In the 20th century important research has been done on the origin of religions, thanks to which it has become known that there is no scientific value in claims about religions’ evolution, and that such claims are only imaginary scenarios. Research into world religions by such leading anthropologists as Andrew Lang and Wilhelm Schmidt has shown that religions did not evolve; on the contrary, sometimes underwent distortion over the course of time. The results of Schmidt’s research were published in detail in the periodical, Anthropos.

Research done especially between 1900-1935 shows that claims about the evolution of religions are totally false, which led many anthropologists to abandon their evolutionary ideas. But despite all these scientific and historical facts, some radical atheists continued to defend this untenable scenario.

• Archaeological Finds from Egypt and Mesopotamia

The Mesopotamian plain, not far from the civilization of ancient Egypt, is known as the “cradle of civilizations.”
Among the most important information to emerge from archaeological research in these areas came from discoveries regarding these societies’ religious beliefs. Inscriptions tell of the activities of countless false deities. As more information was discovered and researchers discovered better methods to interpret the data, some details about these civilizations’ religious beliefs began to emerge. One of the most interesting things is that above all the false deities these people believed in, they also believed in one God. Historical evidence shows that true religion always existed.

The following pages will examine the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indian and European civilizations together with the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans to prove that they all believed in one God and were visited by messengers who communicated true religion to them.

The first researcher to discover that polytheism had originally contained monotheism was Stephen Langdon of Oxford University. In 1931, he announced his findings to the scientific world, saying that they were quite unexpected and totally at odds with previous evolutionist interpretations. Langdon explained his findings as follows:

… the history of the oldest civilization of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits. 73

Five years later, Langdon would state in The Scotsman as follows:

The evidence points unmistakably to an original monotheism, the inscriptions and literary remains of the oldest Semitic peoples also indicate … monotheism, and the totemistic origin of Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited. 74

Excavations at modern Tell Asmar, the site of a Sumerian city dating from 3,000 BCE, unearthed findings that completely corroborated Langdon’s ideas. The excavation director, Henry Frankfort, gave this official report:

In addition to their more tangible results, our excavations have established a novel fact, which the student of Babylonian religions will have henceforth to take into account. We have obtained, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, religious material complete in its social setting. We possess a coherent mass of evidence, derived in almost equal quantity from a temple and from the houses inhabited by those who worshiped in that temple. We are thus able to draw conclusions, which the finds studied by themselves would not have made possible.
For instance, we discover that the representations on cylinder seals, which are usually connected with various gods, can all be fitted into a consistent picture in which a single god worshiped in this temple forms the central figure. It seems, therefore, that at this early period his various aspects were not considered separate deities in the Sumero-Accadian pantheon. 75

Frankfort’s discoveries reveal very important facts about how a superstitious, polytheist system comes into being. The theory of the evolution of religions claims that polytheism arose when people started to worship evil spirits representing the powers of nature. But it was not so. In the course of time, people developed different understandings of the various attributes of the one God, which eventually led to distortions in belief in one God. The various attributes of the one God turned into the belief in several.

Long before Langdon had made his translations of the Sumerian tablets, a researcher by the name of Friedrich Delitzsch made similar discoveries. He found that the numerous deities in the Babylonian pantheon all devolved from the various characteristics of Marduk, as they called the one Deity that time. Research has shown that belief in Marduk resulted from the deterioration, over time, of the belief in one true God.

This one Deity, Marduk, had many names. He was called Ninib, or “the Possessor of Power,” Nergal or “Lord of Battle,” Bel or “Possessor of Lordship,” Nebo or “the Lord of the Prophet,” Sin or “Illuminator of the Night,” Shamash or “Lord of all that is Just,” and Addu or “God of Rain.” Over the course of time, it seems that the attributes of Marduk became detached from him and assigned to different deities. In the same way, false deities such as the Sun-god and the Moon-god came into being as the products of peoples’ imagination. Belief in Marduk, along with the other names of this false deity, shows that this belief system actually developed over time through distortion of belief in the One God.

