Evolution in the Quran - Origins of Human & Language | Mufti Abu Layth

of cosmology i'll quickly finish evolution because that's one thing i want you to do i will try to keep your time in mind evolution people this is to remind you that you all emerge from something dumb okay now listen to the professor and realize that so first of all with evolution there is one thing very clear like anybody who is telling you that there is a disagreement with biology within the biological community in terms of evolution is lying evolution is well established they're either they're either lying or

they're ignorant of they're either lying or they're ignorant or they're insane in the present world in past i don't blame them but in the present world it's pretty much well established but let's see what quran really says about you and again you can read it in a judo christian narrative we using said if you do that that's clearly not scientific but the question is what is the bare amount of information that quran gives and does that information like is that information factually correct i'm not even going into saying that quran describes this or does not describe this that's up to people to know but i'm just saying what is the bare

amount of information that quran presents quran talks of creation of human from point one quran says that all every living thing comes from water point two quran says that in surah four verse one it says we created you from a single nupt and we created from it it's made point three uh quran says adam was given the name of all things point four so four points uh this point the first thing like surah 4 4 verse 1 you can easily understand it like we all come from a single cell and then that cell splits into two and then from that all humans are come that that's not difficult to like that can

like many scholars who have tried to study evolution have done that but quran also says that in surah 14 so that was that we created you from one knobs and from it we made its main you could you could give it that interpretation that we come from one cell which splits and then from that we actually you know to to be honest i've not actually now that you say it sounds common sense but i've never really thought of that before about that enough's being referring to a cell i didn't think of that but that's that that that's just the start of it now i'll tell you what quran does say that we come from one man and one one woman which it says from

surah 49 verse 13. so what do we know let's start so so we keep this in back of your mind and i'll tell you we know life comes from non-living matter that is and that is hundred percent sure it might have started in the haitian but definitely started in the eons following it and so it's first definitely started in that so but then how did life start the theory of evolution actually does not deal with how life started the the branch of science which deals with this is called a biogenesis so what what do we know from ability

muscles there is a debate in the in the experts of who study abiogenesis did the life originate in ocean or did it originate online and there are currently currently two famous there's a very famous hypothesis it's called clay hypothesis which says life originated because of self-replicating claim so there were these clay molecules which had the property of sent replication and that is because of which the life started there is some more research done indicates like might have started on banks of oceans and which which would have some radioactivity there are other theories also which indicate that life there is high pro i would say there is higher

probability for life to have started on in clay or clay had a non-trivial role to play in life then it then then for the converse because uh like these the number of these hypotheses are moved there's also this hypothesis that it started deep within earth deep but then there are these things and there's also one that it started on the bank of russia so this is so what you're saying is this is a mainstream view within that genre of science on the origin of life as that life originated from clay is this what we're saying it's one

of the views is called clay hypothesis people can google this up and when you google just google a biogenesis you will get that and a this clear hypothesis states that life originated from self-replicating clay molecules so replicating clay molecules people now i'm not saying this is the only one there are other we don't understand it's not but the one but it's one of the ones this is highly probable and one thing is certain from the sheer number of hypothesis put in for the that like there's high probability that life life originated due to something at the place where which was

some kind of interface of land and ocean something like beaches and then there is a theory that life originated on radioactive beaches so people i think that there was some like interesting papers written on that so i i would again i would not put it at the left a lot does happen on the beach hi hi high probability hi i'm sure much life has also originated on the beach as well

so so high probability that life started from you know from self-replicating clay molecules possibly on the beach or deep within earth or in the back of ocean we have these various hypotheses but just to say that life originated from clay is not scientifically wrong in fact it is highly probable but not verified yet it's not verified it does not so we should be honest here and say well we are not sure but it is highly possible that life originated from but no definitely okay verified and there are other opinions uh and there's some opinions that clip only played a catalyst role there are many many like because

this field is again not well understood and there are many hypothesis sometimes here like so so so the idea of how a biogenesis started there's a lot of debate on that but this idea that life started from clay is highly probable life then life or all life originating on from sea this is completely true like life stayed in sea for a very long time before it migrated so all life coming from ocean water we created everything from water will they not then believe hundred percent or the way it says when you know god created heavens and earth and his throne was overlooked so this is this thing you know [Music]

uh that every living thing it comes from water is this could i mean i've understood this to mean that water is the source of life is that i have understood it as like like all the origin of every living thing that you see on earth traces itself back to ocean life on the land is relative you're seeing it too it's kind of habitat yeah because can am i am i because i my understanding is life as we know it cannot exist without water but what you're saying is related in

