Page 84 - Miracles of the Qur'an

However, five years after Darwin's book was published, the discovery of
Louis Pasteur disproved this belief, which constituted the groundwork of

evolution. Pasteur summarized the conclusion he reached after time-
consuming studies and experiments: "The claim that inanimate matter can
originate life is buried in history for good." 24
Advocates of the theory of evolution resisted the findings of Pasteur for a
long time. 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 in the

20th Century

The first evolutionist who took up the subject of the origin of life in the
20th century was the renowned Russian biologist Alexander Oparin. With
various theses he advanced in the 1930's, he tried to prove that the cell of a
living being could originate by coincidence. These studies, however, were
doomed to failure, and Oparin had to make the following confession:

"Unfortunately, the origin of the cell remains a question which is actually the darkest
point of the entire evolution theory." 25
Evolutionist followers of Oparin tried to carry out experiments to solve
the problem of the origin of life. The best known of these experiments was
carried out by American chemist Stanley Miller in 1953. Combining the gases
he alleged to have existed in the primordial earth's atmosphere in an

experiment set-up, and adding energy to the mixture, Miller synthesized
several organic molecules (amino acids) present in the structure of proteins.
Barely a few years had passed before it was revealed that this experiment,
which was then presented as an important step in the name of evolution, was
invalid, the atmosphere used in the experiment having been very different

from real earth conditions. 26
After a long silence, Miller confessed that the atmosphere medium he
used was unrealistic. 27
All the evolutionist efforts put forth throughout the 20th century to
explain the origin of life ended with failure. The geochemist Jeffrey Bada from

84 Miracles of the Qur'an