Some Comments from YouTube Watchers of the Tour-Farina Debate

[Boris_Badenoff]

@Eddie

Well, it has been going for 28 years now, with no sign of diminished activity. The DI Press puts out book after book, Bio-Complexity publishes several articles every year, other publishers publish books by ID authors, the ID people are frequent guests on various interview shows.

All of this religious babble is aimed at the scientifically ignorant America public. Three decades and still nothing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. How come Stephen Meyer, Behe, Bechly, Tour, Dembski, Wells, Luskin, Axe, Berlinski, Denton and many others are not producing any tangible results in any field of science? When are Stephen Meyer, Behe, Bechly, Tour, Dembski, Wells, Luskin, Axe, Berlinski, Denton going to show us some results instead of sitting on their butts all day writing books for gullible rubes?

@Eddie

A new crop of ID people has come up, many of them working in information theory, computer science, and so on, and their names are starting to appear in print, in journals of engineering, information theory and so on. As some of the founders of ID have passed on or begin to fade into the background, it looks as if a new generation is taking their place.

That is not true. Who in this new generation is taking their place? Name 'em and claim 'em™.
One lie that comes to mind in one of his books Reverend Meyer wrote that ‘information theorists’ (plural) talk about specified complexity. When asked who “they” are he then admitted that he knew no one but William Dembski and William Dembski himself is not much of an information theorist since he has published exactly 0 papers so far on the topic in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

The Gospel of Intelligent Design Magic has finally been replaced by a new and more comprehensive argument from ignorance called “The Gospel of Specified Information Magic” brought to us by that organization which is always on the cutting edge of pseudoscience, The (non) Discovery Institute. This church of discovery has never actually discovered anything because it’s never spent dime on actual research and development. Look them up. One of their leading crack (pot) (non) scientists has invented this all new argument from ignorance and his name is Stephen C. Meyer. Reverend Meyer’s argument is a classic example of backward reasoning. He’s looking at the complexity of (or “information” in) modern cells and incredulously claims all that information couldn’t just pop into existence, some magical being had to put it there. Of course he hasn’t a clue how this was supposedly done but only why. The sadistic fine designer of information specification requires worship, praise and souls to torture for all eternity, mostly for accepting science and/or common sense over religion. But how does Reverend Meyer know what the first cells even looked like billions of years ago, or how much information they contained? Obviously primitive cells were not nearly as complex as they are now after 4 billion years of cellular evolution. So what did the fine designing intelligent tuner do, just squirt a tiny bit if information (DNA) in the first cells and then let them evolve for billions of years? Why wouldn’t the fine designing specific tuner just make DNA specifically complex and informationy right away? I guess that’s it because Meyer seems to be convinced DNA cannot not evolve. Everything else evolves but for some unknown reason not DNA or information as he calls it. Apparently that’s been static for 4 billion years. I’m pretty sure Meyer thinks that the tuning information design specifier did just that, that DNA and life have always been pretty much as they are today, just like his particular specific holy science information scripture says. After all Minister Meyer insists millions of species just magically appeared during the Cambrian Period and “fully formed!” (He thinks evolution would have to build life forms one part at a time like a LEGO set.) “What good is half an eye?” he cluelessly exclaims. Anyway Meyer’s backward reasoning means he’s got everything else backward. The origin of life did not require preexisting intelligence but the origin of intelligence required preexisting life. Nobody needs to disprove Meyer’s ridiculous claims, he needs to disprove that. Good luck.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@paulm12

I totally agree here. However, I’d argue these bad faith attacks give legitimacy to ID in two ways:

1. If the objections to ID appear based more on a on other reasons besides the research itself, then this gives bystanders like myself a pragmatic reason for ignoring them. In other words, objections to the motivations of “debunkers” ends up undercutting the debunker’s own objections to ID and can demonstrate that such attacks are self-defeating (Such a case can be made based on the behavior of the “skeptical community” and the writings of people like Marcello Truzzi).

I agree in general that, to the extend all anyone does is attack people’s motives, that does not suffice to show the ideas advanced by the badly motivated people are therefore automatically invalid. If there were no actual substantive responses to ID, and if there were only people attacking the ID people for their motives, that would be a problem.

