# James Tour and his 60-day challenge

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564>\
**Category:** Side Conversation\
**Tags:** Science\
**Created:** [December 17, 2025, 12:01am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564 "2025-12-17T00:01:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 41

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sam](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/sam/32/11437_2.png) [@Sam](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Sam)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 5:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564/41 "2025-12-22T17:34:12Z")

</div>

> [@Faizal\_Ali](#):
>
> > [@Sam](#):
> >
> > "And you might say, how do you know we’re nowhere close? Because the more we learn about a cell the more complex it becomes like this interactome thing.”
> 
> And you cite that in Tour’s _defense_? That passage show exactly the sort of confusion between abiogenesis and evolution that one would expect from the most ignorant Young Earth Creationist.

Let’s slow this down, because this response is badly mis-aimed.

I am defending Tour on **one point and one point only** : that he does _not_ argue “this is impossible.” Full stop.

The quotation was provided solely to document that fact. Not to defend Tour’s broader views, not to adjudicate abiogenesis versus evolution, and certainly not to endorse or critique his reasoning about cellular complexity. None of that is at issue here.

Recasting a clearly contextualized quotation — where Tour anticipates a question and answers it himself — as “confusion” or “Young Earth Creationism” is not engagement; it is deflection. It sidesteps the specific claim being corrected and replaces it with a familiar team-based dismissal.

That move is compounded by a straightforward ad hominem. Branding Tour an “ignorant Young Earth Creationist” is irrelevant to the point under dispute and functions only to poison the well rather than deal with the misattribution that prompted this exchange.

What makes this especially telling is how routine it is. Rather than anyone on @AllenWitmerMiller side simply acknowledging and correcting a plainly false summary, the priority appears to be shielding an ally at all costs — even if that requires ignoring the text being quoted. That is not accidental; it is how partisan discussions operate. A significant divergence from [Our Mission and Values](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/our-mission-and-values/10208)

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/james-tour-and-his-60-day-challenge/17564)._