Although people argue that you can’t bring creationists to accepting evolution simply by showing them thge facts, this Radiolab audio shows that that isn’t an inviolable truth. The podcast tells the story of a pious Muslim who studied evolution to try to debunk it, because she realized that evolution was undermining her faith, and if she could show that evolution was bogus, her faith would remain sound. Well, you know what happened next: she learned the irrefutable facts of evolution and gave up her faith, losing her “tribe” in the process.
This transformation is not unique. As I’ve said before, at one of James Randi’s “Amazing Meetings,” I met two Orthodox Jews, both of whom told me (independently) that they abandoned their faith because, after reading Why Evolution is True, gave up their pious Judaism (many Orthodox Jews reject evolution). Both were sad because, having embraced evolution, they were rejected by their family, but they stood firm in their acceptance of science. Such people are very brave, for the love of truth outweighs not only their love of superstition, but their need for a social network.
This 40-minute recording is the fascinating story of a well-known paleoanthropologist, fossil collector, evolutionist, and science popularizer, Ella al-Shamahi. A Muslim in full jilbāb and in an arranged marriage, al-Shamahi studied evolution at Imperial College London so she could understand why it was false. Instead, she became a convert.This is from is the Wikipedia page on al-Shamani:
As a child, Al-Shamahi was a devout Muslim who wore the hijab from the age of seven and began missionary work throughout Britain at the age of 13. Her biology studies at Imperial College London were undertaken with the eventual aim of disproving evolutionary theory, but she soon came to believe that the theory was correct and her later studies would further distance her from her faith. As of 2025, she was describing herself as a “non-practising Muslim”.
Al-Shamahi characterizes her political views as “wokey-progressive — definitely left-wing”, but she has also called for the scientific field to be more accommodating of those who are right-wing or devoutly religious and for discussions to be more nuanced.
In the podcast al-Shamahi describes two moments that were pivotal in getting her to embrace evolution:
A.. One was in Drosophila! She describes an experiment in fruit flies in which, she said, she saw the very beginning of speciation: two groups of the same species that began evolving reproductive barriers between each other. She doesn’t describe the experiment, but my best guess was the intriguing experiment of Bill Rice and George Salt, published in Evolution in 1990 (see also Rice 1995 ). In this experiment, flies were divided into groups by being running them through a complex maze that involved their having to make four “chocies”: light vs. dark (phototaxis), up versus down (geotaxis), faster versus slower development time, and whether they preferred the odor of acetaldehyde or ethanol. This produced eight groups of flies, of which Rice and Salt selected only from the two extremes. After 35 generations, they got nearly complete separation of the two groups with no intermediates, which is the beginning of the type of reproductive isolation called “habitat selection,” which of course impedes gene flow because the two groups don’t encounter each other. There was no mating discrimination shown when the flies were tested in the same chamber. Now this is a lab experiment, and the flies likely would merge if selection were stopped, but it shows nevertheless that a form of impeded gene flow could evolve in only 35 generations (a couple of years). This was convincing to al-Shamahi, though I’d argue that there are many other types of evidence that are more convincing (island biogeography, the fossil record [she does mention that under “stratigraphy“], and other stuff in my book.
B. The other bit of evidence, which I don’t discuss but Ken Miller has, is the finding that in “retrotransposons“—nonfunctional bits of DNA that move around in the genome—mutations in humans and chimps are in identical positions in the jumping DNA. That similarity implies a close relatedness of humans and chimps: they must have shared some of these “jumping genes” that were present in a common ancestor. Since the DNA is nonfunctional, there’s no adaptive explanation that a creationist could devise to explain for this identity.
Both cases led to al-Shamahi’s epiphany, and, accepting it, she says “I knew I was going to have to leave my whole world.” (20:40 on the podcast). Fortunately, her sisters supported her views, but she didn’t talk about her new feelings to her friends, for she “did not know how to exist in a secular world.” In the end, however, she found community among secularists and forged a career based on evolution. She still says that “gentle does it” with creationists, and she tries to bond with them rather than convince them. In the end, though, that is her aim, however she achieves it.
