Page 141 - Some Secrets of the Qur'an

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THE EVOLUTION MISCONCEPTION

Lamarck's Impact

So, how could these "favourable variations" occur? Darwin
tried to answer this question from the standpoint of the
primitive understanding of science in his age. According to the
French biologist Lamarck, who lived before Darwin, living
creatures passed on the traits they acquired during their
lifetime to the next generation and these traits, accumulating
from one generation to another, caused new species to be
formed. For instance, according to Lamarck, 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, and in his book "The

Origin of Species," for instance, said that some bears going into
water to find food transformed themselves into whales over
time. 17
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Mendel and
verified by the science of genetics that flourished in the 20th
century, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits were
passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection
fell out of favour 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, at the end of the 1930's. Neo-Darwinism added
mutations, which are distortions formed in the genes of living
beings because of external factors such as radiation or
replication errors, as the "cause of favourable variations" in
addition to natural mutation.
Today, the model that stands for evolution in the world is
Neo-Darwinism. The theory maintains that millions of living
beings present on the earth formed as a result of a process