I wonder whether this is one of the challenges? To a lay person, ‘PhD scientist’ is impressive enough and a list of publications even more so. Then being in chemistry - the right broad field - also seems compelling. But someone who understands chemistry understands how incredibly tightly specialised it is at the ‘pointy end’ where research is done and publications written. Someone can be publishing in one field and then be the equivalent of… not a 4th grader, but a 4th year undergrad in another.
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Except that the comment @glipsnort was correctly deriding was about genetics.
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Fair. But you kinda quote-mined me. 
And there’s also the fact that the IDcreationists are rarely impressed by any credentials held by those whose science they reject.
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Oh yeah, the confirmation bias is strong, and the authoritarianism selective…
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Don’t celebrate too much. Remember, we are talking about the origin of life here and from what I hear from Tour in his videos is that he is addressing the chemical impossibilities of abiogenesis. So, it’s not that he is laying hard on genetics in his presentations. He is staying true to origins and chemistry of origins.
Non-sequitur to my comment, which was about the tendency of creationists to applaud the qualifications of those who agree with them and deride the qualifications of those with whom they disagree.
My point re. Tour was this one earlier in the thread:
Chemistry ain’t chemistry. Tour is outside his specialisation… which means his views weigh no more than those of a smart non-specialist.
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I don’t follow here. Perhaps what you are saying without saying it is that only those chemists who have a pre-bias towards evolution are qualified.
I think he is superbly qualified to speak to the chemistry of life origins.
I made the point as clearly and carefully as I can. Tour’s specific field is the synthesis of particular kinds of organic molecules. While ‘organic’ might sound like ‘life’, it is disconnected from life, and is simply the chemistry of carbon compounds. That specialisation is as different from the chemistry of proteins required for the original of life as, say, the physics of nanotechnology is from the physics of cosmology, or the painting of motor vehicles with the painting of abstract impressionist art works, or any of a huge number of other examples. Chemistry is an incredibly broad field, and specialisation in one sub-field does not qualify someone as a specialist in another and very different sub-field.
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Now you are speaking plain English. We appreciate that here when you simply state a claim and attempt to back it up. Thanks for that…but
I completely disagree. I think you might find that there are others here who would disagree as well.
And yes, by the way “organic” does indeed sound like “life”, so can’t find your point here. It seems to definitely disagree with you at the very root.
Organic in chemistry doesn’t mean life. It means carbon. Chem 101. You can be a brilliant organic chemist and not know crap about biological life.
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The problem is Tour goes way beyond his biochemistry knowledge, attacks the work of OOL researchers and claims abiogenesis is impossible. Not just improbable or hard to replicate (which it is) but impossible. Then Tour launches into his “but of course God could do it easily” spiel. Tour isn’t doing science, he’s doing religious apologetics.
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Regardless of whether everyone thinks he is qualified to comment or not, Dr. Tour deserves far more respect than what I am reading on this thread. His position is that the scientific methodology of creating a synthetic (not-natural) environment for proving the OoL is at step one, false. I think he has just as much expertise in scientific methodology as anyone here. His argument is against setting up the perfect environment to create life. By doing that, you create a false representation of how life began. This is not a biology question, nor a synthetic chemistry question, it is a scientific methodology question.
If you’re trying to find the point at which life spontaneously occurs naturally, setting up an environment that is not natural is not an accurate representation.
Argument aside, the man deserves respect.
I have seen tons of respect thrown at him. But he has also acted in ways at times that causes him to not deserve respect.
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Sorry but someone who deliberately misrepresents the scientific work of others to push his own religious viewpoints does not deserve respect for those actions.
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But ‘natural’ when? The point has been made multiple times that the natural environment on Earth around 4 billion years ago when a naturalistic model suggests abiogenesis occurred was chemically utterly unlike the natural environment on Earth now, which has been utterly altered by the existence of life.
Insisting that abiogenesis must be able to occur naturally under natural conditions now is not an honest test of the models proposed in OoL research.
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I think that’s why Dr. Tour considers it impossible.
It’s just like Tour insisting abiogenesis must account for the formation of the first complex cell similar to existing one celled animals. Tour sets up these total strawmen (and he knows better!) to help him push his religious views.
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Spot on. That’s why Jeanson fools them on topics he is not an expert in.
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Vitalists chemists thought it was impossible to generate organic compounds in the lab, until urea happened. You can’t say something is impossible until you have fully explored all accessible possibilities.