My question has nothing to do with that. My question to you was whether Tour’s representation of OoL research is accurate, not whether the public has an accurate understanding.
HTH.
Hey I agree, people shouldn’t think debates has anything to do with how science is actually done.
The real problem is bad incentives in science communication and people’s poor reading comprehension and short attention spans. Largely economic incentives to grab attention (to generate clicks and generate ad-revenue) with exaggerated headlines, personal dramatizations, and people failing to even read the already poorly written pop-sci articles with comprehension, is all at fault here.
But I don’t see how Dave Farina has contributed to any of that. He has nowhere stated that the origin of life field has succeeded in creating life. Essentially all he’s really done is rebutted many of Tour’s technical claims while also attacking his religious motives for attacking the origin of life field.
Edit: I will add that in some cases I think Dave has made statements that exaggerate our state of knowledge. For example when he said we have “plausible prebiotic pathways to all the important biomolecules” I think that’s an exaggeration. First of all we don’t actually know what all the important biomolecules are(nor do we know much about at what stage in life’s origins they might have become relevant), and at least in some cases the suggested pathways to the sorts of things he probably is talking about have somewhat debatable prebiotic plausibility. And again, there are plenty of established researchers in the field who think some of these proposed pathways are have debatable prebiotic relevance.
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Hey I think technically the statement might even be true in that many origin of life researchers come from fields other than chemistry, such as astronomy, physics, biology, geology, and so on.
But it’s a point of no significance, because there’s plenty of perfectly competent chemists in the field who know just as much about chemistry as Tour does.
It’s just Eddie trying make some sort of appeal to credentials again, as if when Tour says something him being a chemist means he’s automatically making a valid point on any point of relevance to chemistry, and it’s supposedly wildly implausible than he could be making any mistakes or hold misconceptions on any chemistry-related issue in his attacks on origin of life research.
It’s just blatant nonsense through and through. Eddie does this when he has nothing else to go on. Harp credentials with ultimately fallacious appeals to authority.
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It does not give ontological legitimacy to ID, but it gives viewers practical or epistemic legitimacy to ID.
It is self-defeating if the debunkers claim the motivations are relevant for legitimate argumentation.
P1: ID and creationists are motivated by their religious views, not the results of research or argumentation (Farina’s claim)
P2: Arguing or displaying the motives of individuals or organization forms a legitimate basis for criticizing views
C1: Therefore, P2 forms an undercutting defeater for ID and creationism.
Now, if the debunker accepts P1 and P2 to get to C1, someone can similarly argue
P3: Debunkers are motivated by their metaphysical naturalism and/or desire to maintain scientific orthodoxy,
C2: Therefore, P3 forms an undercutting defeater for P1 and thus C1.
Can you summarize these, or at least point me in a good direction? I’ve watched hours of Dave’s more recent content on Tour (The Delicious Unraveling of James Tour, Elucidating the Agenda of Dave Tour, etc) and have yet to see anything substantial, but I haven’t seen all of his earlier content. While I don’t trust Dave to be charitable to Tour’s points, I do think you would be.
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Is Lee Cronin an “origin of life researcher”? His work appears to be in Assembly theory, and appears to relate to detection of extraterrestrial life, not deduction of how life originated on Earth.
What do you mean by “the field as a whole”? Do you mean all of Chemistry? If you do, I’d suggest (i) that it would be nearly impossible to adjudicate, given how vast and diverse the the entire corpus of Chemical knowledge is – far too vast for any single mind to come close to encompassing it, but (ii) more importantly, I don’t see how this question is even remotely relevant. This is for the same reason that I’d rather entrust my life to a bridge designed by a civil engineer than to one designed by an electrical engineer, even one whose knowledge of the “the field as a whole” of Engineering was superior to the civil engineer’s. It is not their knowledge of “the field as a whole” that matters, but their knowledge of the relevant subfield.
I am fairly certain that every one of the “list of 25 authors” know far more about “what actually happens in chemical reactions” that underlie origin of life research than Tour does.
