For what it’s worth, Gish coauthored papers with a Nobel Prize winner. The comparison may be slightly more apt than one would imagine.
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I finally have the semester “put to bed” and can write a bit more in-depth now.
Tour spent most of his time discussing the problems of chemical synthesis that are required for abiogenesis. As a nanoscale synthetic chemist, of course he is very familiar with those issues. What I will present here is what Tour mentioned - not necessarily what I accept (ie don’t shoot the messenger). Some of his main chemistry-related points are as follows:
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Homochirality - how and why did it develop
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Difficulty of redesigns - In the lab, if something doesn’t work quite right, you can go back to your lab notes and try again with some modifications. But how would this work without an outcome plan?
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Time is not the friend of abiogenesis - Frequently, scientists claim that some of the chemical difficulties of abiogenesis can be solved simply by the vast time scales involved. Tour’s contention that instead of being a solution, time can be a detriment. The Cannazzaro reaction (my Chemistry is too weak to elaborate here) would be a serious problem for small, organic molecules.
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Reagent addition - Chemical synthesis in the lab requires a high degree of reagent purity and a stepwise process for chemical reactions to result in a desired product. How would these requirements of purity and a stepwise process be carried out without human intervention?
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Mass transfer - Tour indicated that this is one of the most obvious challenges to abiogenesis for him. The fact that a large amount of raw material is often needed for a tiny quantity of final end product.
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Complexity of synthesis reactions - In the lab today, complex synthesis reactions frequently require temperature changes at multiple steps. How could this be done?
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Finally, assuming all 4 classes of macromolecule are present, there is still a massive hurdle of complexity for all of these to fit together even into a proto-cell.
Tour (understandably) did not get into as much detail about the biology, but he did mention a couple of biochemical points.
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Membranes:
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- Monoacyl lipid destabilize membranes
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- Complexity of necessary glycans on the outer surface of the plasma membrane
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- Considerable difference between outer and inner leaflet composition
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Complexity of molecular interactions
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Origin of information
One of his major points was actually something that bothers me a little bit about abiogenesis, as well. I may be just displaying my ignorance, but it seems there has been a noticeable lack of development in abiogenesis research since Miller and Urey. Tour did mention a little about the work of Jack Szostak, but mostly in negative terms. He showed the following figure and noted the significant amount of hand-waving required.
Tour went on to actually call for a moratorium on OoL research, appealing to the audience “Wouldn’t you rather have the grant money for your own research?”.
Tour then mentioned his signing of the “Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” that he signed and that became such a big deal. Honestly, at the face value of the statement, I would sign it, too!
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.
As written, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this statement. As Tour noted, evolutionary biologists have already shown that the “random mutation and natural selection” version of evolution is outdated and incorrect. Tour said he was unaware that it would eventually be used in the Dover Trial.
Tour went on to several perceived problems with Universal Common Descent - origination of body plans, “orfan” genes, and others, that many of us have heard before. He did very little to expand on any of these topics. He seemed to be feeling that his allotted time was about finished.
He ended his talk passionately arguing for scientists to stop presenting conjecture as fact. In my opinion, this viewpoint was a somewhat excessive. Certainly, there are scientists that do present their work as conclusive and undebateable, but in my experience, these are greatly outweighed by those that understand that conclusions can often be in error and further confirmation and work is always needed.
That pretty much wraps up my play-by-play, but I would be very happy to discuss the lecture further.
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At the margin of a hydrothermal vent you can have water at between 2°C and over 400°C with turbulent mixing.
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Thank you for that extremely helpful summary, Curtis.
I love so many perspectives of Dr. Tour but especially enjoyed this one:
I love a good honest pragmatist!
So many of Dr. Tour’s points also remind me of why I’m a “philosophical intelligent design affirmer” even if not a fan of “ID theory” scientific arguments. (I’m NOT saying that Dr. Tour’s arguments were necessarily intended as ID arguments. I’m simply confessing that there’s lots of scientific phenomena which feed into my personally philosophy of recognizing an intelligent designer even though I don’t claim to have scientific arguments for such per se.)
I’m struggling to grasp why this argument should be considered compelling. For example, in my limited understanding, it takes a tremendous amount of plasma in the sun to produce eventually a relatively tiny quantity of heavy elements like uranium. Does that fact thereby constitute an obvious challenge to solar fusion? (I’m not saying that Tour’s argument is necessarily wrong. I’m saying that I just don’t understand it from a logic standpoint. Tiny things and rare things come out of huge systems on a regular basis. What am I missing here? Help, anyone?)
