intro 3 main points 1 religious therioes 2 scientific theories 3 search for life on other planets Nearly all religions have creation stories to explain the origin of life. These stories tell how the world and living things were created. The best known creation story comes from the Book of Genesis from the Bible. It tells how God created the earth and all living creatures. Some beleive that the creation occurred exactly as Genesis said it did. Others think that the story is a symbolic account of creation, which is a mystery that will never be fully understood. Religious schollars beleive that Gods method of creation is revealed through science and human understanding. Many scientific processes have been theorized. One is the theory of spontaneous generation. This is the development of living organisims from non-living materials. This theory was widely accecpted until the mid-1600's when Italian scientist named Francesco Redi helped to prove them wrong when he conducted experiments the showed how meat prodected from flies would not produce maggots. His experiment was not exactly the end of the dispute for spontaneous generation, however. Another scientist, this time from France, helped to settle the controversy. Louis Pasteur conducted tests during the mid-1800's that demonstrated that even the smallest bacteria did not grow spontaneously, but always grew from other bacteria.