James Tour goes off about having his funding revoked for attacking abiogenesis research

Conversation
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If this were true, then how do you explain the existence of whole journals devoted to publishing this apparently-nonexistent “progress”, e.g.:

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres

The origin and early evolution of life is an inseparable part of the discipline of Astrobiology. The journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres places special importance on this interconnection. While any scientific study which contributes to our understanding of the origins, evolution and distribution of life in the Universe is suitable for inclusion in the journal, some examples of important areas of interest are: prebiotic chemistry and the nature of Earth’s early environment, self-replicating and self-organizing systems, the theory of the RNA world and of other possible precursor systems, and the problem of the origin of the genetic code. Early evolution of life - as revealed by elucidation of biochemical pathways, molecular phylogeny, the study of Precambrian sediments and fossils and of major innovations in microbial evolution - forms a second focus. The journal presents experimental papers, theoretical articles and authoritative literature reviews.

(My emphasis)

Addendum: I have also seen the following areas mentioned as areas where Abiogenesis research has made considerable progress in recent decades:

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It wasn’t alleged. You can read about it at:

Exactly. You’ve got that right!

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Not true. I have read papers on the subject at the request of people such as Herman Mays, whom I believe you know. Ask him how that convo went. I do know enough chemistry to realize that something is really strange when a paper claims a pH gradient is driving a reaction but doesn’t report pH measurements from the reaction chamber.

It’s very easy to explain. Atheists need a creation myth, and they believe science will give it to them. It’s atheist wish fulfillment.

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That’s projection. Atheists are just fine with “we don’t know how life came about”.

Given the track record of science, it is no wonder that we think science is the best tool for figuring out how life originated. There are millions of supernatural explanations that have been replaced by scientific explanations, but not once has a natural explanation been replaced by a verified and evidenced supernatural explanation.

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It is impossible for you to have read papers on the topic, understood them, and honestly claim there has been no progress.

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One has to wonder what progress has to look like if all the actual progress that has happened in the field doesn’t count to you. I mean if this isn’t progress then your standards are blatantly irrational:

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Nothing strange about that, no.

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I admit it, I love watching these guys step on rakes.

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Ben, this claim is absurd on so many levels. :rofl:

  1. Not all scientists are atheists. There are, in all probability, quite a number of Christian scientists working in the field of Abiogenesis.

  2. The “creation myth” accusation, coming from somebody who is defending the literal truth of the Book of Genesis, itself quite literally a “creation myth”, is a comically absurd example of psychological projection and lack of anything vaguely resembling self awareness.

  3. Even if we’re willing to label Abiogenesis the “thing that Ben calls a creation myth”, the fact remains that science is making “progress” at this “thing that Ben calls a creation myth” – as evidenced by all these journals chock full of articles documenting this progress – and you have completely failed to explain away this evidence.

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Frankly, I don’t understand your complaint. Both theists and non-theists agree that there was some point in the past when non-living ingredients (various chemical elements found in our universe) came together to produce the first living organisms. Living organisms from non-living ingredients is known as abiogenesis. The alternative is to claim that living organisms ALWAYS existed—and I don’t know anyone who believes that.

So what is the disagreement? The Bible in Genesis 1:12 (NASB 1995) says, “The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind . . .” Genesis 1:24 says, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind." Thus, the Bible clearly teaches that the earth [i.e., non-living material] produced both plants and animal life. That sure sounds like abiogenesis to me.

If you are objecting because “atheist” scientists (as well as scientists who happen to be agnostic and scientists who happen to be theistic and even Bible-affirming Christians) don’t happen to mention God in science textbooks and peer-reviewed journal articles, then you are simply confusing ultimate and proximate causation.

The chemical elements of the planet (as in soil, water, air, and even “the dust of the ground”) combining at some time in the past to form the first living organisms is simply a summary of the proximate cause. Whether or not God was the ultimate cause is a different philosophical and theological question, not a scientific question. The ultimate cause is not a scientific question because there is no way under the scientific method to subject deities (or anything which is not a part of the matter-energy universe) to scientific testing and verification. So there is no reason for scientists (whatever their personal beliefs or non-beliefs about God) to mention God when publishing their scientific research.

Science is not synonymous with philosophy. (It is a small subset of philosophy which arose as natural philosophy and eventually evolved into what became known as modern science.) I think you are confusing the two.

Speaking for myself, I have no problems believing that God could create a universe where abiogenesis processes produced the first living organisms—just as Genesis 1 describes. So I have no beef with “atheist scientists” or anybody else who is trying to understand those proximate causes which, no doubt, involved the laws of chemistry and physics. Only a weak deity would be incapable of creating a universe which inevitably produced living things through natural processes, aka abiogenesis.

I don’t see any conflict between the abiogenesis described in Genesis 1 and the abiogenesis being investigated by scientists. Why create an argument where none is warranted? I would be delighted if within my lifetime I could read detailed scientific descriptions of how the first living organisms came to be. The discovery of the proximate cause(s) of biological life in no way undermines philosophical/theological claims of the ultimate cause.

Your position reminds me of those chemists in the era before Friedrich Wohler who insisted that scientists would never be able to synthesize a biochemical produced by a living organism. (If you are not familiar with the distinction between organic and inorganic chemistry in those days, please check it out.) They insisted that organic compounds were somehow “magical” in that only God (through the living organisms he had created) could make them. Of course, Wohler proved them wrong.

