Episode 29 - I Embarrassed You - Evolution Myth Advocates' Criticism of God's Creation and How We Answer Them

Have You Embarrassed Me? - Refuting the Myth of Evolution and Responding to Its Advocates

Dramatic Introduction

The Seller: Sir, this is the Jeep you asked for, model of the year, and it's very comfortable for you. Please, you can try it.

The Customer: By Allah, it's actually comfortable, but before I get in, tell me: what is this pedal? It looks empty!

The Seller: No, sir, it's the gas pedal, it's what makes the car move. Is this your first time buying a car?

The Customer: First time buying a car?! I play with cars! What's wrong with you?! But this pedal feels empty. So what's this? This is empty... The whole car isn't manufactured or anything, it's all by chance!

The Seller: Sir, this is the brake pedal to control the speed.

The Customer: Control the speed?!

The Seller: Yes.

The Customer: So what's this? This is empty, why is there a field... The whole car is by chance or not manufactured or anything!

The Seller: Man! Aren't you ashamed of your ignorance? Everything is by chance, and this is empty! If you please, get out of the car, I'm not selling you the car. Please, get out.

The Customer: But this pedal is by chance.

The Seller: If you please, I don't want to sell you the car.

The Customer: So what's the function of this pedal? Before you tell me... tell me its function?

The Seller: Should I tell you?! Please, get out of the car.

The Customer: What's its function? You don't know its function!

The Seller: Please... I can't sell you the car. Please.

The Customer: But it has no function, you've embarrassed me... I see you're embarrassed!

Our Situation with Followers of the Myth

This is our situation with the followers of the myth. When they fail to find traces of chance around them, they return to themselves... Will they say as the people of Ibrahim (peace be upon him) said before: (So they returned to themselves and said, "You are indeed wrongdoers.") [Al-Anbiya:64]? Will they review themselves and realize the falsity of their myths? No, they return to themselves to search for a mistake!

(Audio effects)

This is our situation with the followers of the myth. They talk about what they call: flaws in human design! Like the eye's network, and the sperm duct. Or what they consider redundant members: like the appendix, the wisdom teeth, and others. All of them are beautiful evidence of Allah's perfect creation, which these people - out of ignorance sometimes and neglect other times - turn into evidence of chance and randomness.

Will we show that all of these are examples of wise creation? Yes, but before that... what if my brother and sister did not attend this episode? And what if they did not know the answer to the examples they mention? Would the followers of the myth have embarrassed you to bring the answer? Are you the one required to answer these examples? Or is the supporter of the myth the one required to explain the perfection and precision in the universe and its creatures... in a convincing way?

The Fallacy of Shifting the Burden of Proof

This method of the followers of the myth is called in the science of logical fallacies: shifting the burden of proof. The opponent says something foolish and puts himself in an embarrassing position because he contradicts the obvious facts to everyone, so he provokes a side battle by demanding that you answer a minor matter, thus diverting attention from him and directing the eyes to you waiting for you to answer his question! While the truth of the matter is that whether you answer or not, it does not change anything from the fact that his speech is foolish, and your lack of an answer to his question does not give his speech any value.

Therefore, my brother... it is not correct when the followers of the myth confront you with such questions as a challenge that you hastily search for a function for these members, as if you are obliged to answer or else he will embarrass you! No, tell them: first, explain to me the work of the device you are talking about this part in.

Response to the Retina's Grid Doubt

For example, when the storytellers say to you: "The arrangement of the retina's cells is flawed: the light-sensitive cells are the cones and rods, so they should be at the front to receive light directly. However, in reality, they are at the back, and light must pass through cells that have nothing to do with receiving it. This indicates that the eye came about randomly and by chance." Repeating like parrots what Richard Dawkins said in his book "The Blind Watchmaker" (2015 edition), where he mocked this arrangement of the retina and said: "Any engineer would laugh and feel provoked by such a reversed composition."

When you hear this, brother... before the big picture is lost in the details and before you burden yourself with searching for an answer, say to them: "First, explain to me the work of the visual system that you are objecting to a part of (the arrangement of its retina). Surely, you have only objected because you know the details of this visual system. Therefore, you considered this part to be redundant or flawed... and that it should be in another specific way."

Let them explain if they know. Let them tell you about the eye... its muscles that control its lens according to near and distant objects, the nervous supply to these muscles, the two types of fluids necessary for it, the diverse retinal cells (rods and cones) of which there are more than 100 million in each eye! And what stuck in my memory from my PhD days is a study that says: "The structure of one of them is more complex than the most complex factory built by man!"

