Making life is not the same as finding out about the origin of life. If Tour can’t achieve his goal honestly, he should abandon it.
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I won’t say I know him, but I have had personal experience with him, as a result of which his conduct in the debate did not surprise me in the least. On the basis of my admittedly limited interaction with him I found him to be rather vindictive and vengeful, to the point that he wrote to the Dean of Medicine at my university to complain about our email correspondence. (I will admit that some of what I wrote was not as collegial as it should have been.)
It may have been Tour’s primary goal in this debate to publicly embarrass and humiliate Farina. And the Discovery Institute seems to have been a willing accomplice in this effort. If so, that could be another parallel to my personal situation.
It also seems clear that the DI is trying to position Tour as their new eminent “scientific expert”, now that the previous holders of that position (Behe, Denton, Dembski, et al) are completing their decline into total irrelevancy,
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I doubt many OOL researchers would disagree with that. By the same token, cosmologists have yet to reproduce the Big Bang in a lab, and none are even trying.
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The silliness of pretending that making life is the same as trying to understand the beginning of life is the scam.
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Thank you for that video. I’m half-way through now and it’s excellent. Not a fan of Cameron but I completely agree with almost everything Paul Rimmer says. Very informative and also in-depth in a way laypeople with very little chemistry knowledge can follow along with.
One small point of disagreement is when Paul says the side-chain chemistry would be disastrous if the side-chains are involve in peptide bond formation.
That’s an assumption that what we need at the beginning is a protein sequence like those we see in extant life which do not involve these hyperbranching polymers. We strictly don’t know that is necessary and there are some indications they might not be.
There has been work that shows that hyperbranching polymers (though not using canonical peptides specifically, but chemically related polymers like depsipeptides and polyesters) can still obtain defined tertiary structures and perform catalytic functions, despite consisting of polymers with branches extending out of their side-chains in all sorts of ways.
Yes, if we are trying to explain how we got proteins like those we see in life, growing additional peptide chains out of the side chains would be a big no-no. We just don’t know that that is a no-no.
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Well no because you’re not, of course, getting “slandered” at all. My characterization seems to be absolutely accurate. You have now stated several reasons why you think Cronin’s statement is some sort of big and significant admission.
How mightily fair-minded of you. Do we really have to wonder if you’d feel this way if it was the other way around? If someone was quoting Tour out of context?
You’re basically saying you think the quote-mining is fine because when the quote is free of context or any further clarifications, you agree with it and it conforms to your preconceptions.
You don’t care what people mean when they say something, apparently. What matters is if you like a certain way to view them.
How many are trying to do it? Do you even know? And do you know anything about why they do what they do, instead of what you think they should be trying to do?
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Yup, this paper: A prebiotic basis for ATP as the universal energy currency
It’s also should be mentioned that the chemistry of early is probably very similar. Not regarding the complicated long polymers forming the same bonds each time. That was probably something that was relatively late. I am talking about the very building blocks, the monomers, and even the precursors to everything we see in biochemistry (the organic compounds forming the core of metabolism). That type of chemistry doesn’t seem very accidental, and in fact, it’s the type of chemistry you would expect to see from the disequilibrium between H2 and CO2. These can undergo a redox reaction to form H2O and CH4, which is exergonic. At least, they would if it were not for the fact that they don’t react very easily. The easiest way for these to react, a path of least resistance, is through the core of biochemistry that we see in life. That has a benefit since it implies the origin of life is NOT accidental. Furthermore, it also has great “selective” mechanisms from pure chemistry (not evolutionary). The biochemistry we see in all of life is rather restrictive. All possible compounds you can make with carbon is enormous, millions, but life uses a only a few hundred as the building blocks (not including the variations seen in the polymer sequences). So there are many degrees of freedom in organic chemistry that has been excluded. The reason for this is because all the matter in the biosphere is made from these few building blocks at the core of life’s biochemistry. Those building blocks limits the possible things you can make.