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Nope. I don’t care what Bible scholars think. Almost nobody pays attention to that circle. They know less than nothing. Bible scholarship starts with a preferred conclusion (God inspired the Bible) and then makes absurd and unfounded “observations” (It’s magic, it predicts the future!) about the Bible that fit that claim, ignoring or discounting all the contradictory evidence. So their consensus that Jesus was a real person and anyone who says different is a crank and using pseudo-scholarship is based on fallacious methods and is factually incorrect.
Creationists know their claims do not stand up to the scientic method and will never be accepted by the scientific community. So the central strategy of ID advocates appeal to the public. Well two can play at that game. Skepitcal scholars have taken their arguments to the public and Christian scholars and even agnostics like Ehrman and O’Neill are screaming bloody murder.
There are some great articles on my Facebook page from the Washington Post “Did the Historical Jesus Really Exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up. There are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus’ historical existence.” And from “HuffPost, Jesus Never Existed, After All - In an earlier post, I argued that the historicity of Jesus was doubtful. Some religion scholars questioned one of my sources. Now, recent scholarship comes as close as possible to settling the issue.” Even Ehrman, who has made a fortune making up stuff about Jesus has admitted Jesus mythicism is spreading like wildfire among the general public
Bible “scholars” are not what supports the Christian superstition. In religion the only thing that matters is public opinion. It’s the public that supports Christianity and its churches, preachers and its so-called academic community. Bible scholars can sense the end is near and they are running scared. I could not care less what those people think about me or other skeptics. Why would I? They are being laughed off the planet as we speak.
The line that you quoted right there of mine was NOT regarding this particular point (about Tour and Farina communicating how science is actually done). That line you quoted was in response to your silly claim that attacks from people like Farina support the claim that the ID community is unfairly targeted and excluded from scientific journals…
THAT was the particular point I was critiquing in that particular sarcastic line. Don’t confuse a response to one point as a response to a different point. Regarding THIS claim that you made above, it’s just plainly ridiculous. Any particular behavior of David Farina does NOT (in any shape or form) represent the state of peer or the way papers gets published in the scientific community. Hence why I made a sarcastic remark about Farina being in charge of what papers gets published in scientific journals. It’s an absurd line of reasoning.
No it doesn’t give ANY legitimacy. This is simply fallacious reasoning, specifically the “Fallacy Fallacy” as I have outlined earlier. The fact that an idea or claim receives poor critiques, that does not mean the claim or idea is has any legitimacy or merit. The logic just does not follow.
I already went over this previously. What you are doing here is the Tu quoque fallacy. This fallacy is used when someone attempts to dismiss detractors or debunkers as hypocrites, because their critiques against someone else also applies to themselves. Even IF this is true, even if the debunkers are being hypocritical, that does not invalidate their argument.
Now, if you were to say that the religious motives of the ID institutes does NOT mean that their arguments are wrong. I would agree. However, the motives of the organization behind the intelligent design movement is NOT irrelevant. As the “wedge document” (published by the discovery institute) has shown, they are VERY explicit about their goals and motivations. The birth of the Intelligent Design movement was part of a political strategy to push a particular religious fundamentalist agenda. This (in and of itself) does not mean all their arguments are wrong, yes. The claim against ID is two-fold. (1) Their arguments are wrong AND (2) they are self-admittedly motivated by a political and religious ideology.
You are free to accuse the detractors of ID of being “motivated by their metaphysical naturalism and/or desire to maintains scientific orthodoxy”. However, that would be a mere assertion and it would not be comparable to the political/religious motives that ID-proponents have outlined themselves in their own publication. So, any suggestion that Intelligent design and its detractors are just “two-sides of the same coin, each with their own motives and agendas” is drawing a false equivalence. That is, unless you can show that the detractors of ID have published something like a political manifesto outlining their metaphysical naturalistic motives. So far, I am not aware of any.
