Chabad Rebbe and Spontaneous Generation

Follow the link and search spontaneous generation, and you will find an answer from Chabad apologists Ginsberg and Branover (two fo the most quoted on scientific issues) based on letters from the CR himself. It is a positive defense obfuscation. IOW, they argue that just because we see eggs and worms, does not mean that these worms came from those eggs. Ergo, there CAN BE spontaneous generation, and no one can disprove it. The Pasteurs would quickly counter that no such "spontaneous generation" occurred when outside access was denied. However, our brilliant apologists would say the often quoted axiom that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absense" and that cases that are "highly improbable" are nonetheless feasible.

Well, gentlemen, then there is no disproof of anything ever, and the Rambam's implication to the contrary is false. I challenge you to produce any positive evidence, a single observation, from anywhere, that spontaneous generation, the generation of life from the inanimate occurs. It should be easy enough given today's technology. (Note: the Talmud and early sources assume that it occurs in many species with regularity, not just that it is "highly improbable". Note the discussion about lice and lice eggs.) I hear only the chirping of spontaneously generated crickets.

Without examining this struggling apologetic line for line, shooting fish in a barrel, I offer the following defense of the position. (Did he say DEFENSE? My G-d I think he did!)

When one observes very small eggs, larval worms, and grown worms or insects, it is difficult to make the connection between each of these stages from the previous. The reproduceable effect will be that if one puts these eggs and / or larvae in proper environment, in a place unaccessible by an uncontrolled environment, the worms or insects will grow. If one were to put in only sterile spoiled fruit or sterile mud, no organisms would grow. However, halacha goes by observation, and the observer sees two or three separate entities, an egg (if it is microscopic, halacha might not even consider it existent), larvae, and mature organism. Thus, halacha must deal with them separately, because halacha is instructing the average OBSERVER in what must be done. Thus, the organisms ARE spontaneously generated from a halachic point of view, and the descriptions of that process are correct, from that point of view. The underlying apologetic argument emerges OK from this. We cannot say that the eggs, larvae, mature line is OBSERVED, not by a scientist in a lab, but by the OBSERVER in any particular case, trying to make a halachic determination. Hence, the "we cannot say that it never happens, even though we observe it in a lab" type proof is SUSTAINED, and all runners are safely on base.

1) Spontaneous generation proofs in science are sustained.
2) The halacha that some organisms are treated as spontaneously generated is sustained.
3) The defense premise of the apologetic is even sustained.

And most importantly, the only way to explain all of this is with the hashkafa that the Chazal were discussing halachic assumptions, rather than scientific reality, and the fundamentalists are REFUTED.

Update: Even more nauseating apologetic at Frumteens