Page 390 - Christians Must Heed Jesus

Christians Must Heed
Jesus

"Life Comes From Life"

In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life. The prim-

itive 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 organisms, 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 under-
stood that worms did not appear on meat sponta-
neously, 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 ac-
cepted in the world of science.

However, five years after
the publication of Dar-
win's book, Louis Pas-
teur announced his re-
sults after long studies and
experiments, that disproved
spontaneous generation, a
cornerstone of Darwin's theo-

Louise Pasteur

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