Page 384 - A Call for a Turkish-Islamic Union

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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 de-
veloping in rotting meat
was assumed to be evidence
of spontaneous generation.
However, it was later un-
derstood that worms did not
appear on meat spontaneous-
ly, but were carried there by
flies in the form of larvae, invis-
ible to the naked eye.
Louis Pasteur
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
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." 73
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.

A CALL FOR A TURKISH-ISLAMIC UNION