182 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



through the agency of forces intrinsic to inorganic matter is 

 scientifically untenable. Hence it follows that life originated 

 through the action of an immaterial or spiritual agent, namely, 

 God, seeing that there is no other assignable agency capable 

 of bringing about the initial production of life from lifeless 

 matter. 



§ 9. Futile Evasions 



Many and various are the efforts made to escape this is- 

 sue. One group of scientists, for example, attempt to rid them- 

 selves of the difficulty by diverting our attention from the 

 problem of a beginning of organic life in the universe to the 

 problem of its translation to a new habitat. This legerde- 

 main has resulted in the theories of cosmozoa or panspermia, 

 according to which life originates in a favorable environment, 

 not by reason of spontaneous generation, but by reason of 

 importation from other worlds. This view has been pre- 

 sented in two forms: (1) the "meteorite" theory, which rep- 

 resents the older view held by Thomson and Helmholtz; (2) 

 the more recent theory of "cosmic panspermia" advocated 

 by Svante Arrhenius, with H. E. Richter and F. J. Cohn as 

 precursors. Sir Wm. Thompson suggested that life might have 

 been salvaged from the ruins of other worlds and carried to 

 our own by means of meteorites or fragments thrown off from 

 life-bearing planets that had been destroyed by a catastrophic 

 collision. These meteorites discharged from bursting planets 

 might carry germs to distant planets like the earth, causing 

 them to become covered with vegetation. Against this theory 

 stands the fatal objection that the transit of a meteorite 

 from the nearest stellar system to our own would require an 

 interval of 60,000,000 years. It is incredible that life could 

 be maintained through such an enormous lapse of time. Even 

 from the nearest planet to our earth the duration of the 

 journey would be 150 years. Besides, meteorites are heated to 

 incandescence while passing through the atmosphere, and 

 any seeds they might contain would perish by reason of the 



