Page 132 - Eternity Has Already Begun

ETERNITY HAS ALREADY BEGUN

Similarly, maggots developing in rotting
meat was assumed to be evidence of sponta-
neous generation. However, it was later un-
derstood 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 when Darwin wrote The Origin of
Species, the belief that bacteria could come in-
to existence from non-living matter was wide- Louis Pasteur
ly 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, that 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." 18
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 impasse.

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
perhaps the most obscure point in the whole study of the evolution
of organisms. 19

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