Interesting presentation echoing the same thing (but every talk by Eric Smith is interesting).
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I have to remain neutral regarding the email correspondence, since I haven’t seen it. But if memory serves, this is the first time I have heard you say that your side of the conversation was “less than collegial”. One naturally wonders whether some “less than collegial” comments stimulated an excessive reaction on Tour’s part, i.e., whether, even if writing to your Dean was an excessive response, there was some warrant for feeling gratuitously offended on Tour’s part.
In any case, I concede that Tour is not always good at concealing exasperation. On the other hand, Dave, who is seemingly in a permanent state of adolescence, is the sort of person who quickly generates large amounts of exasperation. So the two of them were not a good pairing for a serious intellectual debate. But Tour should have known, based on Dave’s video series, that a live debate was likely to turn out no more constructive. He should have nixed the idea of a live debate (with Dave, I mean, not necessarily with others) from the start.
Given the power imbalance, wouldn’t Tour’s conduct in that instance be seriously egregious and indicative of a major character flaw?
This seems to transfer blame for Tour’s behavior onto his opponent, just as the last paragraph did. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
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I think that misses point: Expressing exasperation by screaming insults and waving his arms about is all he has. He has no arguments to make against the science itself, because he has made inadequate effort to understand the science. So why would he try conceal his exasperation?
Again, I think that misconstrues the likely reason this debate was organized, with Tour’s complicity. A serious discussion of the scientific status of various hypotheses regarding abiogenesis was obviously not in the cards, since no one currently conducting research in that area was on the stage.
The goal was to convince right wing Christian ideologues that abiogenesis is an atheistic scam. And, judging by the DI’s posts on “Evolution News”, they seem to think it has succeeded.
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Evolution news is the “public relations” face of ID, and I never take it very seriously. In fact, I rarely read it. What is more relevant is what ID insiders say to each other in private. I can tell you that many of them were dismayed by the Tour debate and found fault with both participants, as well as the format and the moderation. And many of their criticisms overlap with criticisms stated here.
As for, “A serious discussion… was not in the cards,” surely Dave Farina should take some blame for that. He could have said, “Look, Dr. Tour, we’ve had our culture-war fun in the video debate, but if you really want a serious scientific debate, it shouldn’t be with an untrained, fan-boy middle-man like me; you should face someone who works daily in origin of life research. I am therefore declining the offer to debate you live, but am offering to set you up in a debate with Dr. -----, who knows much more about the subject than I do and will be better able to demonstrate the flaws in your arguments. Will you consent to debate with Dr. -----?”
If Farina were serious about educating the public in what real origin of life science is about, he would have done that, rather than showing up with canned first pages of articles and hurling personal and professional insults at Tour. But evidently his ego was so great that he wanted to be seen in a major university, on a stage, debating with Tour, more than he wanted the public to be educated in the subject-matter. I’ve already conceded that Tour showed bad judgment in participating; it would be nice you would concede the flaws in Farina’s personal motivations.
None of that is as important as the evidence.
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Yes, I think most people here already know that “ID insiders” are two-faced liars. But thanks for the reminder, anyway.
That would not have solved the problem, however, because it would still have left James Tour up on the stage, taking up half the time shrieking uninformed nonsense. Exactly what do you think qualifies him to publicly debate or lecture on abiogenesis? Has he contributed so much as a word to the scientific literature on the subject? Has he shown the slightest inclination to make a good faith effort to understand that literature?
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I was going to say that this comment was unworthy of you, but based on past experience, that would not be a correct statement.
A far greater knowledge of what actually happens in chemical reactions than a good number of origin of life researchers, for a start. And in any case, against real scientists he would not have to do any shrieking, because a real scientist (unlike the fraud “Professor Dave”) would have gone straight up to the board when offered the chalk and shown with precise chemical diagrams why he thought Tour was wrong. Then they would have discussed chemistry instead of shouting or insulting.