evolutionary terms to what i am saying because everything we are predominantly made of water because we came from water okay i see so what you're saying is life's habitat being in water is central to its to its existence that it that's because it's from water water gave it its existence that's what you had water for most of its existence it only came to land relatively like fume were like i think by 600 i don't remember maybe 5 600 million

years ago but for majority of the time it was in water because you know whenever there's things like let's say space exploration or other things one of the things they look for often is water isn't it because doesn't it then uh correlate with like like it is seen as a if you can find water it may indicate that there's some life there is a high probability of the life as we understand it but we'll come to this debate on what life is when that's a separate debate in itself i think we've been a bit narrow in that definition but uh coming to this coming to the specific point yes what do you think is correct but it's also related to what i am saying

because i say so say life originated inside by self-replicating clay molecules or on radioactive beaches or or deep in within the on the floor or back oceans or any of these other hypotheses deep within the land there is also one theory that it originated within the land and then it went to oceans and it stayed in oceans for a very long time so this idea that all living things come from water is 100 correct it came life came from clay it's also correct

and then then quran makes then this idea that you know we come for i mean every one of you you know our creation starts from oneness which splits and then we come from that that's fine but then there is something more beautiful quran also says in surah 49 verse 13 that all humanity comes from one man one woman it does not say that these man and woman were a couple which verse are you speaking about which verse 49 verse 13.

okay sorry you carry on sorry i'll just bring it up as well yeah so what do we know about evolution of humankind and there is something very interesting but there is something also clearly and easily misunderstood so let me let me clarify the misunderstanding before i actually give you that information so that people don't think i am presenting your own information because it can be easily misunderstood you see let us is let us take kohanim which are the priestly class of jews they can't marry converts you know there's this misunderstanding by the way that jews you can't convert into judaism you can

but if you do you cannot marry kohani in company so some studies have indicated at least a certain portion of those kohanins can trace their ancestry back to somebody called they call that call him in scientific terminology y chromosome where why can't the idea is how do we know that because we can trace some we have y chromosome and it can you can taste your petri linear lineage through this white rooms but say all the humans into some xyz factor had died in the world and only the descendants of

only these kohanin were alive and also the true khonin who were actually the descendants of then you could then it would be fair to say that arun is the father of all mankind however it does not mean that at the time of our own there were no other humans or he did not have a parent he did not have his parents he had parents and his children married other human beings of the time but none of the trees which did not merge with harmon's tree survived and only the though that so the all humans can trace their prominence i'm saying for example if that word then you would say that all humans could in principle only trace their ancestry back to

our own or paul kohanin who are real cohen can't raise their ancestry back to our own it does not mean arun was the only human being it means there were other human beings he had parents but every every kohanin [Music]

even though he is the father of humanity as we know it does not necessitate that there were no other humans living parallel with adam or preceding him yeah so what it does not necessitate that either in scripture or in science but what it would mean that no tree there's many verses that actually do support this as well it's just that because the narrative uh is generally already superseding that it's supplanting that so people don't pay it so for example verses like in allah in allah adam one

now the question was who did he choose him from uh and and then people say well you know he made him and then obviously made him as a chosen one but that because it's yeah so what do we know scientifically then you know we can trace our y chromosome dna back and interestingly we can trace it back to one man living in africa okay so it said that of course this man had parents and him his children intermarried with other people but this fact i thought you were gonna say it's uh and that man is mamadou's great great

great great grandfather i don't know if mama's actually tuned in today so so this man this man uh we can trace our ass you this and this is not this is not um question of theory we can do it and we can actually explicitly show it that all humanity today descends from one man which but there is a debate about the only debate that we have is when that man so this man in terms of scientific terminology is called y chromosome adam you can google it um and he possibly lived at around 200 000 years ago it is he i i thought i thought they were

gonna uh write okay i'm with you i'm with you i'm with you okay there's a debate on there's but the predominant studies show that he was around 200 000 are you are you placing adam with chromosomal adam is that what we're what you're doing because i i would because i've always i felt always is an intriguing word but i felt that adam ali salam was the father of the cognitive revolution

also and i'll tell you how what i'm in fact i've seen your views and i like them and i will tell you how they fit with this on the other hand we can trace back the ancestry of all living female on earth to one woman again in africa who is called microcontrol eve and then there's a generation they might have because we cannot they could have been describe but if there is a higher probability that this eve microcontroller lived around 150 000 years ago so adam lived at least 50 000 years before eve before or after i think i think they put

