be upon him) is established in the Quran, which is the most authentic book on the face of the earth, as every Muslim believes! And the fact that we all are descendants of this one man and this one woman is necessarily known in the religion of Islam! If you do not give weight to these “narratives,” then declare your atheism and do not be a coward, so people know you!! Otherwise, stop this nonsense, and adhere in such absolute unseen matters to the method of the Muslims and their sources of knowledge acquisition. And Allah is the guide to the straight path.
Translated from: https://srajarabic.com/?p=5129