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The Deception of Evolution
           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 bacte-
         ria could come into existence from non-living matter was widely ac-

         cepted 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." 1

           For a long time, advocates of the theory of evolution resisted these
         findings. However, as the development of science unraveled the com-
         plex 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 Twentieth Century

           The first evolutionist who took up the subject of the origin of life in
         the twentieth century was the renowned Russian biologist Alexander
         Oparin. With various theses he advanced in the 1930s, he tried to prove
         that a living cell could originate by coincidence. These studies, how-
         ever, were doomed to failure, and Oparin had to make the following
         confession:

           Unfortunately, however, the problem of the origin of the cell is per-
           haps the most obscure point in the whole study of the evolution of
           organisms. 2

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