James Tour: Friendship Across Disagreements

Peaceful Science
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Yeah. There’s definitely flaws in our understanding, which makes it an interesting discussion. My stance on is basically just “Well it’s convinced people way better at chemistry than me, so I have no real reason to disagree.” Same with most geology stuff.

My biggest problem with Tour and most IDers is they work in absolutes when chemistry is inherently probabilistic. “There’s no way this could’ve happened naturally!” Really? How do you know that? Is it unlikely? Probably, which is why we haven’t found other life. Is it impossible? No.

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I don’t really agree with that, because it seems to be buying into the premise that (for example) the RNA world has to sort of spontaneously emerge out of prebiotic chemistry (and thus that the origin of life has to basically be the RNA world hypothesis).
So even if that is very very unlikely, that doesn’t mean the origin of life is unlikely, because nobody has shown that life has to begin with RNA. The RNA world hypothesis is based on an unsubstantiated premise. It is a hypothesis that life began with RNA. What if it didn’t?

Before everyone’s heads explode, notice what I’m not saying. I’m not saying there was no RNA world (I’m almost certain there was), just that it’s relation to the actual origin of life is unknown. There is not anything that I know of that compels the inference that life has to begin with the spontaneous formation of RNA.

Did RNA have a role in very early evolution? Absolutely, we know enough to say that much. Did that RNA get produced in one of these rather speculative “prebiotically plausible” syntheses? Who can say?

But there is just so much we don’t know, both about early Earth environments, and what kinds of chemistry and physics are possible in those environments, that it is jumping to conclusions to say that life has to begin with RNA in such a scenario.

I’m strongly in favor of not buying into unsubstantiated assumptions. I’m fine with the idea of such chemistry being explored in principle, but we have to be mindful that it’s far from the only option on the table, so any conclusion about how likely such scenarios are have very little influence on the actual probability of life’s emergence.

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Not at all. What makes you ask?

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That would be the first step towards producing an actual creation model. As the old saying goes, if all possible evidence is consistent with a conclusion then no evidence is consistent with the conclusion.

Like what?

All species are mutating and are under the influence of selection. Can you show us a single genetic difference between any two species that you think could not be produced by known and observed natural processes?

If you are talking about the origin of life, we don’t need to explain that. Do I have to prove abiogenesis in order to claim that I share a common ancestor with my cousins? Nothing in the theory of evolution would need to be changed if the first simple life were created by God and all life evolved from that created first life.

Scientists agree that neutral drift and selection are mechanisms that influence all populations, so I don’t know where you are trying to go with that. It’s a bit like saying geologists don’t know what they are talking about because some say deposition is happening and some say erosion is happening.

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A forensic scientist does not observe a murder, but he can still gather evidence that explains who committed the murder and how.

It would appear that no evidence could every change your mind because anything could be consistent with special creation, at least in your eyes.

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There is also lack of public trust from many people today who think that the coronavirus SARS-COV-2 virus is not real, or the COVID-19 as an illness is not that bad, that masks do not help reduce disease spread, etc. I know you fight for the truth in that area, which I greatly appreciate: So you should realize that lack of public trust does not mean a particular scientific theory is untrue.

There actually is not great evidence that people have lost their careers over these issues. I do not think that any tenure committee has directly pointed to someone’s stance on evolution as being the reason they did not win tenure, the committees state other reasons. Unfortunately, bias can of course occur in the process, it would just be hard to prove that it did.

Also, a relatively small group of people having some strong convictions does not make something true. Scientists challenge each others ideas all the time, its part of the process of science that leads to testing of and improving upon theories and ultimately building consensus. In spite decades of attempts, YEC and ID scientists have failed to disprove the theory of evolution and have not built consensus among mainstream scientists on their side.

You seem to be afraid that science will draw people away from the faith. This fear is unfounded. Rather, it is the false narrative that there is a debate between science and faith that draws people away from faith. Thus, we need to work harder to demonstrate the fallacy of that debate narrative.

Based on other statements you have written on other threads, I wonder if you are confusing science with scientism and naturalism. There are many scientists who use the scientific method and follow principles of methodological naturalism every day in their work, yet hold to a strong faith in God. Many famous scientists in history have not lost their faith while using scientific methods including people like Newton, Mendel, Pasteur, and also there are many scientists alive today including John Lennox and Francis Collins who have a strong Christian faith. You have also interacted with many scientists here on this forum here who hold to methodological naturalism and keep a strong faith in Jesus as their savior. So you do not need to fear the scientific method or any particular scientific theory. Scientism (the idea that all knowledge comes from science) and naturalism (the idea that only natural forces operate in the universe) are the problematic philosophies, not science itself. Those of us scientists who hold to faith and believe in miracles can do so because we know that there are different ways of knowing that do not include science. We can trust historical evidence, we can understand theological reasoning, and we can know from our personal experiences that God exists. Christian theology actually led people like Mendel and others to use science to study the natural world: because our theology tells us that the God of the Bible is a God of laws and of order. That led to the idea that we could study his creation and there would be laws governing the universe that would help us make sense of His world. Thus, science can draw people to worship.

