Page 89 - Seeing Good in All

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The Evolution Misconception

Even in the period 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 experiments, which 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." 2
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, however, the problem of the origin of
the cell is perhaps the most obscure point in the whole study of the
evolution of organisms." 3

Evolutionist followers of Oparin tried to carry out
experiments to solve the problem of the origin of life. The