@paulm12

2. People in the ID community allege they are unfairly targeted and excluded from scientific journals. Attacks from people like Farina support this claim.

Here I disagree. Nothing Farina has done or said supports any claim that ID proponents are being unfairly targeted and excluded from scientific journals. You’d have to show where and when this happened.

Yes people in the ID community allege that, though mysteriously most of them, such as Michael Behe, Douglas Axe, Ann Gauger, and others have published papers in the peer reviewed literature. If there really was some sort of conspiracy against them it is odd they nevertheless manage to get papers into mainstream journals from time to time.

In fact I think this whole spiel that there’s some sort of conspiracy against ID in mainstream science is itself a highly suspect and problematic claim exactly because it is so typical of the proponents of all sorts of pseudoscientific ideas and concepts. The fact is that ID has had it’s hearing in the scientific community and was and continues to be found wanting.

We have to contend with the fact that some times the reason certain claims or ideas can’t get published is because those ideas are bad for all sorts of reasons ranging from logically flawed, ignorant of prior work that strongly contradicts it, completely unsupported, etc.

The only way to win over the scientific community is to keep working on your ideas and convincing them with evidence and experiment. And if those attempts never manage to convince the scientific community, that’s a red flag on the merit of the ideas themselves.

There’s only so far we can go debating the hypothetical possibility that the scientific community more broadly is illegitimately suppressing ID gaining mainstream acceptance without actually taking a look at the ideas and concepts advanced by ID proponents, such as Irreducibly Complexity, Complex Specified Information, and so on.

Is it true that these ideas have failed to gain mainstream acceptance because there’s a conspiracy against ID, or is there actually something wrong with those ideas? I claim it’s the latter and I have looked at them. The ideas are fundamentally flawed.

The only way for us here, now, to make any headway on this point of disagreement is to go and take a look at those ideas ourselves.

@paulm12

It makes bystanders who know nothing about ID say “hey, maybe ID researchers have a point about being targeted, I wonder if they have a point about anything else.” At the very least, it shows we can’t just take someone’s word for it that ID has no merit, and perhaps have to look at the primary literature to make a decision.

I would welcome any actual in-depth look on papers produced by ID-people in the primary literature.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@paulm12

@Faizal_Ali

Have you any evidence that OOL is commonly misrepresented, and its successes exaggerated, in undergraduate science education?

As I mentioned in my video, the fact that the public thinks we are farther along than we are is reason to think either some claims are exaggerated or that the public thinks OOL is easier to solve than it actually is.

That was quite a leap. How did you determine that Tour’s representation of OoL research is factual, Paul?

[paulm12 (Paul Mayer)]

@Mercer

Not a valid point. They started their own journal and still don’t manage to produce any tests of ID hypotheses.

I’m guessing you also dismiss sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, etc as equally unscientific due to a lack of tests for such hypothesis, and would similarly argue those studying such fields are not scientists or researchers?

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@paulm12

People in the ID community allege they are unfairly targeted and excluded from scientific journals.

Do you believe them?

[Nesslig20]

@paulm12

I totally agree here. However, I’d argue these bad faith attacks give legitimacy to ID in two ways:

1. If the objections to ID appear based more on a on other reasons besides the research itself, then this gives bystanders like myself a pragmatic reason for ignoring them.

I would agree that it is reasonable to ignore the bad-faith criticism of ID, but the existence of bad faith criticism against ID does not give legitimacy to ID. That would be committing “fallacy fallacy”.

Also… what research? The “best” research papers they provide are just criticism against evolution. I have yet to see a paper that gives merit “FOR” ID. Just so we are clear, critiques against evolution ≠ giving merit for ID.

@paulm12

In other words, objections to the motivations of “debunkers” ends up undercutting the debunker’s own objections to ID and can demonstrate that such attacks are self-defeating (Such a case can be made based on the behavior of the “skeptical community” and the writings of people like Marcello Truzzi).

