From Dawkins admirer to Muslim Believer, my story.

After having read many stories of the reverse movement in a separate thread, I thought it about time to tell my own.

My first plumb into the land of critical thinking came when at age 17 I read and loved "Godel, Escher and Bach". From there my love of popular Science flourished.

In 1988 I devoured "The Selfish Gene", and loving the book went so far as purchasing it's sequel "The Extended Phenotype". As theories they were beautiful and I admired them.

Because of being mathematically astute, I even purchased and read John Maynard Smiths numerous books detailing an ESS, the evolution of sex etc....

All of these books occupy pride of place on my bookshelf. And have recently been joined by a Folio edition of "The Origin of Species".

But not all of rationality, coupled with a soulless materialism, could satisfy me.

And then a friend of mine took me to the masjid, and there I found a Sakina (a silence, peace and contentedness) that I had not looked for, not there.

In my second year of a practical life sciences degree I wrote a paper on "Evolution".
I enjoyed writing it.

And it is in the writing of that I first critically questioned the idea of life springing full-fledged from a primordial soup of any sort.

Off course evolution is both a beautiful theory, and more importantly has been "proved" by observation in terms of microbial resistance and the like.

But the only real thing that had been proved is the progressive part of the inductive process.

Proof by induction requires two equally important parts. The initial input has to be shown to be true, and then a logical progression must also be shown true.

Normally, to prove the initial input is rudimentary because it is supposed to be the simplest expression of the series.

But the funny thing is is that whilst evolutionary progression gets all the news, it is the basic building block of life that gets none.

Scientist recognise that the cell is the basic building block of all life.
And yet the cell is marvellously complex.

And furthermore it had never been shown that mere mechanical or chemical or physical forces can "make" it.

Indeed the cell is necessary for evolutionary progression.
It provides the distinctness, the phenotypedeness, by which evolution can progress.

And contrarily Dawkins, et al, dismisses it's intricacies by supposing the advent of a replicator molecule. Completely missing the point that even the advent of a replicator molecule, does not deliver the first cell.

And off course SCIENCE has given up trying to create a cell, from primordial ingredients that must have been on Earth.

The closest any scientist has ever got is a few nucleotides, the first but not complete building blocks of a first so called replicator molecule.

However, the distinctness of a cell is primary provided by its unique structure giving phospholipid membrane. Which they have not even tried to address.

The molecular structure of a phospholipid is unusually ambiphillic, possessing of two separate polarities within one molecule. And closest natural occurrence to such molecules happens to be from soap, which all have an organic (living) origin.

And it was this realisation that did it for me, and that fact that Evolution far from creating clarity, thrives on misrepresentation. But then that is the subject of another blog.

Off course my religion claims not to explain the origin of life in detail, but it does provide for the foundation of scientific and rational thought on this and many other questions.
"And no change will you find in the Sunnat Allah".

Whilst materialistic rationalism claims for itself all and sundry, down to even the ethics that dominate the Western World.

Whilst we, Muslims, see Rationality as a tool to use, they see rationality as an end and be all. Therein lies our difference.


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