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True, but… there are OoL researchers that believe the chemistry of seawater just doesn’t match what we see in living cells.
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/14/E821
It’s hard to say what the “right” answer might be, but you certainly do have a good point regarding the varying temperatures.
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LOL
I rest my case.
Allen, this actually matches up quite well with my beliefs. Personally, I believe the God that speaks through the “still, small voice” would not loudly proclaim His direct interaction with the development of life.
I think your grasp is just fine. Tour’s question was that how would prebiotic chemistry work with this incumbent loss of material? It would be highly unlikely that the first end-product would be the “correct” one to further the progress toward a living organism. And so much material would be lost at the “dead-ends” that there wouldn’t be enough material to support the formation of a functional end-product.
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I did have a chuckle when I read your post yesterday and the talk aligned very well with your predictions!
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Seawater now or seawater 4 billion years ago?
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Also a good point. Now, this is far from my area of specialty, so I haven’t even read the article I brought up earlier, but it may be a good place to start reading.
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That brings to mind a high school science education film from the 1960’s, much of it using cartoon animation. A comically drawn fish explained that “The blood in the bodies of animals got its start as simple seawater. Yes, blood is just fancy seawater!”
Even though I understood the point being made in that film of long ago, the hyperbole still bothered me a bit.
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Would that material be truly lost? Or simply recycled?
There are huge “losses” in all biological and non-biological systems (thermodynamic systems, for example.) Why should it be any different in abiogenesis situations? Atoms can continue to recombine and move around ad infinitum. A very large universe and many billions of years provides many opportunities for improbable and unexpected events and structures.
Of course, I say all of this simply in exploring the logic. I totally agree with Tour that biological life seems quite surprising—and it strikes me as spectacularly amazing. It is one of the major reasons why I’m a theist. (Again, that is a philosophical conclusion on my part, not a scientific argument.)
Sure sounds like a creationist to me. Would anyone care to defend Tour’s statements? I refer specifically to
Can we also agree that these are far beyond his area of expertise?
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I have long had the impression that Dr. Tour doesn’t claim to be the last word on the subject, nor any sort of top expert on abiogenesis. He has always sounded to me like he is simply saying, “These are some of the reasons why I find abiogenesis quite amazing and unexpected.”
If others had not used his writings and statements for their own purposes—even in ways that he had never anticipated—would there be all that much controversy surrounding on them? (Should he have more circumspectly considered how his statements and his signing the “skepticism towards evolution” petition might be misused by others? I don’t know. But I do get the impression that he was surprised at what happened.)
I’ve always viewed Dr. Tour as simply an honest scientist saying, “Here’s things as I see them.” I don’t agree with all of his opinions but it seems to me that we should distinguish between his open reflections about science and theology and how various people have applied his statements and his academic reputation for their own purposes.
Admittedly, I have not listened to a lot of Dr. Tour’s lectures nor read many of his publications----so my opinions are based on a limited dataset.
I’ll stop you right there. It’s not abiogenesis that I was talking about. Reread:
Universal Common Descent is not abiogenesis and has nothing to do with abiogenesis. And not much to do with chemistry either.
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Agreed. But Tour was also talking about abiogenesis.
Agreed. But, from what I’ve noticed, Tour does—at least at times—discuss those topics together. And so do many who like to quote him (though they not always do so accurately.)
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Can we agree that he has no legitimate reason for doing so, and that his discussion of common descent strongly suggests that he’s some kind of creationist?
He is an old earth creationist. I’m sure that everyone knows this.
So when you say he’s not actually arguing for ID, what do you mean?
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I’ve been meaning to write an article on Tour for a while. This is a good reminder it is important. He recently gave me permission to discuss some of our private interactions. This is important, so it might take me about a month to do it right, especially in light of everything else going on my life. In the mean time, I encourage you to look at his website: James M Tour Group » Evolution/Creation.