This also does not follow. Responding to the debunkers on the basis of their “motivations” (e.g. they have a naturalist world view so of course they would be against ID or creationism) would be committing the appeal to motive fallacy. You may think that the debunkers are hypocrites for doing the same thing (the debunkers are criticizing ID for their religious motives), and you think that this makes their arguments “self-defeating”, but that would be committing the tu quoque fallacy.

So, I don’t see how any of this would give legitimacy to ID.

On a side note: it is not a fallacy to criticize the motives of an institution that has authored a document outlining a political strategy with an explicit fundamentalist religious agenda. Responding to such criticism by saying "well, you too are biased with your naturalistic world view" would be an extreme false equivalence, even assuming that this inferred bias is correct.

@paulm12

2. People in the ID community allege they are unfairly targeted and excluded from scientific journals. Attacks from people like Farina support this claim.

The news that David Farina is in charge of scientific journals has escaped me. Sarcasm aside, the IDs claims that they are unfairly excluded by the scientific community is an age old complaint that has no basis whatsoever. And even assuming it is true that they are being unfairly excluded (which it isn’t), it still would not give any legitimacy to ID. That would be a variant of the Galileo Gambit fallacy.

[Faizal_Ali]

@paulm12

As I mentioned in my video, the fact that the public thinks we are farther along than we are is reason to think either some claims are exaggerated or that the public thinks OOL is easier to solve than it actually is.

You will find the general public is misinformed on a large number of scientific topics. I don’t think we can assume that is due to exaggerated claims by working scientists.

@paulm12

From this thread:

@Boris_Badenoff

It’s pointless to argue with someone who is that religious. He’s either insane, a liar or in my estimation both

And if you read his comment in context, he is criticizing Tour in particular for allowing his religious beliefs to impede his ability to accurately appraise the scientific literature.

In any event, since it is not impossible that you will be able to find someone who criticizes Tour purely because of his religious beliefs, I will modify my position to saying that by far most who criticize Tour and ID in general do not do so solely on the basis of their religious beliefs, but because those religious beliefs cause them to make scientific errors and misrepresentations.

I have to say, your comments here about ID suggest you are not actually very well-informed about the nature of the movement. You seem to be just regurgitating standard ID propaganda, such as that the entire scientific publishing industry is biased against them and that is why they cannot get any research published. Or that critics of ID just engage in ad hominem insults rather than reasoned arguments.

I suggest you better acquaint yourself with the criticisms that have been made of ID.

[Mr_Wilford]

Yeah, Capturing Christianity did a review of the science with an astrochemist and the guy called Tour slimy for that. Even accomplished chemists he knows would struggle to do it under pressure

[John_Harshman]

@vjtorley

I’m not saying that the three Nobel Prize winners I cited are ID proponents. The point is that they took Eberlin’s book seriously enough to review it, and they did not pooh-pooh it, but treated it with respect.

Alternative hypothesis: they are friends of Eberlin’s who obliged him with quotes, regardless of their views on the subject or on the book itself. Also note that few (if any?) are competent in the field of evolutionary biology.

@vjtorley

Those sound like endorsements to me. Wouldn’t you agree?

Yes, those three do. Others, not so much.

[vjtorley (Vincent Torley)]

Hi @Mercer,

@vjtorley

Some contributors to this thread have scoffed at Eddie’s claim to know dozens of scientists within the Intelligent Design movement. I believe he is speaking the truth.

That was the original context of the list of 18 scientists I provided.

However, if you want me to comment on Eddie’s claim that Tour has “far greater knowledge of what actually happens in chemical reactions than a good number of origin of life researchers,” then I’d like to propose the name of an origin-of-life researcher that Tour can at least go toe-to-toe with in a debate: Lee Cronin. Judge for yourself:

Are we close to discovering the Origin Of Life? James Tour vs Lee Cronin

As you can see, Tour and Cronin were able to carry on an intelligent, civilized discussion. Especially telling is James Tour’s comment on how he’d react if the possibility of abiogenesis were demonstrated (1:15:52):

Absolutely, and that naturalistic explanation doesn’t bother me at all, and it doesn’t upset my faith at all. I would just say, “Wow! God’s all the more magnanimous. So that’s how He did it.” I mean, it wouldn’t upset my faith at all. So I welcome a naturalistic explanation, and I think in life, we’re going to continue to see naturalistic explanations of things, and it doesn’t shake my faith at all. I mean, this is why we’re here.

