Hoyle & Wickramasinghe were not naive about biology & paleontology

Well TB, I see you have gotten your reading within 21 years of the present. I would guess that you are highly selective in which of Hoyle and Wickramsinghe’s views you support.
You support Hoyle’s bogus post hoc probability calculations but certainly not their conclusions about the age of the earth and the global flood.You do know that in McLean vs Arkansas Board of Education Wickramasinghe testified for the creationists and said that Hoyle proposed the steady state Universe and I think was the one who coined the term Big Bang though he meant it derisively because he thought the Universe has been here forever.So however niave they may have been about biology and paleontology, and they were certainly wrong in their claim that archeopteryx was a fraud, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe at least understood that YEC is irrational. What stopped them from being YECs is their understanding the YEC is not supported by any aspect of science. Of course they didn’t accept the scientific implications of a literal global flood. You have been shown repeatedly on thread after thread that the world’s geology, paleontology, biogeography and biodiversity completely contradict the scientific implications of a literal global flood so you should not be surprised that scientists who do not share your absolute need to believe in it for religious reasons do not take the global flood seriously.So do you think life came from space? Are you a fan of directed panspermia now?Randy

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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.

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So they were naive in the areas that you agree with and they were not in the area you don't agree with. How convenient for you. I think their claim that archeopteryx was a fraud shows that they were naive about paleontology. I haven't read this book but I did read a lot of Fred Hoyle science fiction in the 50's and 60's so I know he writes well. I just think he got fact and fiction a little confused later in his scientific career.

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In YEC of course we use the flood to explain that the geo-col is a snap shot of life.

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And it fails miserably to explain the geologic column or the fossil record as you have been shown over and over on numerous threads.Randy

Paulk:

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ANY theory can be defended from falsification by making enough ad hoc assumptions. Science works because scientists give up defending theories which require that much work to keep viable.

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It is actually much worse than this. Whenever the problem gets so severe that even a collection of ad hoc assumptions won't save it TB invokes another miracle. You can see this on the the biogeography thread on the flood forum. It's not hard to find other examples of this. He invokes God to suddenly speed up radioactive decay to get runaway subduction started for example and of course all creationists admit that God directed the animals to go to the ark. I don't see how TB can claim the flood is falsifiable with a straight face and not admit that is it falsified. The flood is clearly falsified as a scientific hypothesis. You can't falsify anything if miracles are allowed.Randy