Reflectorites
On Thu, 31 Aug 2000 11:59:14 -0500, Susan Brassfield Cogan wrote:
[...]
>>SB>I thought you had read Hoyle and very much admired him. That aliens did it
>>>is his favorite explanation for life on earth. (Of course, he also believes
>>>that insects are more intelligent than we are and just keeping it a secret
>>>from us dumb humans.)
>>BV>I've read quite a lot by Hoyle. If he really says that, I respectfully
>>disagree.
SB>I can't imagine that you have read a lot of Hoyle and not run across his
>"aliens did it" theory.
I think Susan is getting mixed up with Directed Panspermia and
Panspermia? Hoyle believes that life was seeded to Earth from space, but
that it originated and was transported *naturally*, not by aliens.
It is Crick and Orgel who have proposed Directed Panspermia, that "aliens"
transported life to Earth in the form of bacteria. It is interesting that a co-
discoverer of the structure of DNA (Crick), and one of the world's leading
origin-of-life researchers (Orgel), should find that life is so complex at the
molecular level that they have been forced to propose that it must have
been sent here from elsewhere. Thus Directed Panspermia is effectively the
materialist version of special creation by God! Johnson writes:
"Assuming away the difficult points is one way to solve an
intractable problem; another is to send the problem off into space.
That was the strategy of one of the world's most famous scientists,
Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the structure of DNA. Crick is
thoroughly aware of the awesome complexity of cellular life and the
extreme difficulty of explaining how such life could have evolved in
the time available on earth. So he speculated that conditions might
have been more favorable on some distant planet. That move leaves
the problem of getting life from the planet of origin to earth. First in
a paper with Leslie Orgel, and then in a book of his own, Crick
advanced a theory he called "directed panspermia." The basic idea
is that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, possibly facing
extinction, sent primitive life forms to earth in a spaceship. The
spaceship builders couldn't come themselves because of the
enormous time required for interstellar travel; so they sent bacteria
capable of surviving the voyage and the severe conditions that
would have greeted them upon arrival on the early earth. ... Those
who are tempted to ridicule directed panspermia should restrain
themselves, because Crick's extraterrestrials are no more invisible
than the universe of ancestors that earth-bound Darwinists have to
invoke. Crick would be scornful of any scientist who gave up on
scientific research and ascribed the origin of life to a supernatural
Creator. But directed panspermia amounts to the same thing. The
same limitations that made it impossible for the extraterrestrials to
journey to earth will make it impossible for scientists ever to inspect
their planet. Scientific investigation of the origin of life is as
effectively closed off as if God had reserved the subject for
Himself."(Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial," 1993, pp.110-111).
SB>And what's wrong with aliens doing it? Stephen
>thinks God did it, but he's in this debate because of his Christianity.
Not solely. I could still be a Christian and believe that evolution was God's
way of creating. In fact I did believe this for about 20 years. I am in this
debate because I want to know the *truth*.
OTOH most evolutionists on this List seem not to be concerned all that
much with the details of evolution itself, but are "in this debate" because of
their *anti*-"Christianity"! But they are in good company-so was Darwin
(see quote below).
SB>You
>keep repeating over and over that you don't really care who did it. So
>what's wrong with aliens? (Unless you are referring to the insect thing.
>Well duh! who in their right mind would agree with that?)
As I have posted before, Hoyle's makes clear his view on insects being
intelligent was: 1) to do with insects having a *collective* intelligence
(which I don't agree with but I don't regard as all that unreasonable);
and 2) he presents it as just speculation and does not make a big issue
of it.
[...]
On Thu, 31 Aug 2000 00:31:02 +0100, Richard Wein wrote:
[...]
>SJ>As Darwin himself put it, in a letter to the geologist
>>Charles Lyell shortly after publication of Origin, "I would give absolutely
>>nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous
>>additions at any one stage of descent...if I were convinced that I required
>>such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as
>>rubbish..." (F. Darwin 1911, vol. 2, pp. 6-7) According to Darwin, then,
>>evolution is an algorithmic process." (Dennett D.C., "Darwin 's Dangerous
>>Idea: Evolution and The Meanings of Life," [1995], Penguin: London,
>>1996, reprint, pp.59-60. Emphasis Dennett's)
RW>This is the passage I referred to in my last reply to Brian, but couldn't
>find the text. Thanks for posting it. ;-)
My pleasure. Part of my aim in getting at the truth is clarifying what
Darwinism *really* means.
Richard might be interested in the following quote which I found recently
where Darwin makes it quite clear in a letter to Asa Gray, that his
*primary* (note the words "utterly unimportant"!) objective was religious
(i.e. anti-creation), not scientific:
"You speak of Lyell as a judge; now what I complain of is that he
declines to be a judge .... I have sometimes almost wished that Lyell
had pronounced against me. When I say 'me,' I only mean *change
of species by decent*. That seems to me the turning-point.
Personally, of course, I care much about Natural Selection; but that
seems me utterly unimportant, compared to the question of
Creation or Modification." (Darwin C.R., letter to Asa Gray, 1863,
in Darwin F., ed., "The Life of Charles Darwin," [1902], Senate:
London, 1995, reprint, p.246. Emphasis in original).
Steve
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"It is hard to resist the impression of something - some influence capable of
transcending spacetime and the confinements of relativistic causality -
possessing an overview of the entire cosmos at the instant of its creation,
and manipulating all the causally disconnected parts to go bang with almost
exactly the same vigour at the same time, and yet not so exactly
Coordinated as to preclude the small scale, slight irregularities that
eventually formed the galaxies, and us." (Davies P.C.W., "The Accidental
Universe," [1982], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1983,
reprint, p.95)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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