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Isn’t that exactly what they are working on? Given roughly equal aptitude and access to research resources, I would expect that scientists who are engaged in a specific focus to be the most authoritative in their area.
By his publication record, Tour and his lab is very productive and has made outstanding contributions to graphene materials and nanotechnology research. But an OoL researcher is likely reading nothing of materials and nanotechnology and following everything significant touching on amino acid chemistry. You know what you spend your life working on. What exactly are OoL scientists supposed to know if that be something other than what they actually research? They are more likely drawn from chemistry majors than interpretive dance.
On the other hand, Tour undoubtedly has the background to be a quick study on the particulars of OoL chemistry. However, in the debate he volunteered that his interest is entirely apologetic, and he has not, and offered no intention, of publishing professionally. He is an outsider maverick, with other professional and life priorities, and I would not credit him with superior insight to actual researchers.
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Neither would I question the results of that survey. I, rather, question the conclusion you and Tour seem to draw from it, which is that the general public is being “misled” regarding origin of life research. If you ask a sample of 152 people: “Scientists have created bacteria in a lab. True or false?” and 72% answer “True”, it is not valid to therefore conclude that 72% of the general population is walking around believing that scientists have actually done that. It is likely that the respondents just gave their best guess to a question about which they had never thought before and otherwise had no opinion about. OOL is not exactly a hot topic that is widely discussed and debated outside of the narrow confines in which we are currently ensconced here. 
I also think it is rather unfair to say that people are being “misled.” I find it far more concerning the number of people who hold other incorrect views such as that vaccines are dangerous, or that climate change is a hoax. And in those cases there is no question that there are individuals and entire organizations actively working to misinform the public. I honestly cannot see that is the case with OOL. Can you cite a single person involved with OOL research who has come out and said “Guess what? We just created an entire live frog in our lab, from scratch”? I don’t think you can. So even if the public is misinformed as you and Tour claim, I don’t think that can be blamed on OOL researchers.
It is also a bit curious that the only mentions of that Narcum study I can find on line are from ID and creationist websites, going to back to at least 2021. So if it is still in “prepublication” it might be permanently consigned to that state. In any event, I have found Narcum’s email so I will see if he is able to provide some more details.
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Look at the video linked above, in post 171. Tour calls Lee Cronin an origin of life researcher about 20 times in that video, and Cronin never corrects him on that label; also, Cronin discusses origin of life throughout the video. So Cronin has answered your question.
Wrong. It does not. Some Biblical scholars make that assumption, others do not. In most of the major universities of the world, the professors of Biblical Studies are more likely to be atheists, agnostics, or religious liberals (who don’t believe God inspired the Bible in any rigorous sense of the word “inspired”). You simply don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been on the inside of Biblical scholarship. You haven’t. You should stop speaking about what you don’t know.
Really? When Amazon sells tens of thousands of copies of books by Biblical scholars annually? And when university and college libraries buy copies of the same books for their students, and subscribe to dozens of journals of Biblical studies? The truth is rather that “almost nobody” pays attention to your website, or your theories.
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None of that is true. Bible scholarship includes examination of the Bible as an ancient document like any other.
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Vincent, to answer Mercer’s question directed at you:
The main reason why I don’t reply to 99% of what Mercer posts has nothing to do with the contents of what is being discussed; it’s that Mercer’s posts to me (and often to others, but especially to me) are obnoxious due to their constant personal edge. I don’t believe that barbarism in conversation should be rewarded with replies.
Thank you. That is what I had in mind in my original statement. Not every biologist or geologist interested in the origin of life would have as much background in chemical reactions as Tour.
I agree that OOL researchers include competent chemists. That is why I limited my claim to “a good number”, not “all” or even “a majority”.
No, I wouldn’t say that even a very good chemist would always be right in all matters concerning chemistry. Chemistry is a big field and no one can know it all. And experts in one branch of chemistry might make errors when dipping into another branch. (Similarly, experts in evolutionary biology might make errors when dipping into climatology, but that’s a side-point.)
