Page 491 - Bigotry: The Dark Danger

Adnan Oktar
(Harun Yahya)

widely accepted. In that period, it was
commonly believed that insects came into
being from food leftovers, and mice from
wheat. Interesting experiments were con-

ducted to prove this theory. Some wheat
was placed on a dirty piece of cloth, and it
was believed that mice would originate
from it after a while.

Similarly, maggots developing in rot-
ting meat were assumed to be evidence of
French biologist
life originating from inanimate materials. Louis Pasteur

However, it was later understood that
worms did not appear on meat sponta-
neously, but were carried there by flies in the form of larvae, invis-
ible to the naked eye. At the time Darwin wrote The Origin of
Species, the belief that bacteria could come into existence from non-
living matter was widely accepted in the world of science.

However, five years after the publication of Darwin's book,

Louis Pasteur announced his results, after long studies and exper-
iments, which disproved spontaneous generation, a cornerstone of
Darwin's theory. In his triumphal lecture at the Sorbonne in 1864,
Pasteur said: "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation
recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment."
(Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose, Molecular Evolution and The Origin of Life, W.

H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1972, p. 4)

For a long time, advocates of the theory of evolution resisted
Pasteur's findings. However, as the development of science unrav-
eled the complex structure of the cell of a living being, the idea that
life could come into being coincidentally faced an even greater
impasse.

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