Creationism - National Center for Science Education

What initially strikes the reader confronted for the first time with a text of this kind is the sheer abundance
of subjects discussed: the Creation, astronomy, the explanation of certain matters concerning the earth, the
animal and vegetable kingdoms, human reproduction. Whereas monumental errors are to be found in the
Bible, I could not find a single error in the Qur’an. I had to stop and ask myself: if a man was the author of
the Qur’an, how could he have written facts in the seventh century A.D. that today are shown to be in
keeping with modern scientific knowledge? [1979:120]
There is, he says, “absolutely no opposition between the data in the Qur’an on
Creation” and modern knowledge of cosmogony. The Creation account in Genesis, on
the other hand, is a “masterpiece of inaccuracy from a scientific point of view” (1979:22).
The six ‘days’ of creation described in the Qur’an are long periods, according to Bucaille,
who asserts that the Qur’anic creation account is “quite different” from the Genesis
account. The Bible is simply wrong in its claim that man was created recently.
In a second book, What Is the Origin of Man?: The Answers of Science and the
Holy Scriptures, Bucaille relies heavily on the arguments of anti-Darwinian French
zoologist Pierre-Paul Grasse, quoting him extensively. Bucaille argues that Darwin was
motivated largely by sociological factors, and that materialist evolution flourishes
because of ideological—not scientific—reasons. Bucaille credits Darwin with some
insight, but says that his evolutionist followers have extrapolated recklessly from
Darwin’s theory, far beyond what he himself claimed. Drwin never claimed that man
descended from apes, says Bucaille, though evolutionists now assert this in order to deny
God and to promote materialism (1982:9, 170). Man was created similar to the apes, but
separately (1982:199). Scientists “do not possess one iota of evidence” that they are
related (1982:200), though Bucaille concedes that there has been some evolution within
the hominid lineage (1982:211-212).
Animals have evolved, but prior intelligent programming was necessary. Chance
mutations are entirely incapable of accounting for evolution: “mutations would have had
to occur in a chronologically perfect order at exactly the right moment in time,” which
clearly they are incapable of doing (1982:67). Evolution, says Bucaille, is “quite
obviously oriented”: i.e., a directed phenomenon (1982:50) (he cites Teilhard
approvingly.) He strongly denounces Jacques Monod’s “chance and necessity” view of
evolution (e.g. 1982:52-56). Bucaille notes that many Europeans remain skeptical of
Darwinism, but that it is accepted quite uncritically in America (1982:44). He then
discusses various “scientific” passages in the Qur’an, especially those dealing with
human reproduction and embryology, explaining how these demonstrate the Qur’an’s
scientific infallibility.
Mohammed Ayub Khan Saidookhail presents a less sophisticated argument in his
booklet The Missing Link: an Antithesis (1971). “Since long,” he writes, “my mind has
been agitating to write something relating to ‘The Missing Link of Man’ because I could
not relish the idea that my ancestors were apes.” “The man [sic] got on earth by creation
and not by evolution. The monkey or baboon never evolved into a man, but man was
made as such from the very beginning” (1971:1, 50). Saidookhail, who is is presumably
Moslem, quotes from both Genesis and the Qur’an. A privately published booklet by
Farid Abu Rameh, Creation or Evolution: Does Science Have the Answer? (1981?),
based on a lecture given in England, presents the standard creation-science arguments,
relying heavily on ICR material. Rahmeh, who got a civil engineering degree from the