Reasons to question the commonly accepted in religion or science.

If we wonder why people do not readily accept what we believe to be truth we need only to look at history. Questioning and doubting are good.   Telegony is the theory that men leave behind an imprint on women after having sex with them, thus tainting any children those ladies might have with other men. Telegony was once widely accepted as fact across Europe. To keep bloodlines pure European kings insisted their queens be virgins, not widows or divorcees. The belief in telegony had largely died out by the 1900s but Nazis gave it new life. According to Nazi dogma, an Aryan woman who had sex with a non-Aryan man could no longer have a child of pure blood.   Before modern science confirmed that men and women contribute equally to the genetic makeup of their children, there was the concept of homunculus. A fully formed person living inside each sperm cell, the homunculus came from the father and needed only a woman's womb to grow. Alchemists tried to raise homunculi outside the womb, but never succeeded. One famous recipe called for incubating sperm inside a pumpkin in a culture of horse dung.   From the time of Aristotle, philosophers agreed that air carried an élan vital, a spirit that could breathe life into inanimate objects. The driving force behind spontaneous generation élan vital was responsible for (among other things) transforming rotten meat into small creatures, such as maggots. French chemist Louis Pasteur disproved this principle in the 1800s, but in doing so, he put scientists in an awkward position. Unless they appealed to super natural forces, scientists had to admit that for life to being on Earth, spontaneous generation had to have happened at least once.   And then there are those centuries when the church killed and imprisoned those who did not follow the company line. Kind of like today except we disfellowship and excommunicate those who do not see things the way we do. Sometimes doubt is very good.. Regards, John Jenkins  865-803-8179  cell Gatlinburg, TN Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com  Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com  Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/ A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. ---Everett Dirksen