We can also see traces of such perversion in ancient Egypt. Researchers have discovered that the ancient Egyptians were first of all monotheists, but that they later dismantled this system and turned it into Sabeism, or sun-worship. M. de Rouge writes:

It is incontestably true that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late result of a process of development or elimination from the grosser. The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian religion, that known to the Greek and Latin writers, heathen or Christian, was by far the grossest and the most corrupt. 76

The anthropologist Sir Flinders Petrie says that superstitious, polytheistic beliefs emerged through the gradual corruption of belief in a single deity. In addition, he says that this process of corruption can be seen in present-day society as well as in societies in the past:

There are in ancient religions and theologies very different classes of gods. Some races, as the modern Hindu, revel in a profusion of gods and godlings which continually increase. Others … do not attempt to worship great gods, but deal with a host of animistic spirits, devils…
Were the conception of a god only an evolution from such spirit worship we should find the worship of many gods preceding the worship of one God… What we actually find is the contrary of this, monotheism is the first stage traceable in theology…
Wherever we can trace back polytheism to its earliest stages, we find that it results from combinations of monotheism…. 77

• The Origins of Polytheism in India

Even if Indian culture is not as old as Middle Eastern cultures, still it is one of the oldest surviving cultures in the world.
In Indian polytheism, the number of so-called deities is virtually endless. After long study, Andrew Lang has determined that polytheistic religions appeared in India as a result of a process similar to that in the Middle East.

Edward McCrady, writing about Indian religious beliefs, observed that the Rig Veda shows that in the early days, the deities were regarded simply as diverse manifestations of a single Divine Being. 78

In the hymns in the Rig Veda, we can see traces of the destruction of the monotheistic idea of a single God. Another researcher in this area, Max Müller, agrees that at first, there was a belief in one God:

There is a monotheism that precedes the polytheism of the Veda; and even in the invocation of the innumerable gods the remembrance of a God one and infinite, breaks through the mist of idolatrous phraseology like the blue sky that is hidden by passing clouds. 79

From this, it is again obvious that there has been no evolution of religions, but that people added false elements to true religion, or neglected certain commands and prohibitions—which finally resulted in the perversion of religious belief.

• Contamination of Religions in European History

We can see traces of a similar contamination in the beliefs of historical European societies. In his book The Religion of Greece in Prehistoric Times, Axel W. Persson, a researcher in Ancient Greek paganism, writes:

… there later developed a larger number of more or less significant figures which we meet with in Greek religious myths. In my opinion, their multiplying variety depends to a very considerable degree on the different invocating names of originally one and the same deity. 80

The same traces of alteration can be seen in Italy. An archaeologist by the name of Irene Rosenzweig, after researching the Iguvine tables, which date from Etruscan times, concludes that “deities are distinguished by adjectives, which in their turn emerge as independent divine powers.” 81

In short, all of the last century’s anthropological and archaeological evidence indicates that throughout history, societies first believed in one God but altered this belief with the passage of time. At first, peoples believed in God Who created everything from nothing, Who sees and knows all things and Who is Lord of all the worlds. But in time, the titles of our Lord were wrongly considered as separate deities, and people began to worship these false deities. True religion is the worship of the one and only God. Polytheistic religions developed from the contamination of the true religion, which our Lord has revealed to humanity since the time of Adam (pbuh).

The True Religion Revealed by God

When we look at the culture and religious values of societies in the various areas of the world, we see that they have much in common. These societies could not have shared any cultural exchange, but they believe in beings such as angels, satan and jinni that do not live in the same dimension as human beings. They believe in life after death, in human beings created from the earth; and their worship contains many common elements. For example, Noah’s ark is mentioned in Sumerian records, Welsh religion, and in Chinese inscriptions and in ancient Lithuanian religion.

