Apostate Scientist

The man who said too much -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Who was Fred Hoyle? He was a noted English Astronomer (member of Royal Astronomy Society), known primarily for his theories of stellar nucleosynthesis. He passed away in 2001, at age 86, and his presence is still felt. His presence is felt not so much for his ideas on stellar processes as for the firestorm created by his "alternative" cosmology. Hoyle stirred the pot by suggesting that there was a fallible intelligence responsible for Evolution, thereby putting himself front and center as an "apostate" scientist. Before further elaborating about Hoyle’s ideas, let's mention the two religious philosophies that basically have dominated western society in the 20th and early 21st centuries:

1) “Abrahamic” religions -- Judaism, Islam and Christianity. These religions postulate an all-powerful, perfect God; they feature messianic figures (speculative or realized) and each claims to be a "one true" religion based on an embrace of faith. All three believe that God has some type of implied power-sharing arrangement with Satan.

2) Darwinism -- Darwin's theory basically asserts that random molecular mutations can recombine enough to yield an intelligent, fit animal. The combinatoric requirements for this to happen (even across 15 billion years) are staggering. It's a leap of faith to think even an amoeba could happen this way much less a cat or a bat. Thusly in my book, Darwinism gets cast as a great world quasi-religion. It's based on an article of faith as flimsy as any religious mythology.

In this breakdown, I'm omitting quite a few other things -- Hare Krishna, Scientology etc. In the Western scientific community, most university professors holding any sway fall into one of the two "majors" I've listed above. Fred Hoyle is noteworthy because he stepped very pointedly aside from either group -- he proposed that there is a God, in fact a tangible one. He suggested a fumble-bum, engineering God who can make mistakes. Rather than a Devil, per se, he speculated that this fallible intelligence might be periodically divided or at cross-purposes to itself.

He famously likened Darwin's theory to a wind blowing thru a scrap yard and accidentally assembling a Boeing 747, thereby incurring the wrath of devout Darwinians everywhere. By the same turn, Christian creationists loved that a Royal Astronomer was debunking Darwin's idea. They did (and still do) haul out Hoyle to explain their own fanciful idea of humans cavorting with dinosaurs. They promptly will place Hoyle back in the closet when it looks like they might be embarrassed by his "fallible God" stuff -- no need to go overboard on it. Where Christians see Hoyle as a boon to their debate, mainstream Darwinists have been very incensed -- science author Robert Shapiro even suggested that Hoyle was insane. It's interesting that people from opposite camps are so excited (one way or the other) by Mr. Hoyle.

I like Hoyle's approach -- it's fairly consistent with what we see around us. Am I in total agreement? Of course not. Hoyle basically advocates panspermia, where biotic material falls to the Earth's surface by some kind of intelligent direction. Would this be from solar wind, comets or something else? The panspermia theory doesn't answer the origin of intelligence, it just changes the setting from Earth to space. So where did space intelligence come from? I don't care for his panspermia "mechanism" but what I like about Hoyle is the idea that theism doesn't require belief in supernatural phenomena, miracles or any suspension of scientific method. Do I foresee anytime down the road that Hoyle will be embraced as a great sage? No, I don’t. Hoyle is an apostate to both the major religious movements mentioned above. He presents the idea of a God who might be traceable, knowable and even subject to study. It's blasphemy I tell you. And blasphemy that provokes dangerously tenable ideas.

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