Page 116 - Commonly Disregarded Qur'anic Rulings

114 COMMONLY DISREGARDED QURANIC RULINGS

"Life Comes From Life"

In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life.
The primitive understanding of science in his time rested on
the assumption that living beings had a very simple structure.
Since medieval times, spontaneous generation, which asserts
that non-living materials came together to form living organ-
isms, had been widely accepted. It was commonly believed
that insects came into being 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 understood 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 mat-
ter 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 tri-
umphal 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