This is just one proof that a single, all-powerful deity—that is God, Lord of the worlds—revealed the religious morality. Throughout the world, cultures have been taught religions that came from the same supreme place, revealing the existence of one incomparable deity. Our Lord has revealed Himself in every period of history through those servants He has chosen and exalted; and through them He has revealed the religion He has chosen for human beings. In the Qur’an, Almighty God’s last revelation, He announces that “every people has a guide” (Surat ar-Ra‘d: 7). It is revealed in other verses that He sends a messenger to all peoples to warn them:

We have never destroyed a city without giving it prior warning as a reminder. We were never unjust. (Surat ash-Shu‘ara’: 208-209)

These blessed messengers always taught societies that they should believe in God as the only deity, serve only Him, and that they should practice good and avoid evil. Human beings will attain salvation through obedience to these messengers, chosen and blessed in God’s sight, and to the holy books they have left behind as an inheritance. The last prophet sent by our Lord as a mercy to the worlds was Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace); and the Qur’an, the last Divine book which is under Almighty God’s eternal protection, is the truest guide for humanity.

References :

73. Stephen H. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, Mythology of All Races, Vol. V, Archaeol. Instit. Amer., 1931, p. xviii.

74. Stephen H. Langdon, The Scotsman, 18 November 1936.

75. H. Frankfort, Third Preliminary Report on Excavations at Tell Asmar (Eshnunna): quoted by P. J. Wiseman in New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis, London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1936, p. 24.

76. P. Le Page Renouf, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of Ancient Egypt, London: Williams and Norgate, 1897, p. 90.

77. Sir Flinders Petrie, The Religion of Ancient Egypt, London: Constable, 1908, pp. 3, 4.

78. Edward McCrady, “Genesis and Pagan Cosmogonies,” Transactions of the Victoria Institute, Vol. 72, 1940, p. 55.

79. Max Müller, History of Sanskrit Literature: quoted by Samuel Zwemer, p. 87.

80. Axel W. Persson, The Religion of Greece in Prehistoric Times, University of California Press, 1942, p. 124.

81. Review of Irene Rosenzweig’s Ritual and Cults of Pre-Roman Iguvium by George M. A. Hanfmann, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 43, No. 1, Jan.-Mar. 1939, pp. 170, 171.

Miller’s Experiment

The most generally respected study on the origin of life is the Miller experiment conducted by the American researcher Stanley Miller in 1953. (The experiment is also known as the “Urey-Miller experiment” because of the contribution of Miller’s instructor at the University of Chicago, Harold Urey.) This experiment is the only “evidence” evolutionists have with which to allegedly prove the “chemical evolution thesis”; they advance it as the first stage of the supposed evolutionary process leading to life. Although nearly half a century has passed, and great technological advances have been made, nobody has made any further progress. In spite of this, Miller’s experiment is still taught in textbooks as the evolutionary explanation of the earliest generation of living things. That is because, aware of the fact that such studies do not support, but rather actually refute, their thesis, evolutionist researchers deliberately avoid embarking on such experiments.

Stanley Miller’s aim was to demonstrate by means of an experiment that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could have come into existence “by chance” on the lifeless earth billions of years ago. In his experiment, Miller used a gas mixture that he assumed to have existed on the primordial earth (but which later proved unrealistic), composed of ammonia, methane, hydrogen, and water vapor. Since these gases would not react with each other under natural conditions, he added energy to the mixture to start a reaction among them. Supposing that this energy could have come from lightning in the primordial atmosphere, he used an electric current for this purpose.

Miller heated this gas mixture at 100°C for a week and added the electrical current. At the end of the week, Miller analyzed the chemicals which had formed at the bottom of the jar, and observed that three out of the 20 amino acids which constitute the basic elements of proteins had been synthesized.

This experiment aroused great excitement among evolutionists, and was promoted as an outstanding success. Moreover, in a state of intoxicated euphoria, various publications carried headlines such as “Miller creates life.” However, what Miller had managed to synthesize was only a few inanimate molecules.

