Page 101 - The Golden Age

HARUN YAHYA

arrangement. According to the theory, inanimate matter must have
produced a living cell as a result of coincidences. Such a claim, how-
ever, is inconsistent with the most unassailable rules of biology.

"Life Comes from Life"

In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life. The primi-
tive understanding of science in his time rested on the assumption
that living beings had a very simple structure. Since medieval times,
spontaneous generation, which asserts that non-living materials
came together to form living organisms, had been widely accepted. It
was commonly 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 originate from it after a while.
Similarly, maggots developing in rotting meat was assumed to be
evidence of spontaneous generation. However, it was later under-
stood 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 bac-
teria could come into existence from non-living matter was widely ac-
cepted in the world of science.
However, five years after the publi-
cation of Darwin's book, Louis
Pasteur announced his results after
long studies and experiments, 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." 28
For a long time, advocates of the
theory of evolution resisted these
Louis Pasteur
findings. However, as the develop-

97