Let them explain to you... how randomness can gather the particles of the compound 11-cis-retinal in the appropriate shape so that the shape of this compound changes when photons of light collide with it? Then how did randomness place this compound in the appropriate proportions in rhodopsin, the light-sensitive pigment in the eye? Let them tell you about the preparation of the eye to capture the visible spectrum specifically from the electromagnetic spectrum, which enabled it to see organisms. Let them tell you about the nerve bundles emitted from the retina, the nervous transmission, the centers of image interpretation in the brain, the storage of the image in memory, the performance of the visual system in its function that man needs in the best way until the eye reached such sensitivity that it can respond to a single photon as mentioned in the journal Nature.

Let them explain if they know, and see how they respond to themselves! If they pay attention to their ignorance, otherwise, leave them in their tyranny, blind. In the evidence of design from the same devices they claimed to be flawed, there is enough for those who seek guidance. But it is the Sunnah of Allah, the Most High, that He places in the details of the clear evidence of the truth: ambiguities for those who want to hold onto them and deprive themselves of Allah's mercy. "But those in whose hearts is a deviation follow that of it which is ambiguous, seeking discord and seeking an interpretation suitable to them." (Al-Imran 7). It is the same psychology that seeks ambiguities in the recited verses, seeks ambiguities in the cosmic verses. Just as our friend left the car with all its evidence of design and perfection, and clung to a button he does not know the function of, he was ignorant of the reason for the existence of a specific button, so he made his ignorance a reason to deny the design of the car! Although it is a clear and decisive matter indicated by every part in the car and indicated by the harmony of its work, then he turned the burden of proof on the car seller, saying to him challengingly: "Tell me its function."

It would have been enough for you, brother, to say this to those who claim that the retina of the eye indicates randomness. How much more so if you knew that this claim of theirs is an old joke they laugh at the ignorant with, and that the correct science - as usual - has turned this doubt into a new verse on the ability and wisdom, and that the research of evolutionary journals themselves have been stating for years the necessity of the retina's cells to be in this arrangement because it provides a superior solution for utilizing the space of the eye as in the journal Vision Research, and because this arrangement allows the light to pass first through Muller cells so that the sensitivity of the cone cells in the retina increases as in the research of PNAS and Nature Communication to the extent that the evolutionary site Phys.Org also states that the presence of sensitive cells at the back of the retina is not a design flaw, but a design feature, and that the claim that the eye would be better if the cells were at the front of the retina is foolishness! So congratulations to you who are taught by the Arab storytellers what many of their foreign counterparts have openly stated for years that it is foolishness, and you think you are listening to wise people addressing your minds.

This is in one type of cells; Muller cells through which light passes thanks to this arrangement of the retina. Also read, if you wish, in the evolutionary journal Nature about the 13 types of bipolar cells present in these layers, the function of each, how their arrangement in the retina in this way helps in vision, and read about Amacrine cells in these layers and others. Read, brother, then return and listen to the storytellers as they say: "The arrangement of the retina is wrong!" Ask any creationist for an explanation of this phenomenon, and he will not find it. Listen to them to learn the meaning of the comedy of ignorance and neglect. And glory be to Allah, just as the doubts raised by the foolish against Islamic laws turn into new verses on the knowledge and wisdom of Allah through correct science, so too the doubts about Allah's creation are turned by correct science into a new argument on the knowledge and wisdom of Allah.

You say: "But, you rely on research from evolutionary journals!" Yes, because, my brother, as I explained in the episode "Lend Me Your Mind," we have not rented our minds to Western scientists... but we benefit from their sciences, and we do not imitate their conclusions. We are not followers of the wisdom of Agha Ogli Ahmed - one of the secularists of Turkey - who said: "We have decided to take everything from the Westerners, even the inflammations in their lungs, and the filth in their intestines!" Rather, we take what is correct and leave the intellectual filth to its owners. This speech that we mentioned is said by the followers of superstition and those who reject it from the natural scientists. However, we hold the followers of superstition to the speech of their scholars whom they deify, so that this may be stronger in the argument. We take from them the science if their research methodology is correct, and we do not imitate them in the conclusion if their methodology is flawed and filled with logical fallacies.

We may ask: If a person saw the Sukhoi Su-47 airplane with its inverted wings flying in the sky in an astonishing manner, and laughed at its wings, saying: "This is poor design, indicating that this airplane came by chance." Would such a person have a suitable place other than mental institutions? Even if we did not know the fact that this inverted design is attributed to the agility of the airplane and the ease of its maneuvering. So how then does the talk of the followers of superstition about the structure of the retina of the eye and that it is evidence of randomness and lack of design become a respected science in the eyes of some? While we see them saying this nonsense with the very eyes that they criticize the design of, which work perfectly and most accurately, even if we do not know the fact that this arrangement of the retina is responsible for this precise vision.

