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From: kissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin Kissell)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Educated Religeous Folk
Message-ID: <272@flairvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Nov-83 12:29:05 EST
Article-I.D.: flairvax.272
Posted: Fri Nov 18 12:29:05 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Nov-83 04:16:36 EST
Organization: Fairchild AI Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 12

Contrary to what George La Belle seems to want to *believe*
"spontaneous generation" was never a religious dogma so much
as a SCIENTIFIC THEORY widely held by natural scientists of the
day because it was the SIMPLEST EXPLANATION for the OBSERVED FACTS.
It didn't take a microscope to disprove it, either, just an
inquisitive Italian with an experimental method.  It was a theory
every bit as valid as those of phlogiston and the luminiferous ether.
Science is allowed to be wrong.  Only those who make a religion
out of it (and there sure seem to be a lot of you out there)
insist that a failed theory must have been unscientific because
"science embodies truth", an assertion philosophically on a par with 
papal infallibility.