Chemist James Tour: "Life Should Not Exist"

I won't even pretend to have the knowledge necessary to say much, but figured it would be of interest to the ID folks:

An Open Letter to My Colleagues by James Tour

We synthetic chemists should state the obvious. The appearance of life on earth is a mystery. We are nowhere near solving this problem. The proposals offered thus far to explain life’s origin make no scientific sense.

Beyond our planet, all the others that have been probed are lifeless, a result in accord with our chemical expectations. The laws of physics and chemistry’s Periodic Table are universal, suggesting that life based upon amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides and lipids is an anomaly. Life should not exist anywhere in our universe. Life should not even exist on the surface of the earth.

I won't even pretend to have the knowledge necessary to say much, but figured it would be of interest to the ID folks:

An Open Letter to My Colleagues by James Tour

I note that Tour's Wikipedia page includes this:
In February 2006, the New York Times reported that Tour was one of a small number of nationally prominent researchers among five hundred scientists and engineers whose names appear on Discovery Institute's controversial petition, "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism", which states "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." The two-sentence statement has been widely used by its sponsor, the Discovery Institute, and some of their supporters in a national campaign to discredit evolution and to promote intelligent design.
The New York Times article described Tour as saying that the explanations offered by evolution are incomplete, and he found it hard to believe that nature can produce the machinery of cells through random processes. Despite this, he said he remained open-minded about evolution. He was quoted as saying "I respect that work" and being open to the possibility that future research will complete the explanations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tour

I did a forum search on Jim Tour and this thread popped-up. Hope it is not too old to be revived.

I find this man interesting because he is at once an extremely knowledgeable chemist and also a devout christian fundamentalist to the extent of being a biblical literalist. On his YouTube channel he splits his time between talks about the scriptures and attempting to blow away claims that the origin of life problem is about to be solved. For myself, I have no time to waste on his bible studies - I'm far beyond any hope of conversion on that front but I find that his criticism of orthodox origin of life theories seem to have some merit and I see a similarity in the way the mainstream dismisses him in a similar way that they do with Michael Behe or Stephen Meyer. By the way, Tour is not an ID proponent - he just says that he has some sympathy with the idea but notice how some of the others in the debate try to pigeonhole him as a creationist (he does, in fact, answer that directly).

So this is quite a long video but it is worth sticking with, particularly in the round-table conversation and the panel debate that come later. There are subtle and not-at-all subtle ways in which he is denigrated by the others, especially by Lee Cronin who clearly likes to dominate conversations and believes he is the only one with something worthwhile to say.

https://www.youtube.com/live/6GDv4f2zUus...fN4a0Qde1L

For myself, I have no time to waste on his bible studies - I'm far beyond any hope of conversion on that front

  That's what I once thought!

Here's a follow-up discussion of the above debate at Harvard. It is interesting because Tour has support for his position on OOL research from another scientist in the field who is not religious, indeed is an atheist, yet is very critical of the very same things that Tour criticised at Harvard.

https://youtu.be/X5dSkY1Mv-0?si=PrVvh7g5JtVFNr-Q

I did a forum search on Jim Tour and this thread popped-up. Hope it is not too old to be revived.

I find this man interesting because he is at once an extremely knowledgeable chemist and also a devout christian fundamentalist to the extent of being a biblical literalist. On his YouTube channel he splits his time between talks about the scriptures and attempting to blow away claims that the origin of life problem is about to be solved. For myself, I have no time to waste on his bible studies - I'm far beyond any hope of conversion on that front but I find that his criticism of orthodox origin of life theories seem to have some merit and I see a similarity in the way the mainstream dismisses him in a similar way that they do with Michael Behe or Stephen Meyer. By the way, Tour is not an ID proponent - he just says that he has some sympathy with the idea but notice how some of the others in the debate try to pigeonhole him as a creationist (he does, in fact, answer that directly).