Later, Tour goes on to disavow “God-of-the-gaps” arguments.

This gives the lie to Dave Farina’s repeated claim that Tour is letting his religious beliefs dictate his scientific claims on the origin of life.

Let me remind readers that Tour was named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine in 2013, and that he was ranked one of the top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade by Thomson Reuters in 2009.

But let’s turn your question on its head. Have a look at the list of 25 authors who co-wrote the following scientific paper: The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions ( Life 2020 , 10 (3), 20; Life | Free Full-Text | The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions ). Do you seriously wish to maintain that each of these 25 researchers is more knowledgeable than Tour about the field as a whole? Somehow I doubt it. Rather, it would be more accurate to say that each of them knows a great deal about one small piece of the big picture, and that just a few of them are capable of taking a broader overview of the problem. What Eddie and I are saying is that the majority of scientists who co-author origin-of-life papers probably don’t know as much as Tour about the difficulty of making a proto-cell from simple organic chemicals. As a chemist, he has a good feel for how far we are from life, in contemporary research on the subject. And I applaud his modesty.

I shall lay down my pen here.

[Faizal_Ali]

@vjtorley

This gives the lie to Dave Farina’s repeated claim that Tour is letting his religious beliefs dictate his scientific claims on the origin of life.

No, it might just demonstrate that Tour has learned how to play the ID propaganda game of never saying the silent part out loud by admitting they are just creationists cosplaying as scientists.

@vjtorley

But let’s turn your question on its head. Have a look at the list of 25 authors who co-wrote the following scientific paper: The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions ( Life 2020 , 10 (3), 20; Life | Free Full-Text | The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions ). Do you seriously wish to maintain that each of these 25 researchers is more knowledgeable than Tour about the field as a whole?

Why would they not be?

@vjtorley

What Eddie and I are saying is that the majority of scientists who co-author origin-of-life papers probably don’t know as much as Tour about the difficulty of making a proto-cell from simple organic chemicals.

There remains no evidence to support this claim. And the fact that he believes T. rex red blood cells have been found argues strongly against his ability to objectively appraise evidence when it relates to his religious beliefs.

[Boris_Badenoff]

The creationists portray themselves as a persecuted minority that is being criticized for who they are rather than their ideas. They dishonestly point out that their opponents are atheists and secular humanists and members of an entrenched scientific orthodoxy even though every Christian college and university in the world that teaches life sciences teaches evolutionary theory

[Art (Arthur Hunt)]

@vjtorley

But let’s turn your question on its head. Have a look at the list of 25 authors who co-wrote the following scientific paper: The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions ( Life 2020 , 10 (3), 20; Life | Free Full-Text | The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions ).

As an aside, I do not find this review to be particularly good. It may be that it is already out of date, but as a source of current or forward-looking information, I was disappointed.

@vjtorley

What Eddie and I are saying is that the majority of scientists who co-author origin-of-life papers probably don’t know as much as Tour about the difficulty of making a proto-cell from simple organic chemicals.

@vjtorley, I would assert with confidence that you and @Eddie are wrong. Tour did not even draw a complete picture of the chemistry underlying possible prebiotic mechanisms for peptide bond formation in his debate with Farina. Whyever would you think he is better informed about much more complicated subjects that are far outside of his wheelhouse?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Art

@vjtorley, I would assert with confidence that you and @Eddie are wrong.

When do any of the atheists here ever assert anything except “with confidence”?

Just to clarify, while vjtorley has stated my position roughly accurately, I originally wrote not “the majority” of origin of life scientists but only “a good number”; i.e., I did not insist on 50% + 1. My original statement was compatible with a fraction considerably less than half.

