Cube

Your point? Hoyle was first and foremost an astronomer, so not best qualified to give an expert opinion on a matter of Biology?

Blind luck against the odds, what is likely over what would have had to happen.

Don't listen to Stephen, TruthMuse. Any thinking person knows what your point was.

   Stevie Wonder could see it.

I think I know what T_M is claiming but we have other members who habitually post just links or videos without any opinion of their own and that's not ideal.

If there's going to be useful discussion it's important to hear members' views on the subject in their own words. That's not asking too much is it?

After all, some members visiting this topic might think the OP is trying to say look what a fool Fred Hoyle was for pontificating on a subject that was well outside his field of expertise.

It's all very well saying people will know what's meant but most things are open to interpretation.

Only a fool pontificates outside his field of expertise?

   We're all doomed.

Richard Dawkins is a very highly respected evolutionary biologist but I've seen him come unstuck when he steps outside of his specialist field.

When a business is looking at ways to become more efficient, they are looking for ways by the numbers that things will increase productivity by limiting the need for rework or marring the product by getting it wrong to its ruination. They want to decrease the number of times they have to do quality checks in their process flow because it is so fine-tuned that they don't need to be looked at it numerous times in their operations, making sure it's all done properly. That is all by the numbers measuring the success by numbers, not opinions.

Any process, if it is well managed, can produce good results; Hoyle is saying that to have blind workers without a template for what is good or a manager directing it all, they would have no idea what good looks like, would ever know they got wrong or right no matter how many times to play with the cube. So the biological result would forever be a mystery to them; even if they stumbled on getting the first step right, the second step could ruin what they had without ever moving forward.

But we don't hear biologists saying such a thing and they have the specialist knowledge to make a much better informed judgment about the matter, so why is that?

Do you know of any reputable biologists who have ever claimed something similar?

Maybe they want to keep their sweet gig?

When speaking about the start of life, even in a godless belief system, there was nothing but chemicals, so that a biologist would be out of their depth according to your way of thinking; instead, you would need to consult a chemist. I've posted more than a couple of them speaking about abiogenesis.

Or they have much better knowledge of the subject than any of us?

Out of their depth? Do you understand what it is Biologists do?

Abiogenesis (the origin of life) is a branch of Biology in much the same way that research into particle physics is a branch of Physics - seeking to understand the underlying causation of physical phenomena we experience in our everyday lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

"In biology, abiogenesis or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but an evolutionary process of increasing complexity that involved the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process.

The study of abiogenesis aims to determine how pre-life chemical reactions gave rise to life under conditions strikingly different from those on Earth today. It primarily uses tools from biology and chemistry, with more recent approaches attempting a synthesis of many sciences. Life functions through the specialized chemistry of carbon and water, and builds largely upon four key families of chemicals: lipids for cell membranes, carbohydrates such as sugars, amino acids for protein metabolism, and nucleic acids, DNA and RNA for the mechanisms of heredity. Any successful theory of abiogenesis must explain the origins and interactions of these classes of molecules. Many approaches to abiogenesis investigate how self-replicating molecules, or their components, came into existence. Researchers generally think that current life descends from an RNA world, although other self-replicating molecules may have preceded RNA."

The point I'm making is that chemistry is the study of all of the necessary reactions that chemicals will do. It isn't like they evolve; chemicals remain chemicals reacting as they always would and will. An explanation deals with it quite nicely though we cannot replicate it because it is beyond our abilities, is life is designed. Looking at the possibilities of how it could all go wrong when moving toward life makes a mindless process completely improbable, which is Hoyle's point.

'Hoyle's point' is of interest as a discussion subject but we should be aware that he didn't possess the expertise to be authoratative about the question. In addition he was writing over two decades ago (he died August 2001) and so wasn't privy to discoveries in Biology made since then.

   The real issue is simply that something within a system cannot be the creator of the system. You don't need any advanced degrees to understand that. Heck, you don't even need an education at all to come up with that fact on your own.

   The law of Prima Causation... that everything that exists has something that caused it to exist, is reason enough to know that the Universe had a supernatural creation. It doesn't "prove the Bible" or anything else, but it does prove that the Universe didn't create itself and that matter and energy are not eternal. The physical and natural by necessity came from somewhere and that somewhere cannot be physical or natural.

Fine-tuning is definitely the strongest argument against Evolution. Richard Dawkins himself, in a short video said that the fine-tuning argument was the strongest one against evolution.

What discoveries?

I'm talking broadly but I think new facts have emerged in areas such as cell biology since Hoyle wrote his opinion. It's reasonable to expect there have been.