Page 93 - The Mercy of Believers

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THE EVOLUTION MISCONCEPTION

is a claim inconsistent with even the most unassailable rules
of biology.

"Life Comes from Life"

In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life.
The primitive understanding of science in his time rested on
the assumption that living beings had a very simple struc-
ture. Since medieval times, spontaneous generation, the the-
ory asserting that non-living materials came together to form
living organisms, had been widely accepted. It was com-
monly believed that insects came into being from food left-
overs, and mice from wheat. Interesting experiments were
conducted to prove this theory. Some wheat was placed on a
dirty piece of cloth, and it was believed that mice would orig-
inate from it after a while.
Similarly, worms developing in meat was assumed to be
evidence of spontaneous generation. However, only some
time later was it understood that worms did not appear on
meat spontaneously, but were carried there by flies in the
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 the publication of Darwin's
book, Louis Pasteur announced his results after long studies
and experiments, 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." 2
Advocates of the theory of evolution resisted the findings