Page 104 - True Wisdom Described in the Qur'an

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TRUE WISDOM DESCRIBED IN THE QUR'AN

Lamarck's Impact

So, how could these "favourable variations" occur? Darwin
tried to answer this question from the standpoint of the primi-
tive 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 ac-
quired 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 leg-
end that acquired traits were passed on to subsequent genera-
tions. Thus, natural selection fell out of favour as an
evolutionary mechanism.

Neo-Darwinism and Mutations

In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the "Mod-
ern 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 due to such external factors as radiation or replication er-