I agree.
I have my disagreements with Tour and I have also debated him.
But for goodness sakes, Tour deserves respect as a real and phenomenally accomplished scientist (certainly more so that Dave!). That’s true even when we are convinced he is wrong.
I think before we bother a “big-time OOL researcher”, we should see if Tour is even able to defend his claims regarding proteins against someone of @Rumraket’s stature. No offense intended, Mikkel.
But maybe you already know whether he can, don’t you?
Methinks this forum would be a good place for Tour to debate. It removes the temptation (that seems to be too great for Tour to resist) to jump up and down, shout, interrupt, and otherwise make a fool of oneself as Tour is wont to do. Maybe if you prod him, @Eddie, …???
Totally agreed. Written debates are of course vastly superior to oral ones. I’d be happy to debate Tour on this forum on the three specific claims he made about proteins/peptides at the origin of life.
The proportion of sequences 100 amino acids long that fold, how long peptides/proteins have to be to be functional, and whether Levinthal’s paradox is some sort of obstacle to the origin of proteins.
He made claims about those in the debate and the Q&A period, and I contend those claims are demonstrably wrong. And that I am qualified to show that.
Who deserves every bit of disrespect if he doesn’t bother to know what he’s talking about in public. His accomplishments set expectations for his veracity much, much higher.
He deserves respect as a chemist for his accomplishments as a chemist. And of course as a human being in general, when he isn’t shouting over people and/or doing lame rhetorical/theatrical tricks with a blackboard that demonstrate nothing substantive, he should be addressed in a normally respectful manner.
And he deserves respect for knowing enough chemistry to ask questions that are similar to those in the field who have asked those same questions before him.
When he wanders outside of his field he starts making much less sense and is often times just demonstrably wrong, and there isn’t much he says there that deserves anything other than refutation.
Indeed, but really, anyone is qualified by pointing to the evidence. I do understand that you’re addressing an authoritarian with a pathological aversion to evidence.
Do we actually need @Rumraket’s CV to make an educated guess as to who knows “more about biology and biochemistry”?
We after all have James Tour’s resume. I may be reading it wrong, but I could see nothing indicative of expertise in biology and biochemistry.
Given the high level of specialisation required by scientific research, it would seem likely that there would probably be a large number of even postgrad students (and maybe even some undergraduates) who know more about biology and biochemistry (or any number of other fields outside Tour’s areas of specialisation) than Tour himself does.
And when it comes to the question of when the dinosaurs went extinct, Tour is considerably less informed than the average 5th grade science nerd. Which doesn’t stop Tour from pontificating on how he has the expertise to answer that question.
Since when are professors of chemistry, physics, computer science, biology, biochemistry, geology, etc. at universities and colleges, with peer-reviewed articles in those fields, “not scientists at all”?
Since when are chemistry, physics, computer science, biology, biochemistry, geology, etc. subjects not “pertaining to ID”?
Indeed, it would be interesting to find out how many people here have published any scientific work “pertaining to ID”, or any scientific work of any kind. Rumraket, when asked for a list of his science publications of any kind (pertaining to ID or not) has punted. Crispr has been silent about his publications. How about Roy? Tim? Puck? Paul King? Jonathan Burke? There’s an awful lot of swaggering here about what “good science” is, coming from an awful lot of people who have not shown the ability to produce any. Indeed, among those posters here who have declared themselves to be, or seem to be, atheists (whether de facto or de jure), I count only a handful (literally one of my hands is sufficient, and I’m not sure I need even the thumb) who have any publications in any scientific field. I except you, Faizal, since you did produce one research article during your, what, 20±year (?) academic career, though how relevant that article is for ID, remains for you to elucidate.
Actually, the verified Bible scholars posting on this list sided with me against Boris Badenoff in our discussion of Biblical questions. And it was Boris who turned out to be incompetent in Biblical philology. Which often happens, when someone decides to teach himself a field rather than acquire training from experts in that field. There are, of course, more autodidacts per square foot on the subject of the Bible than any other subject (though climate change and COVID for a time came close to challenging that number), so the existence of Boris Badenoff is not surprising. Nor is the fact that the world never heard of his Biblical expertise until he made his appearance here, and that he is still unknown as a Bible “expert” outside of this website. We are all still breathlessly awaiting his next academic publication, with its dust jacket endorsements from Biblical Studies professors from Oxford, Tubingen, Jerusalem, and the Ivy League. If he ever actually produces it, I’ll seek him out to sign my copy. But he’ll need to send me his address in Pottsylvania.
Considering that the conversational manners of several of the atheists (not Art himself) on this forum approach the “Professor Dave” level, and that Tour probably would not want a repetition of that experience, I think I can safely say that he would decline the invitation. But if you guys can find someone with better manners than yourselves (which should not be hard), and more competence in the subject of the origin of life (which also should not be hard), let me know and I’ll pass on the relevant names to Tour.
