Page 99 - Beauties for Life in the Qur'an

THE EVOLUTION MISCONCEPTION 97

to Lamarck, giraffes evolved from antelopes; as they struggled to
eat the leaves of high trees, their necks were extended from gen-
eration 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. 41
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 mu-
tations, which are distortions formed in the genes of living
beings because of external factors such as radiation or replica-
tion 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
whereby numerous complex organs of these organisms such as
the ears, eyes, lungs, and wings, underwent "mutations," that is,
genetic disorders. Yet, there is an outright scientific fact that to-
tally undermines this theory: Mutations do not cause living be-
ings to develop; on the contrary, they always cause harm to
them.
The reason for this is very simple: the DNA has a very com-
plex structure and random effects can only cause harm to it.
American geneticist B. G. Ranganathan explains this as follows:

First, genuine mutations are very rare in nature. Secondly, most