Response to the Vermiform Appendix Objection

When a follower of superstition says to you: "The vermiform appendix is redundant; remnants of animals that evolution did not eliminate. If it were a creation by design, why would the Creator place a redundant appendix?" As Jerry Coyne and other followers of superstition say. If they say that to you... then assume, my brother, that you have not yet seen this research published two months ago by doctors who are also followers of superstition. It mentions the importance of the vermiform appendix and that it is not redundant as was previously thought, but that it contains all types of beneficial bacteria present in the digestive system. So if you are exposed to a disease that destroys the intestinal bacteria, the appendix compensates for it. It also produces Immunoglobulin A, essential for regulating beneficial bacteria in the digestive system, and its removal increases the incidence of many diseases. And for your information, some of this information has been known for many years.

Assume that you have not seen articles on scientific websites that state that the vermiform appendix can save your life. Even if you have not seen all of this, my brother, do not let a follower of superstition shift the burden of proof onto you. You are not the one tasked with the explanation, and the lack of knowledge about the function of a part of the digestive system is not evidence that it is all without design. Let them tell you how randomness and blind chance can produce the digestive system, the arrangement of your teeth, the types of taste buds, the types of enzymes secreted at each station, the muscles surrounding it to move the food, the valves that work in harmony, the cilia and villi in the intestines that provide a flat surface equivalent to a residential unit at the very least to increase the intestines' absorption capacity! Let them tell you about the trillions of beneficial bacteria in various forms in your intestines and their functions, about the enteric nervous system and its complexities. All the wonders of creation we mentioned are not seen by those who are blind in their perception and mean nothing to them. They leave them and cling to what they call: the vermiform appendix, ignorant or ignoring its function, so they make their ignorance an argument.

Response to the Objection of the Spermatic Duct

If the parrots of the Arabs repeat to you what Richard Dawkins says in his book: "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution" that the spermatic duct in men should be shorter, and that this is a flaw that negates design and indicates randomness, then assume, my brother, that you have not seen detailed references that explain the necessity of this length to maintain the temperature differences between the testicles and the rest of the body, and other benefits. You are not obliged to look it up, my brother, nor to research. Instead, do not allow the burden of explanation to be placed on you. Rather, let them explain to you: how can their laughable randomness produce males and females from more than 8 million species of organisms in sync? Let them tell you about the innate sexual instinct between mates, and the inspiration of small creatures - which have no mind - like insects to mate. Let them tell you about the reality of monogamy, which Allah the Almighty boasts about because it indicates a Wise and Knowing Creator. (And of everything We have created pairs, that you may remember (49). So flee to Allah. Indeed, I am to you from Him a clear warner) [Al-Dhariyat: 50, 49].

But instead of fleeing to Allah, you see them fleeing to ignorance and neglect. The follower of superstition leaves all the signs of wisdom in monogamy to say arrogantly: The spermatic duct should be shorter! And if it were designed with knowledge and will, these flaws would not exist! He suggests modifications to the design of man as if he were a god who encompasses everything with knowledge, knowing what was and what will be and what was not. If it were so, how would it be? (But they have denied that which they do not encompass in knowledge, and whose interpretation has not yet come to them) [Yunus: 39]. Is it not a flaw on your part to deny something merely because you do not know it, or have not yet seen its interpretation and explanation?

Conclusion and Affirmation

We here - brothers - do not deal with logical fallacies only, but with a moral problem that represents excessive arrogance, which is combined with profound ignorance or deliberate neglect, leading atheists to bad manners with cosmic phenomena that they should respect out of respect for science. It also led those who are impressed by them - from those who claim to be Muslims - to severe bad manners with Allah by criticizing His creation while they try in vain to reconcile superstition and Islam. The surgeon, no matter how sanctified he is by the superstition of evolution and no matter how much he talks about the alleged fingerprints of chance in the human body, enters the operation he will perform with the greatest care not to violate the system present in the body out of his implicit knowledge that it is the best system.

In conclusion, some may think that the representative segment is an exaggeration because our friend was ignorant of the function of the gas pedal that drives the car. We say: But followers of superstition have done the same many times, as when Wiedersheim placed the thymus gland among the list of members that have no use! Which they did not know at the time that it is like the on button for all the hormones of the body.

These were brief examples - brothers - when a follower of superstition wants to move you to a new objection, placing the burden of proof on you. So say to him: Do you not feel ashamed of the sequence of signs of your ignorance and your disappointments? Do you expect me to spend my life refuting you? But in the past, it is enough for those who seek guidance.

We reiterate and affirm once again our gratitude to our brothers at the website: Muslim Researchers, from whom we have greatly benefited from their research on this site. And peace be upon you.