Memo to NYT reviewer re Prometheus: Creationism for geeks is still creationism
If that’s what you want to call it. That would make atheists Fred Hoyle and Francis Crick creationists. But never mind. It’s your story.
In “‘Prometheus’ Offers a Creationist Indulgence for Science Geeks” (New York Times, June 10, 2012), James Gorman’s review of a film that explores design (by extraterrestrials) in nature, offers,
Creationism? Yes, in a way, but creationism for geeks, of the sort that science fiction writers and scientists have long indulged in. It does not run counter to the idea of the process of evolution; it just sets the beginning of the whole business somewhere and some time other than the Earth.
Fred Hoyle, an astronomer, is one of the best-known scientists to suggest that life may have had an extraterrestrial origin. Others, like Francis Crick, who with James Watson discovered the structure of the DNA molecule, have flirted with the idea. Crick even suggested at one time that intelligent extraterrestrials might have gotten the ball, or helix, rolling.
Thomas Gold, an Austrian astrophysicist, suggested in 1980 that perhaps life on Earth came from garbage left by extraterrestrials.
Which misses the point: If it is assumed that life could not begin on Earth, why are we supposed to believe all the wonders that Gorman obliviously attributes to Darwinism?
Gorman is trying to put out the fire that Prometheus started by simply taking the assumption that life couldn’t have started on Earth by chance alone seriously. Which many prominent atheist scientists have, as he helpfully points out.
See also: Wired’s Prometheus reviewer way behind the curve on “space aliens created life” theory (She writes as if it is a new idea.)
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