"Geoff Offermann" <gebobs@yahoo.nospam.com> wrote in message news:<0UGEb.604106$Fm2.547224@attbi_s04>...

> "Mark K. Bilbo" <see.blog@sig.below> wrote in message
> news:pan.2003.12.19.14.06.52.496989@sig.below...
> > And so upon Fri, 19 Dec 2003 04:27:35 +0000 didst DarwinistsforDonkeys
> > speak thusly:
>
> snip annoying caps
>
> > > Comment: UNparadoxically, things with unbelievable chances of happening,
> don't
> > > happen <snip> :) I am sorry evolutionarians, but i am not leaving an
> > > ''Intelligent Designer'' out and opting for ''Blind Mindless Chance''
> LOL , it
> > > is a fallacy :)
> > > darwindiddrugs
> >
> > Except that simplistic "probability" calculations are done by ignorants
> > who don't know what they're talking about and don't actually *mean
> > anything at all.
> >
> > By the way, Hoyle's comments don't support "god," he was pushing
> > "panspermia."
>
> I don't understand. It still does not answer how life originated. It only
> takes it away from Earth. Not the most parsimonious theory.

Hoyle believed life didn't "originate" at all. He believed it had always been.

The logic is a little convoluted, here. Hoyle hated the Big Bang with such utter passion and was so devoted to an infinitely-old steady-state universe that he cast around clutching for any hypothesis that could provide thin reeds of support.

If abiogenesis were to be shown to be so absurdly unlikely as to be essentially impossible, this would provide support for an infinitely old universe -- since, after all, if life is here and could never have started, it must be infinitely old; therefore the universe must in turn be infinitely old. Bass-ackward reasoning, but Hoyle was getting pretty desperate once the Big Bang showed its cards and raked in the chips.

Therefore he seized on this infinite-improbability hypothesis -- one well outside his area of competence, unfortunately -- and like closing time at a bar, he suddenly stopped being picky about who he got into bed with. He thus became the darling of anti-abiogenesis (anti-naturalism) creationists by spewing out nonsense about junkyards and jumbo jets.

The irony is spectacular: Hoyle admitted that among his reasons for near-hysteria about the Big Bang was that he felt it smacked of religion; a universe with an origin seemed to him to imply a creator, and he was offended by the very idea.

That, by the way, besmirches his reputation as a scientist. If astronomy *did* point to a creating intelligence, then that's how it would be and honest scientists would follow where the science led. It's not hard to imagine discoveries that would lead to the conclusion that the universe was really created by a god. If we had made such discoveries, science would demonstrate a creator and it would be irrational to reject the concept. But as it turns out, there isn't any evidence of a creator.

And this leads to a really crucial point, I think. Science isn't dedicated to an absence of gods. It'd be as willing to be godly as godless, if that's what the evidence said. Science is just the messenger of the universe. It's dedicated to observing the universe and saying what the universe says to say.

The problem is that the *universe* doesn't say there's a god, and that's what truly offends creationists. They blame the messenger for repeating this blasphemy. It doesn't give them any satisfaction to blame the universe for not having been created by their god.

eyelessgame