Cube

I have seen no new discoveries which lead me to conclude that macroevolution is more believable now than 20 years ago. If anything, as we discover the complexity of even a single cell, design seems inevitable.

I'd say design seems highly implausible.

Before life, there isn't biology so nothing in biology helps at the beginning of the process.

Be that as it may it is a branch of Biology and under very active investigation.

That does what? The study of biology looks at the processes in place, not the chemical reactions, to glean how the processes began, how the information got there that directs the processes, how the information was written in the first place, stored, referred to for error checking and on and on to make processes in biology exist in the first place. 

Assuming for the moment the presuppositions and math in that meme are correct, we still end up with the same problem again: proof of agency, is not necessarily disproof of Common Descent. 

That's where Hoyles point slips off the tracks.

If that cube begins to suddenly thrive and multiply once that magic combination is reached, then that blind worker would have ample reason to accept they reached the finish line, and move on to the next cube.

( Again, that is assuming blind workers were involved at all.)

Those who question purely naturalistic theories of abiogenesis tend to overlook the 'chronological context' of the emergence of life on Earth, within the lifetime of the Universe.

Remember that some 10,000,000,000 years passed before our solar system even began to form and even though life is believed to have emerged in the first few hundreds of millions of years of the Earth's existence, it still took another 1000,000,000 years for more complex life to form and another 2,000,000,000 years for our species to appear.

Whatever explanation you ascribe to our existence you must make it fit within that background. It's a process that looks entirely natural to me.

It shows mindlessness couldn't do it.

I have an issue with the thriving part, to thrive in a state that requires exactness in form and execution. Proper form and execution can be found in a good design; without those, the norms are runaway processes and degradation without proper boundaries or controls. These boundaries and controls are found in designed processes, not mindless ones. Overcoming huge odds is easily done without chance and random processes; the norm is entropy, not upgrading to the next level.

Rather circular I have to accept it was done because I believe it was done over a long period of time.

Possibly found in at least one mindless process.

Or maybe not.

Either way, Hoyle's "Blind Worker" metaphor becomes moot.

I was thinking of that saying 'if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...' but why do you say "circular"?

Remember too that the early Universe was composed predominantly of the simplest elements, Hydrogen and Helium and many hundreds of millions of years were required to create the heavier elements ~ from which life is made ~ in exploding stars.

There's nothing about that process that can't be explained in purely naturalistic terms. For those who insist that some conscious, divine entity was involved you first need to explain why they chose to bring about life that way.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. Is it simply because you don't like the idea? When you look at processes, the norm isn't self-improvement without specifics built into the process, and while that must be true, guards again degrading have to be in place too, out of scratch with nothing directing it all; exactly how does one overcome the odds of even beginning let alone getting to the point you suggest in thriving?

   I don't for a minute accept your theory, but putting that aside for a moment, you still haven't accounted for the origin of the hero's of your story... hydrogen and helium.

Proof something was done a specific way is not by saying it was done over a long time, the specifics mechanisms of how and why need to be studied and there are no mechanisms that show time type of thing occurring that isn't directed by some agency. Informational direction isn't a product of random events over a long period of time that can be shown true, there is nothing viable as life in all of its functional complexity that suggests a mindless process could do this while a directed one removes all of the barriers chance and entropy bring to the table.

I can no more account for the existence of  Hydrogen and Helium than the devoutly faithful can account for the existence of what they describe as 'God'.

But we can be very confident that all the heavier elements, without which life is not possible, were created within stars over geological periods of time. That poses a problem for the faithful in answering the question of why a creator would do things that way - why not simply put in place all the conditions required for the emergence of life from the beginning?

He did. Do you want to know which book to read to learn about it?

Surprise me!

It's in the Book of Genesis. It's the first one in most Bibles (though not the first written). And you really only need to read the first chapter.

         SUPRISE !