I just stumbled across a 2nd hand copy of Hoyle & Wickramasinghe's 1982 book on 'Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism' for A$10.
It turns out that they were
not naive about biology and paleontology at all.
On the biology front they were conservative enough in their 10^40000 calc to allow for the fact that multiple amino-acid seqeunces could perform the same function or that simpler organisms than exist today may have existed. These physicists legitimately came to the conclusion that the origin of life on Earth is riduclously unlikely without 'seeding' or God.
On the paelontology front they in detail point out that in any group of organisms almost all basic sub-groups appear in an 'explosion' of novelty without transitional forms. They go to great pains to point out that the links drawn in are deceptive and assumed only. They dish out serious critism to paleontology.
They pretty much agree with Behe that someone or something seeded the Earth with the basic gene types. The only thing stopping them and Behe from being YECs is that they don't accept the scientific and theological implications of a literal global flood (and Hoyle is no longer with us of course).
They go back and historically anylyse why evolution was accepted in the 1800s and they see it as an oever reaction against the concept of fixity of species. They point out that Blythe introduced the 'natural process of selection' before either Wallace or Darwin in the 1830s and that his suggestion of preexisiting groups diversifying via this process fits the data better than Darwin and Wallaces' extrapolation to ultimate origin of species.
The evolutoinary reaction to their book was/is both predicatble and lamentable.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 01-23-2003]