Darwin and the Theory of Evolution

The theory of evolution has been one of the most fundamentally intriguing theory in the world since Darwin presented it to the Royal Society of Natural History in London. He wrote the famous book The Origin of Species and recently sold for more than RM700K at Christie’s (more here).
The most interesting part of the theory of evolution is that it challenged the common views of the origin of man.
All religious doctrines in the world, Islam ,Christian etc, have a firm believe that all men were created by God. When Darwin tried to say otherwise everyone just got excited until the present day ( …and divide). As a Muslim I believe in creation as stated in the Holy Quran; my discussion today is about the scientific contribution of this theory to the world of natural history. And this is really what makes it so controversial through out the world due to its strong scientific analysis of the subject concerning our faith and belief. First of all, Darwin did not create or invent the theory of evolution (also explained here). He presented his scientific findings about how the species evolved or changed with the environment through the process of natural selection (also known as “ the survival of the fittest”).


It was like any other scientific analysis and was never intended to create any controversy. He did however made a thesis that men might follow the same natural process. That was his scientific discovery and not a conspiracy to ruin the many faiths the world has religiously indoctrinated. We are at the liberty to accept or reject his belief. After the book came out, many quarters of the British society started to get excited and as a result produced the infamous chart of an animal turning into a black man and a black man went on to become a white man; and the process completes. And the white men have become “a complete” species of mankind. This chart was a mere exploitation of the theory and tarnished the valuable scientific theory into a chauvinistic racist statement. It’s no where in the book about this chart or anything related to the races of the world. If we were to go back in time when Darwin was working on his research, we would find there were a number of other scientists working on the same subject. As a matter of fact, the subject of his research , the origin of man, was the main research theme at that time. All scientists were struggling to answer the question---where do we come from? The time when people were so fascinated about their own beings. That was the time and life in 1800s. Among other famous scientists that were doing the same research theme was Lamarck , Baldwin. Lamarck explained evolution through the collection of fossil samples. There were flaws (unexplained in some part of the theory) in his theory so it collapsed.

Another interesting part of Darwin’s work is that Malaysia has some contribution to the theory. Isn’t cool? It was the time of The White Rajah in Sarawak (circa 1854). More on this later.