I don’t say that Tour couldn’t make mistakes in talking about chemistry and the origin of life. My original point to Faizal was not that “Tour, being a world-class chemist, would never make any mistake in talking about the chemistry of the origin of life”; it was that Tour, being a world-class synthetic chemist, knows a heck of a lot about reactions, how molecules are built, how unwanted products can mess things up, etc., and it’s likely that he would know more about some of the relevant chemical reactions than some origin of life researchers who have less background in chemistry.
I try never to say more than what I mean, but several people here routinely try to make out that I meant more than I said.
Thank you I appreciate that. I’ll get on that and return with what I think are some good examples.
I don’t think that’s actually Dave Farina’s claim. I think his claim is that their motives leads them to make bad judgements and give uncharitable interpretations of statements by scientists in the field. Of course he goes further and claims Tour and people like them outright lie about the field for religious reasons.
I don’t disagree with him on the former, and for some individuals in some instances I can even see a plausible case for the latter.
I think a case can be made when for example Tour says that students are taught the primordial soup model (that they’re “taught it” as if it was fact), and that this model says “molecules in a puddle or in a pond, lightning strikes, molecules form, those molecules form into slithering creatures and they come out of this pond.”
And that this silly characterization of the primordial soup model is taught at both the high school and college level in textbooks.
That is simply false. Nobody is being taught that the primordial soup model is true, and that isn’t the primordial soup model anyway. Hopefully we can agree that the above characterization of the primordial soup model is an uncharitably simplistic and silly characterization of it.
It is highly implausible to me, that he is unaware that this silly characterization is incorrect. It is way more plausiblee that he says it anyway because it fits into a sort of narrative of his. Does that qualify as lying? Is he aware he is doing it? Maybe that is debatable, but at the least it’s inconsistent with the facts.
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I would also expect him to know more than the average paleontologist about the chemical structure of a red blood cell. But that didn’t prevent him from incorrectly concluding that red blood cells of T. rex. have been found and, therefore, that T. rex may not have gone extinct 70 million years ago “as we are told.”
IOW, Tour has a well-documented history of drawing laughably wrong conclusions regarding basic, high school level scientific facts based on his understanding of chemistry. Why should we expect him to do any better with the very difficult and esoteric subject of abiogenesis?
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It’s also true in that many origin of life researchers are post docs, grad students, undergrad assistants and lab techs.
But as you say, it’s of no significance.
Tour also disavows his expertise in chemistry when it comes to the age of the earth. Much of geology is general chemistry, and bio-mineralization and oxidation reactions involved clearly require a succession of long duration epochs of differing biospheric and atmospheric conditions. He should also be comfortable with radiometric dating principles such as crystallization. It is disingenuous for him to claim he has “no idea how old the Earth is”. Nobody is asking him to weigh in on a discussion of between 4.5 vs 4.6 billion years; the question is if it could possibly be anywhere near YEC timescales.
This is another example of that calculated “big tent” posturing that I find odious in ID. When it comes to design, extol as a brilliant chemist. When it comes to YEC, well golly gee, shrug, who knows, mealy mouth? The same competencies are in play guys, PICK A LANE.
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Larry Moran, quoting and then responding to Tour:
Furthermore, when I, a non-conformist, ask proponents for clarification, they get flustered in public and confessional in private wherein they sheepishly confess that they really don’t understand either. Well, that is all I am saying: I do not understand. But I am saying it publicly as opposed to privately. Does anyone understand the chemical details behind macroevolution? If so, I would like to sit with that person and be taught, so I invite them to meet with me. Lunch will be my treat. Until then, I will maintain that no chemist understands, hence we are collectively bewildered.
Does he really mean to imply that all chemists are “bewildered” about evolution? Does he really think that evolutionary biologists are obliged to supply “chemical details” proving that whales evolved from land animals or that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor? Are all chemists this stupid?
I wonder if he is equally skeptical about whether the Earth goes around the sun given that we can’t supply chemical details? I wonder what he thinks about plate tectonics?
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