Page 172 - Only Love Can Defeat Terrorism

Only Love Can Defeat Terrorism

came into being from food leftovers, and
mice from wheat. Interesting experi-
ments were conducted to prove this
theory. Some wheat was placed on a
dirty piece of cloth, and it was be-
lieved 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 Louis Pasteur
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 experiments, that disproved spontaneous generation, a cor-
nerstone of Darwin's theory. In his triumphal lecture at the
Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said: "Never will the doctrine of spon-
taneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this
simple experiment." 64
For a long time, advocates of the theory of evolution resist-
ed these findings. However, as the development of science un-
raveled the complex structure of the cell of a living being, the idea
that life could come into being coincidentally faced an even
greater impasse.

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