Encouraged by this experiment, evolutionists immediately produced new scenarios. Stages following the development of amino acids were hurriedly hypothesized. Supposedly, amino acids had later united in the correct sequences by accident to form proteins. Some of these proteins which emerged by chance formed themselves into cell membrane–like structures which “somehow” came into existence and formed a primitive cell. These cells then supposedly came together over time to form multicellular living organisms.
However, Miller’s experiment has since proven to be false in many respects.

Four Facts That Invalidate Miller’s Experiment

Miller’s experiment sought to prove that amino acids could form on their own in primordial earth-like conditions, but it contains inconsistencies in a number of areas:

1- By using a mechanism called a “cold trap,” Miller isolated the amino acids from the environment as soon as they were formed. Had he not done so, the conditions in the environment in which the amino acids were formed would immediately have destroyed these molecules.

Doubtless, this kind of conscious isolation mechanism did not exist on the primordial earth. Without such a mechanism, even if one amino acid were obtained, it would immediately have been destroyed. The chemist Richard Bliss expresses this contradiction by observing that “Actually, without this trap, the chemical products, would have been destroyed by the energy source.”218 And, sure enough, in his previous experiments, Miller had been unable to make even one single amino acid using the same materials without the cold trap mechanism.

2- The primordial atmosphere that Miller attempted to simulate in his experiment was not realistic. In the 1980s, scientists agreed that nitrogen and carbon dioxide should have been used in this artificial environment instead of methane and ammonia.

So why did Miller insist on these gases? The answer is simple: without ammonia, it was impossible to synthesize any amino acid. Kevin Mc Kean talks about this in an article published in Discover magazine:

Miller and Urey imitated the ancient atmosphere on the Earth with a mixture of methane and ammonia. …However in the latest studies, it has been understood that the Earth was very hot at those times, and that it was composed of melted nickel and iron. Therefore, the chemical atmosphere of that time should have been formed mostly of nitrogen (N2), carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour (H2O). However these are not as appropriate as methane and ammonia for the production of organic molecules.219

The American scientists J. P. Ferris and C. T. Chen repeated Miller’s experiment with an atmospheric environment that contained carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, and water vapor, and were unable to obtain even a single amino acid molecule.220

3- Another important point that invalidates Miller’s experiment is that there was enough oxygen to destroy all the amino acids in the atmosphere at the time when they were thought to have been formed. This fact, overlooked by Miller, is revealed by the traces of oxidized iron found in rocks that are estimated to be 3.5 billion years old.221

There are other findings showing that the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere at that time was much higher than originally claimed by evolutionists. Studies also show that the amount of ultraviolet radiation to which the earth was then exposed was 10,000 times more than evolutionists’ estimates. This intense radiation would unavoidably have freed oxygen by decomposing the water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

This situation completely negates Miller’s experiment, in which oxygen was completely neglected. If oxygen had been used in the experiment, methane would have decomposed into carbon dioxide and water, and ammonia into nitrogen and water. On the other hand, in an environment where there was no oxygen, there would be no ozone layer either; therefore, the amino acids would have immediately been destroyed, since they would have been exposed to the most intense ultraviolet rays without the protection of the ozone layer. In other words, with or without oxygen in the primordial world, the result would have been a deadly environment for the amino acids.

4- At the end of Miller’s experiment, many organic acids had also been formed with characteristics detrimental to the structure and function of living things. If the amino acids had not been isolated, and had been left in the same environment with these chemicals, their destruction or transformation into different compounds through chemical reactions would have been unavoidable.

Moreover, Miller’s experiment also produced right-handed amino acids.222 The existence of these amino acids refuted the theory even within its own terms, because right-handed amino acids cannot function in the composition of living organisms. To conclude, the circumstances in which amino acids were formed in Miller’s experiment were not suitable for life. In truth, this medium took the form of an acidic mixture destroying and oxidizing the useful molecules obtained.

