Page 200 - Self-Sacrifice in the Qur'an's Moral Teachings

Self-Sacrifice in the Qur'an's Moral Teachings

"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, sponta-
neous 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 leftovers, 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 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 when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, the belief that bacte-
ria could come into existence from non-living matter was widely ac-
cepted in the world of science.
However, five years after the publication
of Darwin's book, Louis Pasteur an-
nounced his results after long studies
and experiments, that disproved
spontaneous generation, a corner-
stone of Darwin's theory. In his tri-
umphal 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." 82
For a long time, advocates of the
theory of evolution resisted these find-
ings. However, as the development of sci-
Louis Pasteur

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