It will not surprise me in the least if someday a headline reads, “Scientist produce a synthetic organism in the lab.” It certainly poses no threat to my theology—just as the synthesis of urea by Wohler posed no threat.

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^^^^^This. I’m amazed that IDcreationists attack simple “abiogenesis,” as any literal reading of Genesis states that abiogenesis occurred. It’s not even a point of conflict between the two Genesis stories!

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The disagreement is over whether some intelligent Being existed prior to the existence of living things and was responsible for creating life. Researchers in abiogenesis, being competent and responsible scientists, generally do not waste much time investigating this possibility. Since the origin of life is one of the remaining God Gaps, IDCreationists have an obvious motivation for creating propaganda that claims no progress is being made in closing this gap.

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Give me a paper to read, and I’ll discuss it with you.

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Why do you believe so strongly that abiogenesis must be true if it hasn’t been scientifically shown yet?

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They didn’t just “come together” on their own. They were put together by God.

It’s not abiogenesis if God’s intervention is required for it to happen, unless you are saying God is dead.

You skipped the important part, where it says “God said…” It didn’t just happen. God spoke it into existence. Speaking is creating information, and as it happens, a purely physical process cannot create information, which is why abiogenesis doesn’t work.

It would be less confusing for me if you didn’t leave out the form of causation Genesis clearly uses in your selective quote-mining of the text. The ultimate and proximate causes of life are identical in Genesis. God spoke, and it happened.

You are going to have to explain the definition of science that allows you to exclude certain things from it. You are going to have a hard time with that, since philosophers of science have had quite a hard time of it for about a century. It’s called the demarcation problem, and is generally recognized as untenable.

Is God a weak deity because He can’t make a rock so big He can’t lift it? There are such things as logical contradictions. Scientific laws by definition cannot create information because they eliminate contingency. Information requires contingency, and life requires information. It cannot have come from laws. It had to come directly from intelligence.

It’s not about a “threat.” It’s about the Truth.

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  1. I never claimed that “abiogenesis must be true”, either “strongly” or weakly. I merely suggested that science is making “progress” in the field.

  2. As @AllenWitmerMiller points out, unless you assume that life always existed (or I suppose, that life came into existence at the exact same time that the rest of the universe came into existence), then Abiogenesis must have happened (as the universe must have gone from not-containing-life to containing-life).

These two further absurdities in your argumentation, make me wonder if you’ve reached the Byers’ Point™ yet.

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Give me the papers you’ve read, since you claim you’ve read the entirety of the current literature. That way I can give you one you haven’t read yet.

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Information is a certain thing. Is it excluded from scientific law? What definition of information precludes abiogenesis?

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Hi @Mercer, @nwrickert, @Faizal_Ali, @BenKissling, @Art, @John_Harshman, @CrisprCAS9, @RonSewell, @Rumraket and @AllenWitmerMiller,

I just came across a video titled, Challenge to Origin of Life: Replication (Long Story Short, Ep. 8), produced by the Center for Science and Culture. There’s a post about the latest video, over at evolutionnews.org, written by Rob Stadler, who received a PhD from the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Here’s the video.

I must say that the video is very well-put-together: it manages to communicate complex ideas in very simple language, which laypeople can readily digest. Clearly, the CSC is getting pretty media-savvy.

The video claims to have been produced in collaboration with a team of 5 Ph.D. scientists. What I’d like to know, however, is: are the scientific arguments and difficulties fairly presented, in the professional opinion of those who are biologists?

To me, the question of the origin of life is a scientific one, not a theological one. To say that God must have created the first life is a dogma. But it’s no less dogmatic to say that any God worth His salt could have made a universe capable of producing life naturally. Even if He could have, that doesn’t mean He did. The question of how life originated has to be settled empirically. If the obstacles to abiogenesis seem to grow over the course of time, I would say that’s a sign scientists are flogging a dead horse. If, on the other hand, they melt away little by little, that’s a sign of progress.

So I’d like to ask the scientists: how powerful a case do you think the authors of the CSC video have made, with regard to replication? Are there any major holes in their arguments? Is abiogenesis research as unpromising as they suggest? Over to you.

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Is God a weak deity because He can’t make a rock so big He can’t lift it? There are such things as logical contradictions.

And yet, that’s not one of them. You and I can each make a rock so big that the respective maker cannot lift it. It is logically possible, therefore, that someone create a rock they cannot lift.

Scientific laws by definition cannot create information because they eliminate contingency.

What definition is that, exactly? I agree that scientific laws cannot create information, because scientific laws can’t really do much of anything. They are descriptions, not agents. Another reason I agree that they cannot create information is because I actually take seriously some of those laws, and among them is a law of conservation of information. Nothing at all can create information, as far as we can tell. That is not a logical restriction, of course, but if we are going to say that some things get to violate natural law altogether, then it doesn’t mean anything to say that there even are any laws of nature to begin with, now, does it?

Information requires contingency, and life requires information.

Please, elaborate. What does any of this mean? How did you arrive at this conclusion in a way I reliably also could? What would a test of these claims entail, specifically?

[Information] cannot have come from laws. It had to come directly from intelligence.

Well, as i said, if we are going to seriously acknowledge said laws (as opposed to paying lip service to the idea of there being any), then intelligence is as powerless to produce information as anything else. This is no different from saying energy cannot be created, therefore a god must have found a way to create it anyway. The major difference is that “information” sounds just slightly more nebulous or profound, enough to where the silliness of the argument may be overlooked pondering the subject more readily, than had it been made with reference to “energy” instead.