Page 205 - Self-Sacrifice in the Qur'an's Moral Teachings

Harun Yahya - Adnan Oktar

ary 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 differences
or variations occur. 88

Lamarck's Impact
So, how could these "favorable variations" occur? Darwin tried to
answer this question from the standpoint of the primitive understand-
ing 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 gener-
ation. He asserted that these traits, which accumulated from one genera-
tion 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 trans-
formed themselves into
whales over time. 89
However, the laws of
inheritance discovered by
Gregor Mendel (1822-84)

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