[sfjailbird]

There is a verse in the Quran[1] about the origins of the universe and life:

And have not the ones who disbelieved seen that the heavens and the earth were an integrated (mass), then We unseamed them, and of water We have made every living thing? Would they then not believe?

Commentators observe that this verse at the same time lends support to the idea of the Big Bang, and the origins of life in water. Thus there is a lot of support for these theories among Muslims, including the idea of evolution of one kind or another.

[1] https://quran.com/21/30?translations=32,40,84,19,21,20,101,8...

[Ccecil]

I find it interesting that the story of "Genesis" in the Bible basically goes through the order of operations for how the universe formed (aside from a couple of the days out of order...but it is very close). It does lean towards at least a reasonable assumption of what came first. Makes me think there was some sort of "knowledge" being encoded in the story that was attempting to teach the uneducated of the time.

[Someone]

I don’t see it that way. Genesis doesn’t mention the creation of earth, stars get created after there’s land and water on earth, there’s light with days and nights before stars, the sun and moon are equally old, fruit-bearing plants are created before sea life, and water plants aren’t mentioned at all.

I think it’s about you can expect from randomly picking fragments, and throwing away variants that do not hold up to simple scrutiny such as “but what do these animals eat?” or “if there’s no water yet, where do these fish live?”.

About the only thing it gets truly right is the creation of water life before land life.

[dragonwriter]

> About the only thing it gets truly right is the creation of water life before land life.

Sea animals and birds are created at the same time, after land plants, so it has land life first, and sea and land animals together.

[pvaldes]

>the only thing it gets truly right is the creation of water life before land life

50% of probability of having it right just by chance

[ksaj]

Planaria live right there in the middle - the muck, as it were. You're still probably correct for the most part, but it's not a binary. It had to have been quite a blend to kick things off in the evolving life direction.

[dragonwriter]

> I find it interesting that the story of "Genesis" in the Bible basically goes through the order of operations for how the universe formed (aside from a couple of the days out of order...but it is very close).

As a Christian but decidedly not a biblical literalist, that's...just not true, without a whole lot of strained appeal to metaphor informed by knowing the answer you want it to get to.

Genesis has two mutually incompatible creation stories, and while the reference to "days" means this has to refer to the first one, its not really true of either of them.

I mean the first one has creation in this order of days:

(1) Light, day vs. night

(2) separation of the waters (which, incidentally, appear to preexist creation, as they don't get created anywhere) into waters above and waters below, divided by a "firmament" which is named Heaven.

(3) Gathering of the waters below the firmament into one place (the Seas), producing dry land as side effect. And the creation of grass, herb-yielding seed, and fruit trees on the land.

(4) Creation of the Sun, Moon, and stars.

(5) Creation of sea and avian animals.

(6) Creation of (non-avian) land animals, including man.

That's more than a couple days out of order.

[thefounder]

"Genesis" got it wrong. The knowledge from "genesis" is no different than the knowledge of so many others that got it "close" but not quite right.

Another issue is that many texts are vague and open for interpretation so people can make it "make sense" regardless of how wrong/ridiculous/innacurate it is.

[WealthVsSurvive]

We have too much hubris regarding ancient peoples and their religions. These stories and their kin across the world comprise humanity's first attempts at formalizing ergodic reasoning. They were technically incorrect, but only insomuch that they didn't have as much to work with as we do. I also think most miss the important bits about genesis, the part where our consciousness became a binary machine of good-for-me / bad-for-me projected over time (whereas before the machine merely had some limited scratch memory), how that relates to scarcity in the story of Cain and Abel, and how that really sort of mucked things up for humans as far as war and horrific things go. Genesis is primarily about the birth of human consciousness. Eve gained knowledge first, not because of some sexist nonsense, but because it's a "good" thing for women to project about the well-being of themselves and their offspring. This "good" thing however, was witnessed by men who then killed each other over achieving that "good" status. It's a story concerning the origin of all material conflict, the bridge between beast and man, and the evolutionary impetus for the development of all intelligence.

[macspoofing]

It's easy to make post-hoc interpretations of these kinds of verses to make them fit anything.

The reality is that there is quite a lot evolution denialism in the Islamic world - which should suggest that there is nothing obviously pro-evolution in the Quran.

[duskwuff]

> It's easy to make post-hoc interpretations of these kinds of verses to make them fit anything.

Absolutely. These sorts of post-hoc interpretations are particularly common in some branches of Hindu nationalism, where verses of sacred texts (such as the Vedas) are interpreted as representing foreknowledge of modern scientific discoveries, often couched in an anticolonialist narrative such as "Western science stole this knowledge from ancient India".

[BeetleB]

> The reality is that there is quite a lot evolution denialism in the Islamic world

Not disagreeing with you (based on my own experience), but I would caution against generalizations when dealing with a population of over a billion. In some Muslim countries, over half the population believes in evolution.

I can't find a comprehensive study on this, but the theory of evolution is taught in high schools in many (most?) Muslim countries (even if they don't "believe" in it). Indeed, I suspect the opposition in several states in the US is greater than in many Muslim countries. Iran, for example, teaches it in a fair amount of detail.

In addition, the situation is fairly dynamic (e.g. taught in a given country, but banned a few years ago, or vice versa).

[_jal]

It is no different than millennialist numerology games like the Branch Davidians and numerous other cultists enjoy.

The scam just works better if you don't make it quite so easy to falsify.

[thefounder]

Well, all the religious versets regardless of the religion make sense and provide great insights in hindsight with enough "mental gymnstastics". One can find spiritual and astronomical significations even in children's books. Just watch Ancient Aliens! They are gold in this regard!