She hasn’t spoken in detail about her “conversion,” so the podcast at the bottom is fascinating, for al-Shamahi is eloquent and funny despite her travails. Here’s its introduction:
Ella al-Shamahi is one part Charles Darwin, one part Indiana Jones. She braves war zones and pirate-infested waters to collect fossils from prehistoric caves, fossils that help us understand the origin of our species. Her recent hit BBC/PBS series Human follows her around the globe trying to piece together the unlikely story of how early humans conquered the world. But Ella’s own origins as an evolutionary biologist are equally unlikely. She sits down with us and tells us a story she has rarely shared publicly, about how she came to believe in evolution, and how much that belief cost her.
Special thanks to Misha Euceph and Hamza Syed.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by – Latif Nasser
Produced by – Jessica Yung and Pat Walters
with help from – Sarah Qari
Fact-checking by – Diane Kelly
and Edited by – Pat Walters
To hear the episode, and I recommend you do, click below and then click “listen” (there’s also a transcript). Note that there are several longish commercial interruptions.
I found a video of al-Shamahi recorded a month ago in which she also describes her conversion, and I’ve started it at that place. But the whole thing is worth watching,
Or go here to hear her dispelling some myths about human evolution in a 9-minute video. After watching it, I wish I were a Homo floresiensis.
h/t: Robert.
This is her series on PBS’s “Nova”: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/human/
It’s a very good series so far. Al-Shamahi is an excellent presenter.
The accurate term for this process is deprogramming. That’s the means by which victims are broken out of cults.
Authors that come to mind off-the-top-of-my-head that might fill in background for deprogramming this are Steven Hassan in particular (he escaped The Moonies), but also Margaret Thaler Singer and Robert J. Lifton.
….
As an aside, I’m thinking Plato’s allegory of the cave is a good metaphor here….
… I mean allegory.
Walked right into that, didn’t I.
Because religious faith is often so intertwined with family, friends, and culture, it’s hard to give up because so much is at stake. My guess is that lots of people are non-believers but fake their faith in order not to lose their social safety nets.
Norman,
Yes, you are spot on. I am a retired prof. of religious studies. Early in my career, I taught for several years in the Bible Belt. Most of the students who grew up in religious families stayed away from my classes, but frequently spent hours sitting and chatting with me in my office. They were happy to finally have someone who understood their rock-and-hard-place. They went through the motions to maintain family ties, but routinely told me that they grew up believing their pastor was a liar and their parents were deluded. Several brave students of mine openly embraced a nonreligious worldview and were promptly kicked out of their families.
Fascinating, and sad.
Norman,
This is also my idea too (I know you write it down here, but I have to say I had it in my mind for quite some time 🙂
I watched three of her PBS Nova shows about human evolution. I came away with a mixed reaction. It is informative but sometimes collapses environmental changes that happened over huge periods of time so that it appears to be something individuals could/would experience.
She has my local accent.
This was an interesting post to read. I’ve been following the PBS show, and I wondered about the host’s background, but I didn’t get around to looking her up. I’ve got the Radiolab episode cued up for my evening commute.
Yes, particularly pleasing that al-Shamahi’s enlightenment began with an experiment on the approach to speciation in Drosophila—the leading model organism for studies of this subject since the days of a legendary Ukrainian-American geneticist (graduate of the University of Kiev).
Very inspiring. The YouTube link, though goes to a video related to your Hilli Dialogue.
The one on my computer goes to the video I wanted. I am confused.
It works now for me; surely something confused on my end.
Very inspiring. The YouTube link, though goes to a video related to your Hili Dialogue.
I watched one of the Nova episodes, but it’s interesting to know the bigger picture.
When someone claims to have converted to religiosity from a secular life (filling a god-shaped hole), I can’t help but think that they had the seed of religion inside them all along.
