Page 110 - The Alliance of the Good

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THE ALLIANCE OF THE GOOD

form of larvae, invisible to the naked eye.
Even in the period when 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 Darwin's book was published,

the discovery of Louis Pasteur disproved this belief, which
constituted the groundwork of evolution. Pasteur
summarized the conclusion he reached after time-consuming
studies and experiments: "The claim that inanimate matter can
originate life is buried in history for good." 17
Advocates of the theory of evolution resisted the findings
of Pasteur for a long time. However, as the development of
science unraveled the complex structure of the cell of a living
being, the idea that life could come into being coincidentally
faced an even greater impasse.

Inconclusive Efforts in the 20th Century

The first evolutionist who took up the subject of the
origin of life in the 20th century was the renowned Russian
biologist Alexander Oparin. With various theses he advanced
in the 1930's, he tried to prove that the cell of a living being
could originate by coincidence. These studies, however, were
doomed to failure, and Oparin had to make the following
confession: "Unfortunately, the origin of the cell remains a
question which is actually the darkest point of the entire
evolution theory." 18
Evolutionist followers of Oparin tried to carry out
experiments to solve the problem of the origin of life. The
best known of these experiments was carried out by