chromosomal arteries before it was after and then it became before before and and and it might be probable that they might finally go inside but i think if you have this adam leaving before eve then you can give another interpretation to the verse 49 uh surah like verse 4 surah 4 verse 1 that because it verse says that we created from him it's made it might be that he might actually be a daughter of adam from the generations ahead let's see i see okay um that might reputation or but we're not sure of the dates you know we know that humanity can trace his ancestry back to one man like my

chromosome adam one woman like a microcontroller we are not sure when they live they could it could have been one is the daughter of another one is the father of another no or a vice versa maybe the dates change in future or maybe they are contemporaries we don't know but let's yeah because you know i this is the same point that i i mentioned this a while back on my a good while back on one of my monday nights and and in several discussions private discussions i've had with people that i've said that you know one of the things that does stand up for faith whether people like it or not but in my perspective is that look science has emerged with

all these discoveries and all these amazing things and obviously it's unearthed things like evolution and it's shown that but yet if we're just looking at it from a scientific perspective of randomness it ought to be that let's say as uh homo sapiens were adapting they were evolving that it ought to be multiple and it ought to like we ought not to be able to trace our ancestry back to just one it ought to be multiple like if we uh if we're looking at it from this

thing of pure random um it could whereas and i said and i said and it's interesting how scripture or you know it's so easy that it could have just got that so wrong but in a way it didn't and that's and science today unearths that that oh wow okay that's so i find that very fascinating yeah and what is more fa like well what is interesting going back to what you were saying before is this idea that you were saying that adam is the father of the cognitive revolution and at the basic level of cognition lies

our ability to speak and now now there are three things we seem to be converging nobody i think has linked them but they're three independent things we seem to be converging one is that let's leave microcurrent really for the moment she might have lived with adam she might have been after her but let's focus on adam but it's interesting how any of the verses of the quran that speak of human origin not the story even the story of adam as well never actually mention eve the quran doesn't mention eve which is interesting it says in surah 49 verse 13 that we created you from one man and one woman

but it doesn't you say that they were couples right can you check that right so yeah okay let me bring that 4913 yeah yeah carry on sorry and i'll bring that up so but uh but yeah let's focus on item because i think adam is the person to be focused on here in the whole direction so let's say 200 000 let's take this view that adam came around two to three hundred thousand years that's that time given but let's say 200 000 years ago there is something else which can have its origin at 200 000 years and you know what is that modern language language as we know it oh right this is the

the popular verse you are referring to [Music] but let's focus on this particular thing that 200 let's say that it's highly likely that adam came around two hundred thousand years ago even though the time span is between 2002

what is interesting is it doesn't say out of curiosity i'm just saying not that to get caught up on it but it doesn't say a man and a woman but it says male and female that's i'm just saying that it's interesting but yeah there might be something more to it definitely we can explore that there might be some more meaning to it but let's come to this particular thing that 200 000 years around 150 to 200 000 years ago is the time when language and it is 200 000 years ago is the time when and automatically modern humans so they are the subspecies of homo sapiens which look like us but evolution of language is even more

interesting because if you see norm chomsky's view on it it's very interesting i find this view very interesting i mean he argues that language came up because of a single mutation like humans were already ready for it but there was just one missing block which offered by one random mutation and then he gives this analogy of a crystal you see in crystal if you have like you have water it's already close to freezing temperature and then you have one nucleation and bingo whole of the crystal forms so if if one of the humans had this mutation for sophisticated language it was from like you can count one two nine three four five and then you can jump to infinity when you had this abstract realization which might have occurred through a

genetic mutation it would now this is what i'm thinking it could have given his children if it can if it was inherited immense survival advantage and then that is why maybe history dominate and and it also fits with what quran is strong saying quran is saying that the specialty of adam came because god taught him the names of all things with names came you know it's not just spoken language the idea is that language is and the our language is based on abstract thinking which is embedded in us genetically embedded in us and because of this abstract thinking we can realize the abstract concept like god and we can realize many abstract concepts and this is this is something

special that we homo sapiens have had or rather anatomically modern humans and it i'm not saying that we have we this is good but it again it would be interesting if any of the audience wants they could take it up as a phd project maybe relate these three things you're thinking too highly of this audience this is all gcse dropouts this is yeah they're still we're still like but you know instead of what what time is it instead of wasting time with creationist nonsense that is coming from discovery institute tribulating this you know there is the

