There are two different scientific theories about this:
- Cosmology is science deals with the way in which the universe came into being. Unlike the creation story from Genesis, cosmology argues that the way in which the earth came into existence was as the result of a Big Bang, a huge explosion in the universe, which created all the stars and planets, including the earth.
- Evolution This science argues, rather like Augustine, that the higher and more advanced forms of life, like human beings, have slowly developed or evolved from the original simpler life forms, which originally appeared on the earth. This topic will be covered later.
Today most Christians accept the theories of cosmology and evolution and do not take the Biblical account of the Creation literally. They believe that the Bible is there to explain why God created the world, and the relationship between God and nature, rather than a scientific account of how the world was created.
Islamic creation
In the Qur'an there is an account of the Creation:
Your Guardian Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and the earth in six days, and then He settled Himself on the Throne. He draws the night as a veil over the day, each quickly following the other. And the sun and the moon and the stars are all under His command.
Surah 7:54
I have created men that they may serve me. I desire no support from them, nor do I desire that they should feed Me. Surely; it is Allah who is the Sustainer, the Lord of Power, the Steadfast.
Surah 51:56-57
Science has never posed a major problem for Muslim beliefs about creation. For centuries Islamic scientists have been at the forefront of many ideas and discoveries.
Muslims would argue that science does not affect their belief in Allah's creation of the world; instead, it explains what the Qur'an teaches. Therefore scientific explanations are welcomed as they help Muslims to have a greater understanding of Allah's creation.
The Qur'an has an account of the beginning of Creation which prefigures modern scientific theories:
Do not the unbelievers realise that the heavens and earth were a solid mass, then we split them asunder, and we made from water every living thing?
Surah 21:30
He it is who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon each gliding freely in its orbit.
Surah 21:33
Cosmology This science deals with the way in which the universe came into being and says that the most likely way in which the earth came into existence was as the result of a Big Bang, a huge explosion in the universe which created all the stars and planets, including the earth. Because of the Muslim interest in and respect for science which helps people come to know and understand more about Allah, the theory of cosmology is not in conflict with Islamic beliefs about the divine creation.
Evolution This science argues that the higher and more advanced forms of life, like human beings, have slowly developed, or evolved from the simpler life forms, which originally appeared on the earth. Muslims do not accept Darwin's theory with respect to human beings but they do understand that the earth, its physical make-up and climate are subject to scientific change.
EVOLUTION
The word Evolution means “unfolding” and it is used to describe the gradual process by which all the forms if life today have evolved, or “unfolded”, from earlier forms which were on Earth in the distant past. All living things can be classified into groups.
The animals or plants within each group differ in detail and yet have certain main things in common. Scientists believe that this is really a family resemblance, arising from the fact that they are descended from the same ancestors.
So the first birds, about 150 million years had wings and feathers and other features that are found on all birds nowadays. Their descendants gradually branched out in many different ways, until there are all the thousand types of birds today.
As with birds, so it is with animals and plants. The living things we know now have not always existed but are believed to be descended from the others which resembled them in some ways but most died out millions of years ago (example: the dinosaurs)
Part of the evidence that evolution really happens is provided by the fossils earlier forms of life hidden away in the rocks. Rocks usually lie on top of one another in the order in which they were formed, and so we can tell which fossils came earlier and which came later in the history of the Earth. It is even possible to tell, roughly, the age (in millions of years) of a particular rock and the fossil it contains.
CHARLES DARWIN
Darwin was born at Shrewsbury, in England, in 1809-82.
The person who most clearly put forward the theory, or idea, of evolution, which shows how living things came top be as they are today, was Charles Darwin.
Alfred Wallace had also been thinking about the theory of evolution.
In 1989 Darwin’s great book, The origin of Species, was published. In it he put the idea of “natural selection” to account for the way in which evolution takes place.
This new theory about life made many people think, no only in England but all over the world, for most of the people believed in the story of the creation that is told at the beginning of the Bible, and thought that Darwin was attacking a sacred truth.
In 1871 another of his books, The Descent of Man, caused a fresh uproar, for in it Darwin traced man’s ancestors and those of the apes back to a ape-like creature.
