How did people defend or teach spontaneous generation before science began to disprove the theory?

by RedditSaiditTwice
RedditSaiditTwice

Would they use experiments that seemed to prove their theory, like leaving husks out and mice appear?

But I read that experiments were begun by Redi to disprove this theory, with the jars and maggots.

Or was there just no sense of teaching science back then? Or no education, I guess, beyond the very wealthy.