idea of norm chomsky's view on language that language could have occurred because of a single mutation in a human i'm not saying that this need be the only case there can be other origins of language and then this would matter no i'm chomsky because a lot of his evidence that he's uh because he also posited the uh the lady language acquisition device theory in saying stating that the brain is uh he argues hardwired to uh for language so it's it's kind of preset for language as opposed to the other theory that as we're born as children we have the

ability to absorb language so these are the two kind of theories where norm chomsky is at the head of that the first theory saying no it is not a uh it is not something socialized it is internal it's nature it's not nurture and and a lot of the evidence is he's even used for that and then other subsequent people as well have has been very compelling of how children even given certain circumstances where they've lived in very kind of pigeon speak have formed their own creole making a complete language themselves

independently of the appearance and it's um it's it's been there's a lot of research which shows that but yeah sorry carry on yeah so this is very interesting that all these things uh the development of a modern at least a primitive language which then evolved into different modern languages and there's a lot about it in how african languages have more structures than many languages because they seem to come from a free language like a language which evolved subsequently and lost some uh some of the structure but anyway uh so this idea that language evolved around 200 000 years ago

there was 200 000 years ago there was you know we can trace the just just to say there is some argument now that uh neanderthals had some form of language but not as sophisticated or as developed uh as as modern sapiens so it seems that they had because the the kind of the way the larynx is kind of placed it's in between humans and apes and it seems that they may have had like very high pitched kind of certain sounds did not have i'm just saying that this idea of abstract language

excellence absolutely by language i don't mean the ability to speak abstract reason reason in an abstract sense so this idea of this idea of innate ability to reason in an abstraction the it's it's date converging with the development of anatomically modern humans and its data converging with y chromosome adam there seems to be something interesting going on at 200 000 years but it might be that you know it might be there might be more to it or you know but this is something that people can research into but the idea that humans are humans adam was given names of all things

it again is highly probable not verified you know that was that the reason why he still by history dominated but the idea that we can come from one man if you just take this idea that we from one man and we you can even add even the quran doesn't i think explicitly say that as big as an explicit deer as for one man but even one woman it's fine these things are scientifically correct so you don't need to deny a theory of evolution for that these things are inbuilt in theory of evolution the only thing is that this man at the mali had his parents had you know had his friends but then as

quran says he was proper like his dominating and and there is no so it would be right to say that no but there is nobody who is surviving independent of the tree there were other trees they dry they died down so the only tree that survived so all the tree that that remains to us is adam and even michael cronkite so pretty much 100 matching with like there is no conflict of data between what quran is saying and what the theory of evolution is saying i know i have mentioned to you previously that my thinking on on some of this and i've said that the the verses that speak of adam ali

salam eating from this forbidden fruit whatever it was are followed by them covering and you see shame is something which is one a it's a it's generally a social phenomenon it's in the presence of others that human beings tend to feel but it's also linked to greater self-awareness um and and i felt that that that verses is showing that adam ali at this stage of whatever that stage was that phenomenon that he he undergoes he experiences a greater self-awareness he experiences shame

and he wants to cover you know they try to cover their nakedness and this made me think that you see it it seems for evidence seems to suggest that other species neanderthals and and and other sapiens as well they would have covered they would have had like uh some kind of coating and things like this but it made me think that maybe that was simply for warmth and it wasn't to do with shame and shame may have been just something that

came with this greater self-awareness again i never thought about it but this is something we need to really reason like there's much more to it but this there's a lot more to research here but the important thing that i think we can highlight right now to people is that there is nothing innate in quran which contradicts evolution in fact there's a lot which supports it well and the discussion of evolution that will take five more minutes and hopefully we will rap with that but i'm just worried about your time

verse 14 says we created you in stages and in surah 71 verse 17 and in surah 71 verse 17 it says we grieve you like a vegetation from earth i mean you cannot imagine that nabata you know if you see what happens when you grow when you sow a seed you you start with a simple structure and then it diversifies there cannot be a better metaphor for evolution this is uh and also you know there's this the verse as well that speaks about

uh allah speaks about the origin of incen um and it mentions uh in this particular in the verse in this particular verse people say that because allah is speaking of insane he says and that in son obviously inside speaking about they say adam ali salam that means yeah that this kind of something this extract from clay or whatever and people say well that's obviously adam so all the mufassirin write that that's adam but then allah says then

we placed him then we made him a drop of sperm in a firm place which would be the embryo now uh you see here the mufasirin get confused because that they say well the pronoun him we placed him the first hymn was adam it says in sun then we place that in sun as a drop of sperm so some people try to say well we can't say adam was in a womb so you know what this is now speaking of someone else

