Among the verses of Quran in which the creation of human is narrated, verses 30 to 34 of Al-Bagarah (2) are quite unique. In a fascinating comparison of Adam with angels, essentially, God reveals the fundamental supremacy of human nature that qualifies him to be God's successive authority on earth. One would wonder what the distinguishing feature of man is that has made him even superior to angels?
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
2-30
"And, when your Lord said to the angels, "Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority." They said, "Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we declare Your praise and sanctify You?" Allah said, "Indeed, I know that which you do not know."
2-31
"And He taught Adam the names - all of them. Then He showed them to the angels and said, "Inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful."
2-32
"They said, "Exalted are You; we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, it is You who is the Knowing, the Wise."
2-33
"He said, "O Adam, inform them of their names." And when he had informed them of their names, He said, "Did I not tell you that I know the unseen [aspects] of the heavens and the earth? And I know what you reveal and what you have concealed."
2-34
"And [mention] when We said to the angels, "Prostrate before Adam"; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.
صدق الله العلي العظيم
From www.Quran.com
Perhaps judging from the animals' life previously existed on earth, angles had reasons to believe that any other new creature in the material world would necessarily involve killing and blood shed over dominance of earth's resources for survival. This actually seems to be true for the most part of the history of human's life too, if we were to dismiss the intellectual and spiritual growth of mankind. God, however, proves them wrong by putting Adam and angles to a test which was to learn the names. And the result ,according to the verses 30&31 above, is that Adam learned the names but angles did not.
Considering the fact that nature and details of the names have not been specified (in my opinion because it doesn't matter actually), the remarkable revelation of these verses is to demonstrate the unique learning capability of humankind in comparison with the best of creation that are angeles. This contrast could not have been made more explicit. Learning ability, to the extent that humans possess, is indeed the main distinguishing feature that superiorize us over all other beings in the seen and in the the unseen world.
The prominent counter argument would be the limited learning capacity we can see in most animals in terms of being trained to behave in a certain way in exchange for food or other treats. "Conditioning" is probably the name of this type of learning. In this sense perhaps, we can encapsulate the evolution of all natural creatures in a form of conditioning as well. It is a well known fact that from the smallest to the largest live organisms learn from their natural habitat how to improve themselves in order to survive in competition with other species. This process of gradual and subtle improvements towards perfection over millions of years, natural evolution/selection, is basically what has derived all creatures including mankind from a single cell or gen all the way up to their current shape and form, in the evolutionist point of view.
While it is true that all living creatures are equipped with some degree of learning talent, the evolutionary changes that take place even over a very long period of time have never made a fundamental alteration to the nature of that creature. They are always imposed by the survivability principle with minor scope of refinement. Animals ,for example, may learn to change the color of their skin in order to act as camouflage to hide from their predators or from their prey. Please check out the link below to see unbelievable examples of such cases. Yet, it is highly unlikely that a crawling Gecko for instance, learns to fly or live in water no mater how long he is given to evolve.
http://www.boredpanda.com/animal-camouflage/
Learning process in human on the other hand, can be summarized as an intellectual and spiritual transformation from the few known facts we know about a question in our mind to the unknown answers. In other words, it is a metaphysical journey from obvious, from apparent and from the seen world to the unseen world with often times unpredictable results. History is the best display of the range of astonishing learning of mankind from the beginning of time to now. By the way of example, math starts with defining numbers as its basic foundation and then simple operations such as addition, subtraction and multiplication follow. All this elementary findings are easily verifiable by our 5 senses. From this simplicity it builds up its complication to entirely theoretical and abstract concepts such as calculus. Similarly, the same escalation of complexity can be traced in chemistry, physics and in all other branches of natural science.
Interestingly enough, when it comes to an absolutely abstract subject namely philosophy, it appears that the same chain of thoughts take place. That is to say, we start with an undeniable fact like, "I think so I am" as Descarte said, and then develop our metaphysical principles on this base.
Even more interestingly, the impact of acquisition of knowledge on humans is not limited to mental faculty but it will also result in an spiritual transformation. That is, if you learn math long enough it becomes your second nature and you become a mathematician which is a name given to a person with certain cognitive skills who has developed capabilities in solving mathematical problems. The same is true about becoming a physicist, a chemist, a physician or a philosopher for that matter. They develop specific traits and characteristics that are associated with each profession. In reality, their personality has changed or to be exact, their mind has evolved to a superior entity that they were not before while their physical appearance has not altered at all. By the same token, we can fly as a bird or we can swim as a fish without physically transforming to one. We become a driver when driving becomes our second nature. We become a foreign language speaker particularly when the names of that language become our second nature. Through these examples we can clearly see that we convert to what we truly learn.
Contrary to all other creatures on earth, human evolution is in truth not confined to the material world. We learn about kindness and charity to others by practicing these names and once we have experienced these qualities long enough then we become kind and generous. This is definitely an spiritual elevation as acquiring these characteristics make us enjoy life more deeply and we will feel more peaceful internally than ever before. We learn about forgiveness by being forgiving and above all, we learn about love by loving others.
Much to the surprise of angles, humans can learn the names on earth which involves mud and blood. Nevertheless, we are capable of transcending beyond our material nature and reach for the stars well above the reach of all angles. That is what God has made us for and that is how mankind was created in the first place. The inevitable spiritual transformation occur either through the earthly experiences of life or through the hard way of afterlife for some.
In short, the above verses explains the Quranic view on creation of human. That is essentially he has been originally designed and created differently from all other beings including all creatures on earth and all the metaphysical ones in heavens. According to Quran, human being came to existence from an smelly mud and has learned some of the names so far, proving to be the second authority on earth. Since the ultimate attributes belong to God and the ultimate truth is in fact the nature of God, it should be no surprise to perceive humanity as the only creation who is well capable to elevate his spiritual being as close as possible to the characteristics, the names, of God. This seems to me a convincing understanding of appointing a successive authority on earth as stated in the first verse.
I wonder if the Quranic perspective of human evolution is seen in nature besides mankind and if such transformation is ever conceivable as the work of nature for any other creature on earth in the evolutionist view.
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