But would the opposite be necessarily true? Must a formerly religious person who de-converted have always carried the embryo of doubt the whole time? I suppose that is sometimes true. But I think it is also sometimes the case that their new observations and experiences came crashing in on them, and forced them to have thoughts that were not there before.
ISTM anyone who cares about alleged evidence v faith in the first place is well on the way to becoming an apostate. (And I very much doubt that any secularist converted to religion from reading Faith Versus Fact).
I have a criticism of the Nova series. I may be wrong about this, but it seems like the series was promoting a watered-down version of the Multiregional Hypothesis (“MRE”) for the origin of Homo Sapiens, as opposed to the Recent African Origin (RAO) model. The MRE states the Homo Sapiens slowly evolved from populations of H. erectus simultaneously in various regions of the world.
In contrast, the RAO model has Homo Sapiens arising relatively recently from earlier hominins in East Africa and then dispersing around the world and displacing any competing hominin populations.
Genetic evidence should have settled this. If classic MRE were correct, then modern humans would have much more ancient DNA than the RAO model would predict. And it seems that DNA testing greatly supports the RAO model….with an origin of about 200,000 years ago for modern homo sapiens.
But the documentary suggests otherwise.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/human-origins/
Here are some quotes that indicate to me that it is pushing a type of MRE model.
“For the longest time, we thought we knew the origins of our species. We thought we began 200,000 years ago in East Africa. But new revelations from out here in Morocco, from a part of Africa that people weren’t really considering, are forcing us to rethink our very first steps on this planet.”
Holding the Jebel Irhoud 1 skull found in Morocco, Ella says…”This skull was an enigma, an anomaly that didn’t fit neatly into the human family tree we thought we knew. It looked partly like Homo sapiens and partly like an earlier kind of human. So, the question was, was this a different species, or could it be an early version of us?”
“….Thousands of miles from East Africa, where many anthropologists thought we began, and far older than expected, these are the earliest Homo sapiens ever found.”
“There’s this new exciting theory that suggests that our origins as a species are so much more complicated and dynamic, involving not just East Africa, but the whole of the African continent. Africa was a continent rich in diversity, and climate acted as a sort of catalyst, blending these various groups together. And so, we were formed as a result of a mosaic of these different populations across Africa.”
But does the genetic evidence really support a “much older than expected” origin of Homo Sapiens, arising all across Africa at different times? In the transcript of this episode, I don’t see the word “mitochondria” or even “DNA”, so are we just ignoring the RAO evidence rather than refuting it?
Would love to hear from experts on their opinion of this documentary….
Imo the path from religions can be unseen/felt peaks you hit over time. One peak was contradictions, catholic priests jump to mind, let alone the wealth of the CC, wars in the name of… the religion of peace! which god?
Ms al-Shamahi didn’t bother and went straight for the jugular… woah! dismantled by a fly the unhearld hero of science.
Happiness is a warm gun!
Like that John Lennon line it keeps religion in the crosshairs and will remain until my lights go out.
Ms. al-Shamahi wrote a piece in the Washington Post about her coming to accept evolution and the problem of speaking to faith communities and science.
When I was still teaching at a uni, I offered my students extra credit for attending a local Darwin Day event and writing a paragraph or two about what they learned. A few took me up on it.
One year, a student not majoring in science told me that she attended so that she could question the presenter (a professor of geology) about evolution. The student was an evolution-denier because fundamentalist Christian. However, she confided that she left the presentation completely convinced that evolution is true. She told me that she was “shocked” that the prof “made so much sense” and “explained a lot of things.” She thanked me for recommending students attend the event. From the student’s demeanor and tone of voice I believed her.
She was only my student for one semester. I have no idea if she rejected her Christian fundamentalism or not. At least she accepts evolution now! Maybe she was questioning creationism and the Darwin Day presentation answered her questions.
So yes, it does happen.