but that seems to break the flow of the verse now other mufasirin felt that okay maybe adam too then was created in some kind of artificial womb but i said well why go to artificial when there were wombs about you know that you don't need to create an artificial room rooms already existed so yeah and and you could also look at it in another way you know it starts with you know uh clay and then it evolves to because nothing can also mean simple life and then then it it might be talking about various stages of evolution yeah because what happened in the world

actually happened in evolutionary stages i meant from the stage that the quran is in this verse overwhelmingly supporting that adam was born of womb like this verse seems to uh clearly lean that way like you could you could interpret it differently but in all honesty you are doing a lot of acrobats and gymnastics in trying to interpret it if you just read that verse with no other you know just with a clear clean slate you read it you would understand that the first in sun

that is being addressed was in born from womb because that's what the verse says yeah yeah but let's yeah so so i and i even in terms of what happens within the womb is what happened in nature anyway so and then then this beautiful metaphor about us growing like vegetation from earth in simple words i can't think of the reason why i was stressing that professor is because a lot of people feel that to say adam was born of womb um is kufar it's disbelief like people feel that this is you know because allah says in another verse about adam oh i created you with my

own hands so how could this be if he's off womb now the this is why i was just stressing that the actual verse of the quran another verse of the quran it states by its if just looking at it at face value that adam was of womb this is born from womb that's what that's what states and and it's interesting because the people like for example people come up and say oh adam is created from the hands of god so how can it be evolution you see even if i take salafi methodology like here they would say that we don't interpret this verse because you can't interpret what hands of god are that would take you into asha being an ashari so when you can't interpret it means you can't even negate it when you can't

dedicate it you keep going we do the interpretation because when you are negating it you are interpreting it what makes you say that the hand of god is not the theory of evidence like the process of evolution and this you know and it goes back to what i was saying you know evolution is enhanced by i see what you're saying that you what you're saying is we're alive saying that [Music] i've created you with my hands the hands of god could be interpreted as the force of evolution the nature of evolution itself evolution like a reflected light which looks like it goes back to that

you see to be fair though a lot of people understood this just by language you understood it to mean with you know like as ibn hasan would have written other people that you that god created adam like as in adam is a creation a result of care and delic like delic to show a kind of bond and affection you know if you say look i uh brought you like i brought you up with my own two hands i you know to a child it doesn't it doesn't mean you physically brought up the child with your own two hands

it's kind of reflecting a delicacy and intimate kind of relationship that you have with the person yeah so i think with that we have like we have like the main problem that they have had what happens to the creation of adam it's very simple uh like the the idea that humanity comes from one one person is not the basic data given in quran is not against science the only problem is this person had parrots and he had there were other trees and there is no tree remaining which has which is not from this person you might argue in any way but this basic data given quran and the fact that

life can originate from clay and the life has come from ocean i mean you know and you know just to be clear that because we do carry part most people carry part um you know dna a tiny part from other species as well like in the sense uh let's say one to four percent neanderthal non non-africans and then maybe one percent to two percent of uh denisovans and and they say are four species as well potentially that isn't really a contradiction in the sense of an overall because the overwhelming majority is

what it is is that's i mean it's like like if the true kohanin they might contain if the two kohani who can trace their ancestry back to our own they might have other trees mixing in but at least one like one of their ancestors goes back to around that is the important thing so overwhelming thing does go back to chromosomal adam it doesn't homo sapiens are homo sapiens yeah like you know like by the time we have we we have our parents parents parents you know the tree is diversifying one of that person that we can trace our ancestry back to is adam this is important yeah

and then there are other trees mixing so which is very interesting and it's and this is completely correct so there's nothing in quran which contradicts evolution in fact willingly supports it and people don't even like some people who try to justify evolution with quran they'd go to metaphorical interpretations of atom you don't need to do that because you know what quran is stating is perfectly correct it is only that if you start viewing it in terms of with the help of hadith and genesis narratives and imagine that adam had no parents and there were no other trees and now no other humans then you would get it

i i always i i've marveled how the quran never explicitly ever avoids to say certain things like even when it's speaking of jesus and they ask of jesus it could have just very easily just said like it could have just said look by the way adam had no appearance there's nothing and you know if the quran had said that the people in the day and age would have just accepted it as well it wouldn't have the message wouldn't have flopped but because people wouldn't have known about evolution in that sense and they would have just accepted that okay you know fair enough there was just one person and he came out of nowhere

but the quran never said that still despite the audience being you know very receptive to even that idea