Fred Hoyle, former atheist (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 09, 2013, 19:13 (4007 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Hoyle's beliefs about the universe:
" The Intelligent Universe
"the vast unlikelihood that life, even on a cosmic scale, arose from non-living matter". It is apparent that the origin of life is overwhelmingly a matter of arrangement by intelligent control. Unintelligent natural selection is only too likely to produce an unintelligent result (my bolding) "I am not a Christian."[/i]-DAVID: Nor am I.-I wish he'd said what he was, but all the websites say he was an agnostic. The passage you have put in bold fits in with theism and with the form of panpsychism I have been tinkering with. As I keep reiterating, some versions of panpsychism are perfectly compatible with religion, and especially process theology. The version I have been exploring, though, dispenses with God, and it may well be this form that Hoyle was also contemplating: a kind of intelligence which is NOT central and not all-encompassing, but has evolved within the materials formed by non-conscious energy, and from there has exercised intelligent control over those materials.-dhw:I presume you mean NOT all the way to a God.....However, if Hoyle stops short, as do so many of the scientists you quote in your support, perhaps the doubt is more fundamental than residual!-DAVID: We can only guess as to why he stopped just short. Perhaps from incredulity, which appears to be your problem.-You reject both chance and the above panpsychist hypothesis out of incredulity. This is nothing but a tautology. It simply means you don't believe in something because you do not find it believable. Why is that a problem?