Chemist James Tour: "Life Should Not Exist"

[Laird]

"Professor" Dave Farina has changed my view of James Tour. His Debunking James Tour video series is pretty damning.

Cross-referencing with the thread "Exposing Discovery Institute": video series by "Professor" Dave Farina.

I haven't watched this yet but I would recommend watching them go head to head before forming an opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/live/pxEWXGSIpAI

That is one thing I always try to do, is to see how a person responds to criticism before writing him off. Criticism can sound good but not be.

I am biased because the vast majority of the time when I look at materialist skeptics "debunking" I find it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.  So I am not enthusiastic about putting a lot of effort into looking into Farinas's criticism.

If someone wants to layout his arguments to make responding easy I would be interested in looking at them, but I'm not sure if I would respond.

I haven't watched this yet but I would recommend watching them go head to head before forming an opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/live/pxEWXGSIpAI

That is one thing I always try to do, is to see how a person responds to criticism before writing him off. Criticism can sound good but not be.

I am biased because the vast majority of the time when I look at materialist skeptics "debunking" I find it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.  So I am not enthusiastic about putting a lot of effort into looking into Farinas's criticism.

If someone wants to layout his arguments to make responding easy I would be interested in looking at them, but I'm not sure if I would respond.

A nice summarizing comment on the video debate:

@spoggy912
1 year ago

Dave’s final words of this say it all.
In the moment this crowd gives a standing ovation to the BOTH of them for having participated in this debate,
“We don’t know who’s cheering for who I guess.”
The dude is only interested in dunking on Dr. tour, and being the smartest man in the room. He was pompous, arrogant, disrespectful , and demeaning to the audience. But the moment that showed his true colors more than any other was the moment one audience member asked for each of them to share one thing each opponent admires about the other. 1:35:55

Dr. Tours answer was truly beautiful. He says he admires the fact that David built an educational website, he admires that he is a father and a husband faithfully in todays world, and he capped it off with saying he admires that he is a musician and that it’s an incredible talent.
Dave’s answer to the same question was “I admire the tenacity with which you stick to a script of lies”
Bro you have to be kidding me.

There wasn’t a single moment this whole debate in which Dave was acting in good faith.

[Laird]

I haven't watched this yet but I would recommend watching them go head to head before forming an opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/live/pxEWXGSIpAI

That's the first video I came across. I started there.

If someone wants to layout his arguments to make responding easy I would be interested in looking at them, but I'm not sure if I would respond.

There are too many of them for me to remember let alone document - his series goes for many hours - but two points stick with me.

The first is an apparently crucial concept in abiogenesis, that of autocatalysis, a chemical reaction in which "one of the reaction products is also a catalyst for the same reaction". This is said to be the potential bridge between pure chemistry and biology, in that autocatalysis can act as a form of chemical natural selection prior to biological natural selection.

The second is that he seems to have amply demonstrated that James Tour's claim that we are "clueless" about the origins of life is vastly overblown. It seems that there are many plausible pathways known by which abiogenesis could have occurred. Whether in turn he is overconfident about the extent to which we are not clueless is beyond my knowledge to say.

Re his arguments against intelligent design in particular, see the other thread.

The Discovery Institute is referenced fairly often on our board. Often, too, it is criticised and dismissed as a source. Until watching this video series by Dave Farina, I had considered those dismissals to be a case of the genetic fallacy. After watching the series, it now seems reasonable to dismiss it as a source given its apparent unreliability. I'm simply a layman in all of this though, so perhaps others will come to its defence against "Professor" Dave's detailed attacks.

Exposing Discovery Institute

Cross-referencing with my post linking to Dave's critical series on Professor James Tour.

Is there one of the videos on the other end of your link - preferably one dealing with the chemistry of evolution - that you would like me to respond to here? James Tour's work is damn impressive, and it is important to realise that the guy is widely acclaimed because he has devised a variety of molecular machines that can act as toy cars that actually move, etc.

