Page 114 - Character Types of the Unbelievers

CHARACTER-TYPES OF THE UNBELIEVERS
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 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 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 experi-
ments, 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.” 1
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

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