I believe that a man whose scientific research involves the generation of reactions to produce more complex things (such as nanocars) from simpler molecules is more likely to understand the difficulties in producing life by unguided chemical reactions than, say, a biologist who does fewer actual experiments and concentrates mainly on speculations about possibilities regarding crystals, volcanic vents, RNA world, etc. That is not to say that there are no origin of life researchers who know a lot about chemistry; I’m sure there are. That’s why I said only “a good number”, which leaves open the possibility that an even bigger number of origin of life researchers wouldn’t fall under my criticism.

If I were an origin of life researcher I would welcome Tour’s scientific criticism (though not his aggressive manner), because criticism forces one to be more precise and more rigorous regarding one’s claims and procedures. The problem, as I have pointed out before, is that even if there are some individual points on which Tour’s criticism turns out to be scientifically invalid, the origin of life people tend to have a metaphysical bias (i.e., that however life originated, it was by some combination of accident and uncaring natural laws, involving no planning or design at any stage), and that very bias is always going to incline them to reject one of the possible answers to the question, i.e., that the origin of life was not an accident. With Tour around as a gadfly to show that a number of the “accidental” suggestions aren’t very plausible, origin of life studies are likely to become more rigorous, and more honest. Even the most hard-boiled materialistic atheist should not resent a challenge that, if met, will make his or her work better.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@vjtorley

Later, Tour goes on to disavow “God-of-the-gaps” arguments.

This gives the lie to Dave Farina’s repeated claim that Tour is letting his religious beliefs dictate his scientific claims on the origin of life.

That is obviously a non-sequitur. Tour could in principle be lying about his own motivations, or not be sufficiently aware of them. At the very least I think we can all admit we can be influenced by them and it can some times lead us to make errors in reasoning, or give uncharitable interpretations to evidence and arguments advanced by out interlocutors.

I think we can give a concrete example of where Tour’s background biases is leading him give a patently absurd interpretation of abiogenesis research.

In several of Tour’s talks that he has posted on his youtube channel you can find Tour complaining about use of the word “spontaneous” when describing certain chemical reactions proposed to have occurred under prebiotic settings. Tour complains that when abiogenesis researchers use this word spontaneous it means (paraphrasing from memory) they have no idea what is going on and are basically appealing to a sort of magical naturalism of the gaps.

This is fantastically false and misleading.

Tour himself uses the word spontaneous to describe certain chemical conversions in his own papers.

The use of the word spontaneous is common and established vernacular in the chemistry and physics literature. You might find a sentence like “Upon heating a body of water, some of the water will spontaneously convert to steam when the temperature gets high enough.” You can think of countless examples where it would be entirely appropriate to use the word. It’s not used any differently in the origin of life field. It just means, basically, it happens quickly when the conditions are right(it is hot enough, has the correct pressure, the right pH, etc.)

No magic, no naturalism of the gaps, nothing “not understood” or anything. We know what happens when water boils. We don’t have to pretend the word spontaneous describes magical conversions unexplained by, inconsistent with, or outside the laws of physics. This is Tour being unreasonably uncharitable in his understanding of the language employed. There are other examples where Tour seems to suffer a truly strange inability to think reasonably when he’s dealing with the evolution and origin of life literature.

There is a real case to be made for him being exceedingly afflicted by his opposition to this field’s presumed theological implications.

It does no good to just dismiss any and all statements by religious people concerning evolution and the origin of life as being fueled entirely by some sort of debilitating emotional bias, but let’s also not pretend people can’t be affected by it ever, that we need to always without exception take people at their literal word, etc.

No. I reserve the right to exercise judgement about a person and character that goes beyond statements they make. A holistic consideration of everything Tour has said and does on this subject, shows he’s not as entirely unbiased and willing and open to it’s findings, as some literal statements of his here and there might be designed to suggest.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Boris_Badenoff

They dishonestly point out that their opponents are atheists and secular humanists and members of an entrenched scientific orthodoxy

Yet “Boris” himself complains that the entire world of Biblical scholarship, in every college and university, is an entrenched academic orthodoxy that does not recognize his brilliant interpretations of the Bible. The very line of argument that Boris thinks he sees in “creationists” – (“we’re a persecuted minority, and the scientific establishment is not fair to us”) – is the line he takes toward the university scholarship that sees his work as crank pseudo-scholarship. He isn’t in a really great rhetorical position to fault “creationists” for a persecution complex.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@vjtorley

However, if you want me to comment on Eddie’s claim that Tour has “far greater knowledge of what actually happens in chemical reactions than a good number of origin of life researchers,”

That was the context that you excised. Did you do so deliberately?

