What got into Hoyle?

Hmmmmm? Then I guess I'm not familiar with this. Can you expound on this, perhaps by providing some of his works, where we can compare and contrast older works from the new?

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"God is like the sun. You can't look at it. But without it you can't look at anything else." -G.K. Chesterton

Hoyle's ideas about steady state theory, abiogenesis and Archaeopteryx have already been described in this thread. The Wikipedia entry on Hoyle offers a pretty good summary. But realize that creationists will tend to interpret his later ideas in a positive light. This is because they'll, for instance, approve of challenging the authenticity of the Archaeopteryx fossils and ignore the shabby scientific grounds upon which Hoyle based his challenge.--Percy

I'm not familiar with Hoyle's Archaeopteryx argument, so I cannot currently defend or criticize it. If you have any information on it, I would like to read up on it though.As far as creationists lauding Hoyle, it seems like an odd fit. I mean, Hoyle was an atheist and an indirect panspermist. That's not exactly a match made in heaven-- no pun intended. But it seems that as long as someone will defy evolution and the big bang, many YEC's will gladly support their points.Which is another thing. I've never really understood why YEC's have a problem with the BB. I mean, Hoyle was repulsed by the notion that the universe had a beginning at the singularity. And creationists say that the universe had a definite beginning. So why the controversy? I've never understood that.

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"God is like the sun. You can't look at it. But without it you can't look at anything else." -G.K. Chesterton

They also seem to ignore his statement, somehow connected with the Arkansas school creationist lawsuit, that a person was delusional if they thought the universe was less than billions of years old.

That was Wickmarasingh rather than Hoyle himself.But it's absolutely typical fundamentlist behaviour. If an "authority" says something they like it gets trumpeted. If the same person says something they dislike it gets ignored (at best).Fundamentalists are often far more interested in propping up their own beliefs than in any sort of consistency or rationality.

See Archaeopteryx - Wikipedia. Uh, yes. Hoyle's "tornado in a junkyard" quote is repeated by YEC's all the time. And that's my question: How could someone as brilliant as Hoyle come to the point where he could make such ignorant statements? What happened? Because a 13.7 billion year age for the universe is part of BB theory.--Percy

All I can find at the moment is what Wick said on the witness stand in [i]Epperson vs. Arkansas: quoted hereBut I had a quote once.....on a now-defunct computer, of course, that I remember as being from a book H&W coauthored. Oh well.

If you can get to a university library, nj, a good start would be the famous B2FH paper (the "H" is for Hoyle) titled "Synthesis of Elements in Stars" in Reviews of Moden Physics,29,547(1957). In this Hoyle and his co-authors explain where all those elements were formed and why they appear in the abundance that they do. Its amazing stuff but pretty difficult for the layman. Even though there was much of it that I could not fully understand - I am an engineer after all - I could recognise the power of the paper's argument and would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject of the title. I doubt there is a later paper to compare and contrast it with, as Hoyle's contentious work was in different fields.Regards
Chris Smith