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“Daring to Think Series.” Between development and stability, awakening and hibernation – By Hossam Badrawi

“Daring to Think Series.”
Between development and stability, awakening and hibernation
Written by Hossam Badrawi
I watched a dialogue about the theory of evolution and the religious concept established throughout history, and the confusion between interpretations of the heavenly books in a past time, and the rational interpretation of their sentences and vocabulary after God opened our minds to us with knowledge and the audacity to think. ‏
The purpose of this dialogue is to draw attention to the importance of understanding that the interpretation of what God has revealed changes over time with the development of a collective maturity of the human mind, otherwise the Qur’an would not be suitable for all times. What the human mind could comprehend more than a thousand years ago is different from what we comprehend now. Moreover, what the human mind could comprehend only a hundred years ago is not comparable to what it comprehends today. ‏
The cycle of civilization, which was millions of years, became thousands of years after the knowledge of agriculture, and became hundreds of years after the industrial revolution, and developed into dozens of years after technology, and has now become from two to three years with the entry of the era of artificial intelligence and the advancement of digital knowledge. .
Our ancestors were born and died in one cycle of human life, and we lived four life cycles in the past seventy years, and our children and grandchildren, with an average age of eighty years, will live more than forty life cycles in which living conditions change and science develops in an unprecedented way that even the imagination may not comprehend. ‏
I imagine that self-realization through the mind is man’s ability and the greatest thing that distinguishes him from the rest of his creation. Mind and thinking are the miracle of creation within us, and I believe that religion, especially Islam, encourages us to apply reason, thinking, research, and science.
When Darwin launched his hypothesis of the evolution of creatures over billions of years, the scientific theory collided with the beliefs of the Christian and Jewish clerics and their understanding, which was linked to their interpretations of the content of their religious books at the time, as well as the Muslims who followed the same approach. The same wall of denial that the Earth is not the center of the universe, or that we are a planet revolving around the sun, and other scientific proofs…
Interpretations are human, not sacred. Humanity must mature and consider the accumulation of knowledge in its understanding and not stop at the childhood stage of the collective mind of human beings, which is the interpretation of our great-grandfathers for the content of the divine books. . ‏
The religious, philosophical, and scientific question: Was the beginning of creation, which religions symbolize by the scientific name “Adam”* created as we see it now, a complete creation, meaning that the Creator held a piece of clay, then kneaded it in his hand, blew on it, and then Adam found it!! This is what the extremists who adhere to the interpretation of the ancients say, “that Adam was created in his own form,” and they affirm that the theory of evolution contradicts the heavenly books in one word, so there is no room for debate, and it is not possible to believe that man is a product of To evolve from lower-ranking animals…
Of course, I see science and am convinced of its method, but, with the help of others, I tried to find where this certainty of religious scholars came from, and by returning to reason, I found that their argument contradicts even what was stated in the Qur’an, which confirms that man was not created without evolution, and I am amazed at the clarity. Which commentators throughout history have avoided
The Qur’an tells a completely different story about the creation of man, a story in which creation takes place in stages and stages and over a long divine time. The Qur’an says that man did not emerge directly from clay, but rather emerged from a lineage that came from clay: “And We created man from a lineage of clay.”
In the beginning, man was nothing
“Has there ever come upon man a period of time when he was not something mentioned?”
And that His creation came in stages:
“What is the matter with you that you do not hope for dignity in God when He created you in different phases?”
This means that there are stages that began with creation, then formation, then settlement, then blowing. And “then” in divine time means millions of years:
“And one day with your Lord is like a thousand years of what you count.”
Therefore, Adam is the end of a series of phases and not an absolute beginning according to the method of direct creation, as if in simple belief God made a statue.
From clay, then he blew into it and it became the human being he is now. ‏

I said to myself: Why, then, this categorical rejection from religious interpreters, and does this differ from what modern science says in theories of evolution…? ‏
actually no. ‏
As for the story of Adam himself, let us also think and reformulate our understanding. According to religious belief, when God created Adam to inhabit the earth as his successor and said to the angels, “Prostrate to my creation,” they wondered why He would create someone who would spread corruption on it and shed blood, as if they had seen the scene before. (Is it possible that there are other worlds and universes, as science says now, or that the cycle of creation is renewed, so the angels who live in a different dimension from humans describe the matter because they saw it before?) However, God taught him the names and gave him the advantage of reason and the ability to distinguish. And the choice is to be different from the rest of his creation, meaning that the advantage of man in this time and this universe is his ability to think and choose right and wrong. ‏
When he and Eve entered Paradise and forbade them from eating from the forbidden tree, he placed before them temptation and choice in exchange for obedience. ‏
The important thing is that when Adam and Eve decided to use their right to choose and eat from the forbidden tree, their creation was completed, so God sent them down to earth as was the intention of their creation from the beginning. ‏
The value of a person lies in his ability to make a choice, even if it is incorrect. ‏
If they had not made this choice, they would not have descended, and the creation of man would not have been completed nor would he have reproduced and populated the earth. ‏
That is, the descent of Adam and Eve to earth was the completion of their creation, which differentiates them from the rest of the creatures whose decisions are made by genetic trends placed in their formation, and they have no choice like the angels, and it is not a punishment for them, as many interpretations say.
The truth is that many people today do not see the Genesis account of Adam and Eve as anything more than a symbolic story, and even some Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim scholars agree with this opinion. Although most of the interpretations of religions by their time interpreters of the beginning of humanity contradict history and science, which created a conflict between philosophy, science, and religion throughout the ages, increasing knowledge may explain a lot. With knowledge and proof…
These studies prove that the genetic diversity found in modern humans may be too great to be provided by just two people.
The source of energy for billions of cells in the human body, without which life would not have existed in the first place, emanates from the mitochondria (a very small particle next to the nucleus of every living cell), which is the energy factory for humans, and it is inherited from the mother only. That is, women are not only the origin of life, but the reason for its continuation. ‏
I add a drop of knowledge and I share with you my amazement that if we summarize the history of the formation of the universe known as the cosmic year to approximately fourteen billion years ago, the Big Bang would have occurred in the first second of the cosmic year and the formation of the solar system and the Earth would have occurred in September, and the appearance of Single-celled life occurs in October, the appearance of man occurs in the last minute of December 31, and we are now in the last second of this hour. ‏
If we shrink the universe and combine it into a single plate whose length and width is a square kilometer, the Earth would be a point that the eye cannot see except with a microscope, while we humans are on it and claim that the universe was created for us and belongs to us. ‏
Let us close our eyes, imagine time and distances, and understand the greatness of the Creator. ‏
If we leave the universe as it is and delve into the formation of the human body, its cells, its genes, and its quarks (a quark is an elementary particle and one of the two basic components of matter, and the other component, according to this theory, is leptons), it has a mass but its infinitesimally small dimensions are zero, which is observed when a severe collision occurs between a proton and an electron. They are the seed of building matter, which is billions of times smaller than any imagination. ‏
We must, therefore, believe that our human differences are trivial, despite the evils they cause that stem from arrogance that is inconsistent with our universal value. ‏
Arrogance is among human beings, which has only existed for less than one second of the Earth’s life and occupies nothing of the size of the universe. If humans dare to think, there must be humility instead of arrogance and arrogance. ‏‏