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Agreed. My wonder and awe at what I believe to be God’s creation is continuously enhanced as I learn more about evolution, not diminished.

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My concern with Dr. Tour is less about what he says and more about what he seems content to leave unsaid or unclarified. My own soapbox is helping to raise the level of scientific understanding and engagement among my old community of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I recently sat in on a presentation given by Tour at an SDA University. At the end of the presentation the questions he received made it clear that his audience, including professors in the biology department, were not clear on the difference between abiogenesis and evolution. There were questions like “Since evolution is completely and obviously impossible, what hatred or bias is preventing the scientific community from admitting this honestly?” And apart from saying that he doesn’t like to talk about ID too much, he pretty much reinforced the questioner’s assumptions. In communities like the one I grew up in, where misinformation around this issue is the norm, I wish those who do know better, like Tour, would at least not encourage the problem.

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I’m not convinced he knows any better. He gives all impressions of actually agreeing with the questioner without explicitly saying so.

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@swamidass, the section of the video from 37:40 – 45:37 was very compelling to me. I’ve listened to it multiple times.

Whenever Christian career scientists (and those in academia) talk about navigating these types of issues within their career, I always pay close attention. I’ve collected many quotes like these over the years, because I’ve always been curious as to what it’s like being in this career field. This one was worth saving. You were being pretty vulnerable there. Thank you for sharing that video with us!

Having said that, I’d be curious to hear input from other career scientist in this forum about this section of the video. In particular the question you asked, and both discussed:

“If you had to choose between acceptance of your colleges and the acceptance of your friends in the church, or the community of the church, which would be a harder one to lose?”

Would you be willing to start a new thread on just that topic? I know I’m free to start threads here, but I’d like it to come from you.

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Would you go so far as to say that we can know that evolution has occurred even if we had no knowledge of the chemistry (using chemistry broadly, to include genetics, since DNA, RNA, proteins etc. are chemical in nature)? And more broadly, not to limit causes to chemical ones, would you go so far as to say that the we can know that evolution has occurred even if we have no suggestion to offer regarding mechanisms?

I’m not objecting to such a position; I might even agree with it. I’m merely trying to get clear what exactly you mean by “that evolution has occurred” versus “how evolution has occurred”.

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If he wouldn’t, I would.

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It seems to me that was the situation leading up to Darwin, and that some sort of descent with modification must have occurred, because the data implied this. Even before anyone knew about what the mechanisms were.

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OK. So – I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so correct me if I’m misunderstanding you – the way you used the word “evolution” above, and the way you use “descent with modification” here, you are making a distinction between “a process of evolution”, meaning descent with modification, and “a theory of evolution”, meaning a theory which not only affirms the process, but gives some sort of explanation for it? So that one could “accept evolution” in the sense of affirming descent with modification, while not necessarily accepting any particular “theory of evolution” (e.g., Lamarckian, Darwinian, neo-Darwinian, neutral theory, etc.)?

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Yes. We can have some observations that strongly imply organisms have changed over time, without us knowing or understanding how. From that perspective we could be undecided about what kind of process was responsible for this change.

In a similar way to how for most of human history nobody knew about the cellular basis of life, so nobody knew how growth occurred, just that it occurred. Living things grow. We could see things grow and we had no idea how it happened. Eventually the invention of the microscope allowed us to see that growth is due to cell division.

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Thank you. So it appears that you and I and John Harshman agree that the word “evolution” can, and quite frequently does, mean “descent with modification” or “a process of change of organic form over time from very simple antecedents to the whole diversity of life”, or the like, and that someone can be said to “believe in evolution” or “accept evolution” if he or she believes that such a process happened, even if he or she does not agree with any particular account, or with the current leading account, of how evolution occurs.

Against this view is the view that some others have expressed here, most prominently Faizal Ali, i.e., that one cannot be said to “believe in evolution” or “accept evolution” unless one accepts not only the reality of descent with modification, but also the current set of mechanisms advanced by the majority of evolutionary biologists, e.g., mutation, selection, drift, HGT. For Faizal, if one says that evolution did not happen in the currently accepted way, one does not accept or believe in evolution.