So this is quite a long video but it is worth sticking with, particularly in the round-table conversation and the panel debate that come later. There are subtle and not-at-all subtle ways in which he is denigrated by the others, especially by Lee Cronin who clearly likes to dominate conversations and believes he is the only one with something worthwhile to say.

https://www.youtube.com/live/6GDv4f2zUus...fN4a0Qde1L

"I find this man interesting because he is at once an extremely knowledgeable chemist and also a devout christian fundamentalist to the extent of being a biblical literalist"

Regarding him being a bible litealist: I recall him responding, when asked "so you blieve the earth was created in 6 days" - yes but we don't know how long a day is -  infering that a day could equal any period of time. He is perhaps less literalist than some

"I find this man interesting because he is at once an extremely knowledgeable chemist and also a devout christian fundamentalist to the extent of being a biblical literalist"

Regarding him being a bible litealist: I recall him responding, when asked "so you blieve the earth was created in 6 days" - yes but we don't know how long a day is -  infering that a day could equal any period of time. He is perhaps less literalist than some

Yes, he did say that and he probably has a point but I could go into a lot of Old Testament stories that, to me, are the opposite of what I might hope for from a loving,  benevolent deity - especially as these stories are supposed to be the unfiltered word of God himself. I find Tour interesting enough for me to entertain the thought that I might enjoy discussing these things with him across a dinner table which is not the sentiment I hold about most evangelists or religious fundamentalists.

[Laird]

Here's a follow-up discussion of the above debate at Harvard. It is interesting because Tour has support for his position on OOL research from another scientist in the field who is not religious, indeed is an atheist, yet is very critical of the very same things that Tour criticised at Harvard.

https://youtu.be/X5dSkY1Mv-0?si=PrVvh7g5JtVFNr-Q

A cautionary tale...

The debate and review were well worth the watch/listen. Thumbs up from me.

Yes, he did say that and he probably has a point but I could go into a lot of Old Testament stories that, to me, are the opposite of what I might hope for from a loving,  benevolent deity - especially as these stories are supposed to be the unfiltered word of God himself. I find Tour interesting enough for me to entertain the thought that I might enjoy discussing these things with him across a dinner table which is not the sentiment I hold about most evangelists or religious fundamentalists.

I get the impression that Stephen Meyer and JT have an enormously broad understanding of the relevant parts of science, but a very narrow understanding of alternative spiritual ideas.

Near the end of his interview with Joe Rogan, JR did push Meyer a bit on ideas like NDE's, reincarnation, etc etc. and he came across as someone who was only just beginning to see the broader picture.

David

A cautionary tale...

The debate and review were well worth the watch/listen. Thumbs up from me.

This is getting exciting, because I sense that this could be the point when more and more people realise that Intelligent Design is not a half-baked alternative to Darwin's theory (which doesn't in any case address the origin of life), it is a mass of work that actually proves that we didn't get here Darwin's way.

Clearly, I don't think we got here Yaweh's way either - but entity (or probably multiple entities) did design life on Earth. One reason I think we had multiple creators, is that there are many arms races in nature (a predator species comes up with an advantage, then a prey species comes up with a way to counter that). While it is possible to imagine a creator performing this whole process, I think it seems more natural to think of multiple competing creators.

What JT calls 'garbage' or mixtures of vast numbers of chemicals that can easily arise. So for example, if you polymerise a really simple molecule like ethylene, there is only one way to do it, and the resulting polymer molecules will differ only in length.

If you switch from ethylene to propylene, two molecules can polymerise in more than way. A long chain of polypropylene can either be regular, or it can be polymerised randomly.

Now consider successive additional complications:

1)        There may be more than one type of monomer - for example there are a number of different types of sugar (all of which might be present in a hypothetical pre-biotic soup) so this will typically result in a random chain.

2)        Molecules like sugar can link together in more than one way.

3)        It is also possible to link such polymers into branching structures!

Polymerising a sugar will typically have all four of the above complications!

Of course, in a living cell these operations will be performed in a systematic way using multiple enzymes, but we are talking about the time when life hadn't started.

I think a mixture of polymer molecules of that sort can fairly be called garbage!

David