Louis Pasteur on life, matter, and spontaneous generation

tjguy,

By contrast, Pasteur was well known as honest, dignified, sober-minded, careful, courageous, merciful, and committed to doing all he could for the suffering and the cause of science.

According to who? Pasteur was involved in a number of pretty ugly controversies where he doesn't come out looking too good: "If called before a congressional committee investigating scientific misconduct, Louis Pasteur, one of the luminaries in the history of science, would not pass muster by current ethical standards or even by the standards of his own day, according to a leading Pasteur scholar."

A lover of truth, Pasteur was adamantly against evolution...

Really? He was "adamantly against evolution? Where did he ever say anything against evolution? goodusername

Darwin Day should be celebrated on April 1st :) Eugen

“Darwin Day” needs to be changed to “Pasteur Day”

Now there's an idea! Darwin or Pasteur: Who Deserves a Day? http://crev.info/2014/02/darwin-or-pasteur/ Excerpt from the article:

Jerry Bergman has unmasked the scientific follies of this great pretender in his book The Dark Side of Charles Darwin (an eye-opening read). By contrast, Pasteur was well known as honest, dignified, sober-minded, careful, courageous, merciful, and committed to doing all he could for the suffering and the cause of science. He is the man who deserves a day of celebration. He is the one who truly revolutionized biology in the late 19th century with his germ theory of disease, vaccines, and pasteurization process – successes in real laboratory science that have made our lives incomparably better, bringing health and wealth to billions of people. A lover of truth, Pasteur was adamantly against evolution, materialism, and spontaneous generation. He testified that he stood amazed at the wonder of creation, and wished to emulate the faith of a peasant woman. Celebrate Pasteur Day (Dec 27) instead of rollicking with the drunkards on Darwine Day (Feb 12).

tjguy

"Darwin Day" needs to be changed to "Pasteur Day" Blue_Savannah

Loved the 'Buddhism and Aztec cosmology' substitutions, BA77! Axel

related notes:

smallpox: Edward Jenner was an English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine,,,, His father was the Reverend Stephen Jenner,,, "The most famous champion of vaccination was a Christian doctor, *Edward Jenner* who did his work against fierce opposition and in the teeth of threats against himself. In effect he wiped out smallpox from among the diseases that terrify mankind. He died from a cold caught carrying firewood to an impoverished woman." http://www.rae.org/pdf/influsci.pdf polio and measles: John Enders, MD Death Bed: "On a September evening at their water front home in Connecticut, in 1985, Enders was reading T.S. Eliot aloud to his wife, Carolyn. He finished and went to bed, then quietly died. He was eighty-eight. At his memorial service his friend, the Bishop F.C. Laurence, said, "John Enders never lost his sense of wonder - wonder at the great mystery that exists and surrounds all of God's creation. This awareness is what gave him his wide vision and open mindedness, his continued interest in all things new, his ability to listen, his humility in the presence of this great mystery, and his never-ending search for the truth." His widow said that John briefly revealed his heart when he told her, concerning how creation ran, "There must be a mind behind it all." http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=117 of note: T.S. Eliot’s extraordinary journey of faith http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/10/12/2972229.htm Ernst Chain: Antibiotics Pioneer Excerpt: In 1938, Chain stumbled across Alexander Fleming’s 1929 paper on penicillin in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, which he brought to the attention of his colleague Florey.7 During their research, Chain isolated and purified penicillin. It was largely this work that earned him his numerous honors and awards, including a fellow of the Royal Society and numerous honorary degrees,8 the Pasteur Medal, the Paul Ehrlich Centenary Prize, the Berzelius Medal, and a knighthood.9,,, Chain concluded that he “would rather believe in fairies than in such wild speculation” as Darwinism.,,, Chain made it very clear what he believed about the Creator and our relationship to Him. He wrote that scientists “looking for ultimate guidance in questions of moral responsibility” would do well to “turn, or return, to the fundamental and lasting values of the code of ethical behaviour forming part of the divine message which man was uniquely privileged to receive through the intermediation of a few chosen individuals.”19 http://www.icr.org/article/ernst-chain-antibiotics-pioneer/

Supplemental quote:

"Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.,,, In the peer-reviewed literature, the word "evolution" often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for "evolution" some other word – "Buddhism," "Aztec cosmology," or even "creationism." I found that the substitution never touched the paper's core. This did not surprise me. From my conversations with leading researchers it had became clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology." Philip S. Skell - (the late) Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.discovery.org/a/2816

bornagain77

Atheist Scientists have a blind spot that puts them at a disadvantage. There have not been that many great Atheist scientists due to this handicap. Mocking them for their handicap is not right though. ppolish