Page 174 - The Prophet Abraham (pbuh)

The Prophet Abraham (pbuh)

be evidence of spontaneous generation.
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, invisible to the
naked eye.
Even when Darwin wrote The
Origin of Species, the belief that bacteria
could come into existence from non-liv-
ing matter was widely accepted in the
world of science.
However, five years after the publica-
Louis Pasteur
tion of Darwin's book, Louis Pasteur an-
nounced his results after long studies and experiments, that dis-
proved spontaneous generation, a cornerstone of Darwin's theo-
ry. 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." 20
For a long time, advocates of the theory of evolution resisted
these findings. 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 im-
passe.

Inconclusive Efforts of the Twentieth Century

The first evolutionist who took up the subject of the origin of
life in the twentieth century was the renowned Russian biologist
Alexander Oparin. With various theses he advanced in the 1930s,
he tried to prove that a living cell could originate by coincidence.
These studies, however, were doomed to failure, and Oparin had to
make the following confession:
Unfortunately, however, the problem of the origin of the cell is per-
haps the most obscure point in the whole study of the evolution of
organisms. 21

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