James Tour is a real professor, as opposed to Farina who presumably chose his pseudonym to confuse some people that he really was a professor - not that such discussions are best done by appeals to such titles.

David

Is there one of the videos on the other end of your link - preferably one dealing with the chemistry of evolution - that you would like me to respond to here? James Tour's work is damn impressive, and it is important to realise that the guy is widely acclaimed because he has devised a variety of molecular machines that can act as toy cars that actually move, etc.

James Tour is a real professor, as opposed to Farina who presumably chose his pseudonym to confuse some people that he really was a professor - not that such discussions are best done by appeals to such titles.

I am not too sure which side of the argument Smaw is backing, but if he wants to accept my challenge, feel free!

David

Laird might have something more interesting in the way of a reply to the question you're asking, but to me it's less about defending ID here and more about highlighting how it very much seems like the majority of DI's heavy hitters are in fact actual charlatans who manipulate data, spread misinformation, ignore valid criticsm and are in fact more focused on spreading archaic creationist myths (which are proven by leaked documents about the organization that say that's exactly what they're doing) than any kind of good scientific research. 

Is there good defenses of ID to be had? Maybe. But it's pretty painfully aparent that it's not to be had from anyone in that crew.

Come on, there is no point in throwing around accusations like that - can't you come up with something specific - which data has been manipulated? Once we know that, I guess we will also know whether the misinformation in question lived up to its name.

Remember that I am no supporter of the religious dimension to the DI - I simply think the evidence against RM+NS is pretty overwhelming.

Discussions of this kind seem to rely on some simple misconceptions:

1) Most amino acids and sugars come in two forms - L and D - optical active isomers. If you take a molecular model for any of these compounds and view it through a mirror you will the corresponding optical isomer. There is no known way to synthesise a pure L or a pure D form without using some optically active starting material. All the various biopolymers are built from one isomer type. I used to think that this fact only meant that once life had started with one form it would continue with that arbitrary choice. James Tour made it clear to me in one of his videos that the real problem here is that these mirror-image molecules can utterly corrupt a growing biopolymer (DNA, RNA, Protein, or polysaccharide - take your pick) because these can add to the chain, but will kink the chain.

2) DNA or RNA carry coded information. If you were to synthesise some DNA in pre-biotic conditions (in itself not a very easy proposition!), the code it would contain would be random. There is a vast difference between random DNA and DNA containing useful coded information - just as a memory stick filled with random bits would only be useful if useful data were then copied on to it.

3) James Tour also points out that organic synthesis in a lab is an exacting task. Reagents need to be pure, reactions often only work in a narrow temperature range, and often need to be quenched after a specific amount of time (to avoid unwanted further interactions) e.g. by pouring the reaction mixture on to dry ice or using liquid nitrogen. These extra requirements make random chemistry seem pretty unlikely to achieve much.

4) Multi-step organic reactions performed in a lab usually require each step to be performed and the desired intermediate purified before the next step can be attempted. This is because if the various bi-products are not removed, they will quickly cross-react to produce what chemists know as 'tar'. Again, none of this will go on in the pre-biotic soup.

I think that formidable list of problems rules out ab-initio creation of life, so in my next post I'll look at the problems facing its subsequent evolution by 'natural selection'.

David

[Laird]

The previous three posts have been moved here (where they fit better) from "Exposing Discovery Institute": video series by "Professor" Dave Farina.

[Laird]

Is there one of the videos on the other end of your link - preferably one dealing with the chemistry of evolution - that you would like me to respond to here?

Not any one in particular - feel free to take your pick. They're all very detailed and well-referenced.

[Laird]

Discussions of this kind seem to rely on some simple misconceptions

"Professor" Dave deals with every single one of those purported misconceptions throughout his series. Again, though, it's difficult for me to point you to anywhere specific in his videos because there's such a lot of content, which I wasn't taking notes on.