Page 850 - An Index to the Qur'an

questionably, this mechanism will not cause deer to evolve and trans-
form themselves into another living species, for instance, horses.
Therefore, the mechanism of natural selection has no evolutionary
power. Darwin was also aware of this fact and had to state this in his
book The Origin of Species:

Natural selection can do nothing until favourable individual differ-
ences or variations occur. 7

Lamarck's Impact
So, how could these "favorable variations" occur? Darwin tried to
answer this question from the standpoint of the primitive understanding
of science at that time. According to the French biologist Chevalier de
Lamarck (1744-1829), who lived before Darwin, living creatures passed
on the traits they acquired during their lifetime to the next generation.
He asserted that these traits, which accumulated from one generation to
another, caused new species to be formed. For instance, he claimed that
giraffes evolved from antelopes; as they struggled to eat the leaves of
high trees, their necks were extended from generation to generation.
Darwin also gave similar examples. In his book The Origin of
Species, for instance, he said that some bears going into water to find
food transformed themselves into whales over time. 8
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel
(1822-84) and verified by the science of genetics, which flourished in
the twentieth century, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits
were passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell
out of favor as an evolutionary mechanism.

Neo-Darwinism and Mutations

In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the "Modern
Synthetic Theory," or as it is more commonly known, Neo-Darwinism,
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