@vjtorley

… then I’d like to propose the name of an origin-of-life researcher that Tour can at least go toe-to-toe with in a debate:

Irrelevant, as debates are worthless and you don’t have an informed opinion. You and/or Eddie have to know what they know to support any such claim.

@vjtorley

Especially telling is James Tour’s comment on how he’d react if the possibility of abiogenesis were demonstrated (1:15:52):

It has nothing at all to do with Eddie’s claim. Please stop flailing.

@Art

@vjtorley, I would assert with confidence that you and @Eddie are wrong. Tour did not even draw a complete picture of the chemistry underlying possible prebiotic mechanisms for peptide bond formation in his debate with Farina. Whyever would you think he is better informed about much more complicated subjects that are far outside of his wheelhouse?

Good question for you, no? Who knows more: you and Eddie or a biochemist and an RNA researcher?

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@paulm12

@Mercer

Not a valid point. They started their own journal and still don’t manage to produce any tests of ID hypotheses.

I’m guessing you also dismiss sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, etc as equally unscientific due to a lack of tests for such hypothesis…

No, I would not, because unlike ID, they do test hypotheses.

@paulm12

…and would similarly argue those studying such fields are not scientists or researchers?

No, as your premise is objectively false. I predict that you will not make any attempt to support it.

Back to my question:

@Mercer

How did you determine that Tour’s representation of OoL research is factual, Paul?

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@vjtorley

But let’s turn your question on its head. Have a look at the list of 25 authors who co-wrote the following scientific paper: The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions ( Life 2020 , 10 (3), 20; Life | Free Full-Text | The Future of Origin of Life Research: Bridging Decades-Old Divisions ).

If I thought you knew anything about scientific journal quality, I’d accuse you of rank dishonesty in picking a paper from an MDPI journal, but I don’t so I won’t.

I will, however, say that your choice of it shows that you have no idea who knows how much about anything in science in general, though, as MDPI journals are bad in a wide variety of fields.

@vjtorley

Rather, it would be more accurate to say that each of them knows a great deal about one small piece of the big picture, and that just a few of them are capable of taking a broader overview of the problem.

No, it is completely wrong because Tour’s “broad overview” is not even an overview, much less a broad one. When has he mentioned metabolism-first hypotheses? AFAIK, they don’t even exist to him.

@vjtorley

What Eddie and I are saying is that the majority of scientists who co-author origin-of-life papers probably don’t know as much as Tour about the difficulty of making a proto-cell from simple organic chemicals.

I understand you completely. What both @Art and I are saying is that your vast ignorance is obvious because “making a proto-cell from simple organic chemicals” is but a tiny sliver of real OoL research. That’s the very foundation of Tour’s misrepresentations, and it also shows that you have zero knowledge base on which to construct an informed opinion.

[Note that Eddie isn’t responding. Why do you think he isn’t, Vincent?]

[paulm12 (Paul Mayer)]

@Mercer

That was quite a leap. How did you determine that Tour’s representation of OoL research is factual, Paul?

I’m referring to the study Tour cites where 41% of respondents believed scientists created life in a lab such as a frog, and 72% believed scientists had already created life such as bacteria. If you have problems with the methodology of the study I’d encourage you to look for the article when it is officially published. The one Tour showed me is a pre-publication. I have no reason to question the results of the study.

@Nesslig20

The news that David Farina is in charge of scientific journals has escaped me.

My point in my video is simply that Farina (and Tour, but to a lesser extent) are doing a poor job communicating how science is actually done. Of course Farina is not in charge of any reviews or journals (he doesn’t even have a PhD and I do not believe he has any published work period). Still, if the public forms their opinion on the methodology of science from such channels and not from reading the primary literature (which most people are incapable of anyways due to their educational background), this is how they will believe science is “settled.”