By Lewis Loflin
Evolution isn’t Darwin’s brainchild—it’s ancient. Long before microscopes or fossils, Greek thinkers speculated that life climbed from simpler forms and the Earth was old. That seed sprouted in early Christian and Islamic minds, shaping ideas modern creationists conveniently ignore. Theistic evolution—God sparking life, then letting it unfold—wasn’t heresy; it was orthodoxy. Here’s the story, from Aristotle to Avicenna, and why it matters.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) saw nature striving for perfection, a slow grind from chaos to complexity. Early Christians grabbed that thread. In Darwin: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin note how Church Fathers wove it into theology. Gregory of Nyssa (331-396) argued creation was potential—God set laws and matter in motion, then stepped back as the universe and life emerged from primordial soup.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) went further. He saw “germs” of life—seeds in plants, animals, and the environment—activated by conditions over time, not a literal six-day blitz. His take on Genesis? “In the beginning” was a seed, not a snapshot: “As if this were the seed of heaven and earth, though still in confusion... certain to become heaven and earth.” Creation, he said, was like a tree growing from a seed—slow, natural, guided by divine laws, not micromanaged miracles.
This is Deism 101: God as architect, not carpenter. Augustine’s ideas—echoed by William of Occam (14th century) and cemented by Thomas Aquinas (13th century)—held sway through the Middle Ages. Aquinas, a Church titan, stamped it official: God kicked off the universe, then rested, letting nature run its course. Special Creation—God crafting each species—wasn’t needed. Evolution, sans the name, was baked into Christian thought.
While Europe stagnated in the Dark Ages, Islam ran with it. Aristotle’s works, translated into Arabic by the 9th century, fueled a scientific boom. Muslims had no beef with reason or science—revelation just set the guardrails. Unlike Christianity, they sidestepped Original Sin, so evolution didn’t threaten their core. Avicenna (980-1037), a Persian polymath, nailed it in geology:
“Mountains may arise from upheavals of the Earth’s crust, like during a violent earthquake, or from water carving new paths, exposing varied strata—some soft, some hard. Winds and water erode the soft, leaving the hard... This takes a long time... Fossil remains of aquatic animals in mountains prove water’s role.”
Avicenna missed tectonic uplift’s fossil trick—ancient seabeds thrust skyward—but nailed gradual change and deep time, nine centuries before Darwin. Aristotle’s echo is clear: slow processes, not cataclysms, shape the world. The Church briefly ditched Augustine’s evolution-friendly view—not for theology, but politics. Muslims revered Aristotle, Christendom’s rival, so his ideas got sidelined.
By the 16th century, Europe woke up, cribbing from Arabic texts that preserved Greek originals. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) mixed these with Copernicus, arguing gradual change and an ancient Earth—far older than the Bible’s 6,000-year tally. The Church burned him at the stake, not for being wrong (they knew he wasn’t), but for threatening Paul’s Original Sin racket. Without a literal Adam and Eve, no fall, no need for a savior-god. Jesus’ message stands alone; Paul’s Christianity collapses.
Scholasticism tried marrying reason to faith—Aquinas led the charge—but facts kept clashing with Scripture. Paper shortages after Egypt fell to Islam didn’t help; papyrus dried up, hobbling learning. Still, the Church wasn’t dumb—just controlling. Reason worked until it didn’t fit the narrative.
Evolution—secular or theistic—predates Darwin by millennia. Greeks saw it, Christians theologized it, Muslims refined it. Today’s creationists, clutching a young Earth, ignore this. I’m an evolutionist with a science bent, not an atheist. Science shows HOW life unfolds—descent with modification—but not WHY it started. No lab’s cracked life’s origin; self-creation’s bunk. Gaps linger, and that’s no sin—God fits there for me, not Paul’s Gnostic spin. See Creationism Unraveled: Seven Arguments Debunked and Deism and Reason for more.
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me compile and refine this piece. The final edits and perspective are mine.
