Hoyle & Wickramasinghe were not naive about biology & paleontology

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]

RandyI strongly suspect that very few here have read their book. It is a good book, even after 20 years.I perfectly understand their disbelief in the flood. Without the miraculous it is completely ridiculous.

WeylandMy PhD was a training in research. I am currently reseaching and lecturing in a completely differnt field. These astrophysicists went into great detail in their reading up on paleontology. And they critisize it only marginally more than SJ Gould (a paleontologist).The upshot was that these scientists did not believe that transitional forms ever existed.That is how bad the situaiton is for macroevolution. Paleontology couldn't convince a dedicated pair of astrohphysicists that transitional forms ever existed.They believe that new gene types came from space and presumably got into existing forms. Of course the YEC theory is better than this becasue we are not left with the problem of how to coordinate new genes into new cell-types and ultimately novel anatomies. In YEC of course we use the flood to explain that the geo-col is a snap shot of life.Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were not naive on the issues of abiogenesis or paleontology. I will argue that they were quite naive in cell and developmental biology. I think they consciously ignored this major problem for their thesis.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 01-23-2003]

PaulKIf you read their book you would immediately realise that they were not naive on the issues of molecular biology (or paleontology). They perfectly understood how it works. They were naive in thinking that seeding novel gene types could easily generate novel organs and anatomies. I said that because the clear problem with their theory is how gene types come together to form novel anatomies and organs, a problem solved by YEC and the flood. Of course they beleived in an old universe (as I do also via Humphreys cosmology).

PaulKYour points are very sensible.However, in their book they address some of your issues. They admitt that their calc was in the context of assuming that a a certain number of proteins need to arrive at a point in space and time. But they comment that the other schemes produce astronomically high numbers as well (against).All of the RNA world etc hypotheses are completely hypothetical as you know. And know one knows how to morph the RNA world into ours either.The flood is falsifiable. It does make predictions about the geo-col and the fossil record. We'll see how it pans out. Neither the flood or evolution are as easy to rule out as diverse alternative laws of gravitaiton. The type of data is very different.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 01-23-2003]

Is is abundantly clear reading their book that their whole argument fails (and is hardly discussed) at the cell biology level.