This disagreement over vocabulary is at the heart of many of the disagreements here. E.g., since Behe and Denton accept “descent with modification” going back to unicellular creatures, they by your definition affirm “evolution”, though they clearly do not accept the currently dominant theory/theories of evolution held by professional evolutionary biologists. For Faizal, Behe and Denton do not believe in or accept “evolution,” because he insists that the term “evolution” (not just “the theory of evolution”, but even “evolution” simply) must refer not only to the process but to the mechanisms accepted by modern scientific consensus. Anyone who challenges the current dominant account in any significant way, for Faizal, does not merely question the current “theory of evolution”, but actually disbelieves in or rejects “evolution.”

I find your usage more in line with general or popular usage, and also more precise than Faizal’s, since Faizal’s definition conflates event with cause, and process with theory.

My refusal to call Behe and Denton “creationists” (though I have many times agreed that the great majority of ID proponents fall under the several types of creationism) is based on the fact that they accept “evolution” in the sense that you and I are using the term. If they accept evolution, then it is absurd to call them “creationists”, since the hallmark of creationism (when the word is used without qualification) throughout the 20th century and up to the present has been the denial that evolution (in any significant amount) has occurred. Thus, only by a contrived, specially rigged definition of “evolution” can one make Behe and Denton (and other ID folks such as Flannery and Sternberg, and lesser figures such as myself) into “creationists.”

Quarrels over mere words do not of course settle anything about the truth. And they can lead to unnecessary, and often long and tedious, arguments over who is or is not an evolutionist, a creationist, etc. If we followed a more general and commonsense usage of terms here, I think everyone here would agree that most ID proponents are creationists, but that a few of them are not. Had we had universal agreement here on that point, thousands of words of side-debate could have been avoided.

Faizal will doubtless argue that Behe and Denton are wrong about the way evolution works, but even if he’s right, that is irrelevant to the point I’m making. They could have the most abysmally wrong, confused, incoherent, uninformed, etc. account of how evolution works, yet still affirm that evolution happened. But Faizal won’t grant even this much, because of his narrow restriction of the meaning of the term, and so the discussion keeps reaching the same impasse. For him, anyone who doesn’t accept the current theory of evolution, even if that person accepts universal common descent, is a creationist. I don’t find that a clear or useful application of terms.

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Agreed.

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Yes, but the exact same thing can be said of creation as a term. Just as most use evolution to reference event and cause together, but it is still valid to reference only the event apart from cause, so too the current dominant use of creation might be ex nihilo, but it is still valid to reference the outcome apart from cause. Then as well, while not typical, it is legitimate to speak of evolutionary creationism, or even regard a parameterized universe as the process of creation, as long as it is clear what is actually being claimed.

Sometimes, words are used without any support in usage, and sometimes they are just atypical but still have considered purpose in their choice. It can be hard to distinguish these cases. But when they are used to needle someone, - and I do think that you have often been on the receiving end - that generally results in a meta conversation which advances little. My issue with big tent ID is not divine biotech driven evolution, but adducing support for design like it is some conceptual smorgasbord where one is free to heap the plate with conflicting ideas.

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This. If there is one major complaint I have with all of the supernaturalistic stuff about origins and even science more broadly, it’s the lack of clear thinking and testable ideas. But it’s all just ad-hoc.

Is that how it works? Well God coulda done it that way.

no it doesnt
no it doesnt540×2114 150 KB

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I agree that to say God “created” the world does specify the details of how he created it. One can believe that God created the world, yet not believe that the process was exactly as described in Genesis 1. Indeed, one can believe that God created the world and be agnostic about how he did so.

Yes, if what is meant by the term is that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of the world and its character, but used an evolutionary process to bring it to its current state. But when the term “creationism” is used by itself, without a qualifying adjective, the normal sense, at least in popular debates about origins, is “special creation”, i.e., creation through a series of discrete divine acts, and it indicates an anti-evolutionary position.

That’s why calling someone like Denton a “creationist” (without a qualifier such as “evolutionary”) is materially misleading. Someone who calls Denton a “creationist”, in full knowledge of how that term will likely be understood by most people reading a blog post, column, journal article, or book, is trying to create a false impression about what Denton actually believes and says. He is trying to create the impression in the reader that Denton believes that God created the world through a series of discrete miracles and that Denton holds this view because he has a religious commitment to Genesis 1 as an accurate historical account.

If people here referred to Behe and Denton as “evolutionary creationists”, the label would be less misleading. It would still be somewhat ambiguous, because it would lead readers to group them with people like Venema and Miller, but it would be less misleading than leading readers to group them with Ken Ham – which is the intent when their critics call them “creationists”. If people would use language for purposes of intellectual clarification rather than as a political weapon, discussions about origins could avoid a good deal of the friction that typically accompanies them.