I fully expect that no one here will “correct” you on that statement, though if I had been the one to make it, you can be sure that Harshman and probably others would have jumped in to say something like: “Modern phylogenies place birds in the dinosaur clade Theropoda” (Theropoda - Wikipedia). Ah, that old PS double-standard!
In any case, we know that some kinds of dinosaurs are still not extinct; Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins still write about evolution in the way it was written about when Eisenhower was President in the USA and Dirk Bogarde was the big movie star in Britain.
Context restored so that anyone who didn’t realise will see that @Eddie also mentioned surgeons, IT business managers and aerospace engineers, that those were the people @Faizal_Ali was referring to, not the university professors, and that @Eddie has deliberately omitted to quote his previous post in order to pretend he didn’t say that part.
Is your doctoral degree in hypocrisy? You demand credentials from other people yet refuse to provide your own. And some of those people are even posting under their actual names, which you could google if you wanted. We also have no way of telling whether any of your hundreds of “ID scientists” are even real people, much less published in any relevant field.
Self-pity is not a good look for you. And I would allow anyone some latitude on that point unless it’s relevant at the time. I see that you have managed to avoid answering the question, which was perhaps your goal.
I never said they weren’t.
However, physicians, surgeons and people who “run IT businesses” are generally not scientists. Were you not aware of this?
So, to be clear, your definition of “ID scientist” includes every single chemist, physicist, computer scientist, biologist, biochemist and geologist? If not, perhaps you could be more specific.
By my understanding of the term “ID scientist”, it would refer to a scientist who is actively publishing or is otherwise engaged in research that purports to support the claim that some aspects of what is called the “natural world” are best explained by positing an intelligent being who was responsible for their “design.”
And it should be clear that I would not consider any of them, nor myself, to be “ID insider scientists.”
That aside, I am not sure what point you are trying to make here, assuming there is a point beyond your habitual obsession with penis measuring. Perhaps you need to try keep track of what is actually being discussed rather than just randomly writing whatever insulting response happens to pop into your head. You know, since you are so concerned with the tone of the discussions here.
Yes, because they are sufficiently literate to understand the sense in which I was here using the term “dinosaur”. And I am pretty sure that you are not trying to excuse Tour’s embarrassing gaffe by claiming he was actually referring to modern birds when he expressed doubts over whether dinosaurs went extinct circa 70 million years ago. You and I both understand he was referring to T. rex and those sort of dinosaurs. Correct?
Hi @CrisprCAS9 and @Art,
Thanks very much for your replies. I’m glad to see you’re both on the same page. Thanks again.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/095058499190020C
How about you, hypocrite?
OK, now we are clear. Except for the part where you also said they were “insiders”. Do you care to clarify what you meant by that?
No, I am not aware of that. I do recall you being taken to task, by at least one expert in cladistics, when you scorned and ridiculed the idea that all tetrapods could be considered fish. But that was not pedantry on their part. Just them calling you out on having the temerity to criticize fields of which you have no understanding.
And my position is that this was such a spectacularly stupid error that it calls into question each and every criticism he makes outside of his narrow field of expertise, including abiogenesis. In both cases, his argument is the same; “I KNOW THIS STUFF! Chemical bonds are my area of expertise! So I know that dinosaurs could not have gone extinct 70 million years ago, as we are told.”
No, his reasoning should have been:
If we have found T. rex red blood cells, then T. rex did not go extinct 65 mya…
T. rex went extinct 65 mya.
Conclusion We have not found T. rex red blood cells. (Modus tollens).
As I said, this does not require any deep knowledge of current paleontological research. Just the ability to use basic logic and the knowledge level of the average 5th grade science nerd.
But if his arguments are utter horseshit, who cares about his temperament?
Ah, so you’ve published nothing in natural science, just data management science? Not that I belittle that subject, but since we are usually discussing natural science here, what I had in mind when I asked for scientific publications was publications in biology, biochemistry, climatology, origin of life – the things we usually debate here. I salute your for your publication, however. I’ll reserve my left hand digits for the atheists here with publications in non-natural sciences. In the meantime, I still don’t have five atheists to fill up the digits on my right hand, regarding the natural sciences. Isn’t it odd that a site like this – Peaceful Science – should not be able to produce even five atheist regulars with peer-reviewed natural science publications?
I never once claimed to have any publications in natural science. Nor did I ever claim to know more about a scientific question than world-class scientists who have addressed that question, as several people here have done. If I had made such claims, I would gladly have provided a scientific c.v. to anyone who asked, on request.
Well, in that case you’re doing fine. I had mistakenly thought you were interested in credibility.
No, nobody thinks you’re being fooled. They just think you probably have a George Santos kind of relationship to truth.
Not even that is true. You would have to weigh that evidence against geology and the physics of nuclear decay. The latter would win. One supposed anomaly can’t trump the entire corpus of scientific evidence. Unless of course you’re a YEC, as Tour apparently is.
If so, that critic was wrong. And your scientific judgment is highly suspect.