A couple of summers ago, I spent substantial time with Tour, which is a story in and of itself. No one had taken the time to explain many of the basics of evolution to him before. As a result of our conversations, this is what he added to his statement:
Some biologists say that “random mutation and natural selection” have long-been recognized by many evolutionists themselves to be insufficient to account for the complexity of life. They cite research from the 1960s and 1970s suggesting that neutral drift is quantitatively more important than natural selection in understanding genetic differences between organisms. Neutral drift (Neutral theory of molecular evolution - Wikipedia) can be considered as small genetic variations that occur from, for example, parent to their offspring, and this occurring for successive generations. Moreover, the mechanisms of evolution and their relative importance are continuously subject to careful scientific examination and revision so “careful examination of the evidence” has not been avoided. Some biologists suggest that the core of evolutionary studies for the last several decades has not centered upon the sufficiency of Darwinian Theory, defined as “random mutation and natural selection.” (So maybe those biologists should join me in signing A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism .) But evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs over time, and the theory of universal common descent (Common descent - Wikipedia). This is the idea that all life shares a common ancestor. For those less trained in science, this theory does not propose, for example, that humans evolved or descended from chimpanzees, but that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor in the distant past. I can understand why those fluent in the field of genetics would be convinced by that theory; there is an impressive quantity and insightfulness to the work.
He also was in conversation with DI at the time, who gave him reason to write this:
But even with that evidence supporting common descent, others find common descent insufficient to explain some parts of the data. For example, humans have ~20,000 protein-coding genes, which is only ~1.5% of DNA in the entire human genome, and it is within that 1.5% that common descent studies are primarily (though not exclusively) focused. A large-scale project instituted in 2003 by the US National Human Genome Research Institute, called the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) (ENCODE - Wikipedia), seeks to determine the role of the remaining 98.5% of the genome that was formerly poorly called “junk DNA,” but better called “intergenic regions.” There is ENCODE evidence that part or even much of the intergenic regions have regulatory elements that can affect gene transcription (building of RNA and then construction of enzymes that regulate or build the biological system). Also, work on orphan genes (also called ORFans, Orphan gene - Wikipedia) casts new light on the uniqueness of some genetic information; orphan genes are considered unique to a narrow taxon, generally a species. So some interpret ENCODE data and orphan genes as markers for uncommonness . Even further, some argue that biological similarities between modern humans and other hominids, for example, can be considered as common design parameters and need not require a common descent model.
Still others are dismissive of the relevancy of ENCODE and orphan genes research in the context of common descent evaluations. For example, they say that for decades biologists have realized that intergenic regions have regulatory functions. And they suggest that within ENCODE, the experimental techniques that were used result in much of the data itself being statistically irrelevant, and those regions that are truly functional are minimal in their functionality. With orphan genes, they claim that less than 100 of them show evidence of translation, and all these genes map back to non-gene DNA sequences in the chimpanzee, so it is actually evidence for common descent. Then again, other geneticists contest that many biologists have simply ignored a rapidly growing list of thousands of putative orphans in the human genome because they cannot find homologous non-gene sequences in the chimpanzee genome. If it is true that some biologists are ignoring data that does not easily fit with their common descent model, it is disconcerting. The list of ENCODE data and orphan genes is rapidly growing each year, so the detractors of that data are having a more difficult time to force the closet door closed on this burgeoning set of information. Thus, overall, the same data is viewed very differently depending upon the evaluator’s perspective. As a synthetic chemist, I cannot proclaim a victor in this contest, but it appears that each side is building defenses and offenses to buttress their fortifications.
My impression is that it is a tragedy that I was the first biologist of (limited) stature to actually have a conversation with him about evolution. He had on his website for over a decade an invitation to have someone explain evolution to him. In the early 2000’s, one of @Art’s friends, while a graduate student, responded, but in Jim’s telling was not very kind to him. I was the only other person that ever reached out to him. I’ll explain more when I can, but I must say that Tour was doing the best he possibly could to understand. He is a phenomenal scientist with an active mind, who has not been exposed to much evolutionary science. It is a real shame that more people had not reached out to him.
Of note, this is part of what he says about ID and teaching evolution:
So what should be taught in schools regarding evolution, in my opinion? As I wrote, I am not a proponent of intelligent design for the reasons I state above: I cannot prove it using my tools of chemistry to which I am bound in the chemistry classroom; the same tools to which I commensurately bind my evolutionist colleagues. A better approach would include more teaching about common descent using basic genetics arguments.
I note that this sentence is there because of my conversations with Tour. He finds them convincing, even though he has remaining questions, which he enumerates here.
I’m defensive of Tour for several reasons. Yes, he is a creationist, however he is also a phenomenal scientist. He does not understand evolutionary science, but he was also essentially ignored in his questions for well over a decade. Perhaps people were intimidated by him, I don’t know. However, I feel a responsibility for our failure to engage with him earlier with more respect. I’ve seen him change his mind more than once. He is convincible, and I am saddened that he was vilified rather than engaged.
Tour, since then, has become a dear friend of mine. He is on a journey on these things. He is not one to be vilified. Instead, I would encourage engaging with him in respect.
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