But of course, Dave could not discuss chemistry on his own steam. All he could do was repeat talking points he picked up by reading articles produced by others. Take away his prepared articles, take away his rehearsed responses, and give to both him and Tour a new chemical problem to talk about, one neither had looked at before, and the difference in chemical competence between the two would have been evident even to the most prejudiced observer. Tour would immediately start discussing bonds and half-lives and chirality and so on, and Dave would be fumbling for his hand-held device to quickly look up authoritative quotes on the internet. That’s all he can do. That’s all he will ever be able to do.
Yes, I’ve been wondering along similar lines. It does not appear that the chemicals he has specialised in synthesising show any overlap with the chemical processes hypothesised in abiogenesis.
I’ll bet that Dave, however, knows that a great many peptides with fewer than 100 amino-acid residues are functional.
Tour claiming that they are not is off-the-charts dishonest and/or demented, at least an order of magnitude beyond Meyer’s lie about peptidyl transferase.
Have you never heard of insulin, Eddie?
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Exactly how is my comment wrong? You just admitted that these “ID insiders” knowingly write things on the own website that they do not believe to be true, but which they think will be good public relations. Is “two-face liar” not an appropriate term for such a person? If so, what would you prefer?
Yeah, sure.
And maybe if they decided to have a wrestling match, Dave Farina would have won hands down. It would mean just as much, since just being able to draw chemical bonds on a chalk board does not remotely qualify anyone as knowledgeable about abiogenesis.
Whereas actually taking the time to read and understand the articles on the subject does so qualify someone. That is why Tour is not qualified to discuss the subject, and Farina is.
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This is a blatantly false attribution of knowledge.
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Prove it.
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I said “a good number”, not “all”. So I’m not saying there are no origin of life researchers that know chemistry as well as Tour. I was responding to Faizal’s ludicrous suggestion that Tour is not competent to publicly comment on abiogenesis. He certainly is competent to publicly comment on it insofar as researchers in that area make claims about possible ancient chemical reactions in areas of chemistry that he happens to know very well. He does not have to have read everything published in the field of abiogenesis to know that certain proposals are either impossible or wildly improbable.
I admitted only that some of the articles on ENV are written more with a view to public relations than to rigorous scientific analysis. And those articles on ENV are frequently written by non-scientists. When I spoke of “ID insiders” I was speaking of scores of ID insider scientists that I interact with frequently, and those scientists expressed dismay about both sides of the Tour-Farina debate. They recognized immediately that Farina was a blusterer, a faker, a dilettante, and a Neanderthal, but they also were disappointed in Tour, both because he started losing his temper in the last half of the debate and because he participated in the debate with Dave at all. Nothing could be gained by victory over such a scientifically insignificant entity as Dave, whereas much stood to be lost if Tour lost control and started to lower himself to the streetfighter’s level (the only level Dave ever has been or ever will be able to conduct himself on).
Tour showed poor human judgment in agreeing to the debate. He had already in the video debate sufficiently exposed Dave’s low level of human breeding and Dave’s completely derivative, fanboy, science-groupie, Bill Nye the Science Guy level of scientific understanding, and there was no need to repeat that demonstration on the campus of a university with a dignified image to preserve. True, it was enjoyable to watch the blood drain out of Dave’s face when Tour offered him the chalk and asked him to write down a viable chemistry on the board; it would have made a good image for the word “panic” in an illustrated dictionary. But I didn’t need that moment to know that Farina never was and never will be anything but a fanboy in science, a science “Mouseketeer” incapable of producing any research or conversing fluidly about any scientific subject without his articles and his authorities in front of him.
The internet has made it possible for bluffers and poseurs to reach a greater level of prominence than they ever could have achieved in any pre-internet society. In a pre-internet world, Dave would be cleaning test tubes in some industrial research lab, or maybe teaching eighth-grade chemistry in some run-of-the-mill school. Only in our current world would anyone other than his mother, his wife, and the members of his bowling team ever have heard of him. Whereas Tour, on the other hand, would have been just as widely reputed a synthetic chemist even if we didn’t have the internet.