All these facts point to one firm truth: Miller’s experiment cannot claim to have proved that living things formed by chance under primordial earth–like conditions. The whole experiment is nothing more than a deliberate and controlled laboratory experiment to synthesize amino acids. The amount and types of the gases used in the experiment were ideally determined to allow amino acids to originate. The amount of energy supplied to the system was neither too much nor too little, but arranged precisely to enable the necessary reactions to occur. The experimental apparatus was isolated, so that it would not allow the leaking of any harmful, destructive, or any other kind of elements to hinder the formation of amino acids. No elements, minerals or compounds that were likely to have been present on the primordial earth, but which would have changed the course of the reactions, were included in the experiment. Oxygen, which would have prevented the formation of amino acids because of oxidation, is only one of these destructive elements. Even under such ideal laboratory conditions, it was impossible for the amino acids produced to survive and avoid destruction without the “cold trap” mechanism.

In fact, by his experiment, Miller destroyed evolution’s claim that “life emerged as the result of unconscious coincidences.” That is because, if the experiment proves anything, it is that amino acids can only be produced in a controlled laboratory environment where all the conditions are specifically designed by conscious intervention.

Today, Miller’s experiment is totally disregarded even by evolutionist scientists. In the February 1998 issue of the famous evolutionist science journal Earth, the following statements appear in an article titled “Life’s Crucible”:

Geologist now think that the primordial atmosphere consisted mainly of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, gases that are less reactive than those used in the 1953 experiment. And even if Miller’s atmosphere could have existed, how do you get simple molecules such as amino acids to go through the necessary chemical changes that will convert them into more complicated compounds, or polymers, such as proteins? Miller himself throws up his hands at that part of the puzzle. “It’s a problem,” he sighs with exasperation. “How do you make polymers? That’s not so easy.”223

As seen, today even Miller himself has accepted that his experiment does not lead to an explanation of the origin of life. In the March 1998 issue of National Geographic, in an article titled “The Emergence of Life on Earth,” the following comments appear:

Many scientists now suspect that the early atmosphere was different to what Miller first supposed. They think it consisted of carbon dioxide and nitrogen rather than hydrogen, methane, and ammonia.
That’s bad news for chemists. When they try sparking carbon dioxide and nitrogen, they get a paltry amount of organic molecules - the equivalent of dissolving a drop of food colouring in a swimming pool of water. Scientists find it hard to imagine life emerging from such a diluted soup.224

In brief, neither Miller’s experiment, nor any other similar one that has been attempted, can answer the question of how life emerged on earth. All of the research that has been done shows that it is impossible for life to emerge by chance, and thus confirms that life is created. The reason evolutionists do not accept this obvious reality is their blind adherence to prejudices that are totally unscientific. Interestingly enough, Harold Urey, who organized the Miller experiment with his student Stanley Miller, made the following confession on this subject:

All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.225

References:

218 Richard B. Bliss, Gary E. Parker, Duane T. Gish, Origin of Life, C.L.P. Publications, 3rd ed., California, 1990, pp. 14-15.

219 Kevin Mc Kean, Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology), no. 189, p. 7.

220 J. P. Ferris, C. T. Chen, “Photochemistry of Methane, Nitrogen, and Water Mixture As a Model for the Atmosphere of the Primitive Earth,” Journal of American Chemical Society, vol. 97:11, 1975, p. 2964.

221 “New Evidence on Evolution of Early Atmosphere and Life,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 63, November 1982, pp. 1328-1330.

222 Richard B. Bliss & Gary E. Parker, Duane T. Gish, Origin of Life, C.L.P. Publications, 3rd ed., California, 1990, p. 16.

223 “Life’s Crucible,” Earth, February 1998, p. 34. (emphasis added)

224 “The Rise of Life on Earth,” National Geographic, March 1998, p. 68. (emphasis added)

225 W. R. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited, Thomas Nelson Co., Nashville, 1991, p. 325.(emphasis added)