Atheists Review Professor Dave’s Debate | Evolution News
I don’t know how many of you watched the train wreck referenced in this EVN post, or even care, but I found the “atheist” twist amusing……
17 thoughts on “What passes for “debate” these days…”
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I didn’t bother to watch the debate, though I did hear that it was a trainwreck (expected, which is why I didn’t watch).
Yes, the DI is quick to blame atheists for everything that they don’t like.
Written by a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute? You don’t achieve such a lofty position without seeing the world through religious filters, so that everything is either supportive or atheist.
I can understand why this debate would be painful to watch for those here who are trying to defend the models proposed by those running science labs.
While Tour gets very heated and shouts a lot at least he is making good arguments. Can anyone say the same about Farina?
Tour opens by talking about initiating life and the challenges of obtaining pure building blocks. He stresses that the topic is not about him and they should stick with the data. And he looks forward to going over the data provided by Farina. So what does Farina do in his opening remarks? From the very beginning he opens with an attack on Tour saying that he is an apologist who lies about the origin of life on the internet. Not a good start.
According to Tour, the following are the timescales some researchers claimed that life would be created in the lab. Lee Cronin in 2011 – 2 years, Jack Szostak in 2014 – 3 to 5 years, Dimitar Sasselov in 2014 – 5 years. These times have been and gone.
So far I’ve only looked into the first claim and it would appear to be genuine. At the end of this talk from 2011, Lee Cronin did say that he hoped within the next two years they would create life in the lab.
To me, Tour’s accusation of ‘overblown hype’, has some justification. At what stage is the research at now? The problem would seem to be more complex than these researchers thought.
There are plenty more origin of life claims, And this inspires me to dig deeper. For instance, when it is claimed that researchers have synthesized ribonucleotides in the lab, what procedures did they follow? What were the molecules they started out with? I am looking for clarification on topics such as these.
As Tour so often says, we’re all clueless. Although Farina claims to be ‘not clueless’.
CharlieM,
I agree Dave did not help himself here. I think teaching non controversial topics may work better for him professionally.
One of the problems for origin of life is the same for evolutionary theory. Given life is based on sequence based functional information is there any known natural mechanism that can produce this information?
I have not seen a logical model yet by anyone, have you?
I do not accept your “given”.
By itself, functional information does nothing. I see life as based on thermodynamics (or on energy flows). Energy flows without information still do something. We describe a fire as being alive, and we describe an electrical circuit as being alive, because the energy flows are there.
Yes, life as we know it today can be said to use information. But it uses that information to control and manipulate energy flows. It is those energy flows that are basic to life.
“I see no ships.”
How would you recognize a “logical” model, given scientific models are mathematical?
Indeed. One property of a living organism is exploitation of an energy source to maintain itself out of thermodynamic equilibrium with its immediate environment. Death is a process of returning to equilibrium.
Alan Fox,
A model without chicken and egg problems. The simple to complex model does not answer the chicken and egg question. It also does not answer the question of the arrival of new functional information.
Update: The lines are all lit up at EVN. No less than six (and counting) posts on this “debate.” Luskin is doing a multi-post “take down” of Professor Dave. Like I posted at Peaceful Science, both parties got what they were looking for as a result of this train wreck—publicity and notoriety……
I’m taking as an admission of the bankruptcy of ID. So now they are all grasping at straws.
Perry Marshall has arranged for $10 000 000 to be handed out to anyone who can demonstrate this in a self-sustainable way.
The problem with models is that intelligent beings are a prerequisite for setting them up.
CharlieM,
These kinds of monetary incentive are pure theatre. The incentive, for any scientist worth their salt, is the thing itself – the discovery.
Who doesn’t like a bit of theatrics?
Of course gaining grant money plays no part in the incentive of any scientific lab. 🙂
Not really. To get the $10M, the code has to be patentable.
Ask a patent attorney why this is problematic…
If you want to see a fair-minded and reasonable review(instead of all the bullshit propaganda we get on the DI outlets), with criticism of both parties statements in the debate, I recommend this episode on the “Capturing Christianity” podcast:
I’m certainly no fan of Cameron’s, but his guest is origin of life researcher (and Christian) Paul Rimmer who goes over a selection of respective points and arguments by both Tour and Dave. I agree wholeheartedly by almost everything he says.
I would have a few small quibbles that I can’t be bothered to spell out unless someone asks.
In response to ChrisprCAS9 on the peacefulscienceforums I wrote this longer-ish post on my own views of what was lacking (from Dave’s side) in this debate:
https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/some-comments-from-youtube-watchers-of-the-tour-farina-debate/16045/15?u=rumraket
With respect to Tour I think his biggest problem is that we aren’t actually clueless, and many of the questions he pose(which are reasonable questions in and of themselves) are usually based on some dubious premise that we need X(be that peptides with amino acids with carboxyl- or amine-groups in their side chains, fully 3′-5′ linked RNA, phospholipid membranes with protein transport complexes, or what have you) found in modern life, at the origin of life, otherwise there couldn’t be any sort of life. He just doesn’t know that, yet he keeps claiming it. I’d just ask him to prove it. “Tour, you say we need X at the origin of life for there to be life. Prove it!”
Thanks for the link. I’ve just finished watching the podcast and agree that this was a thoughtful review.
I’d love to see a discussion between James Tour and any origin of life researcher as long as they could keep it fairly understandable for a general audience.
I do wish my schoolboy experience of learning chemistry had been more productive than it was. But we are never to old to learn. Without the chemistry being as it is, and the multitude of ways in which elements can combine, earthly life would be impossible.
It’s noticeable that, for many posts by Farina, Tour will counter with several of his own, rather like kairosfocus and BA77 used to do on UD. My question to Tour would be, why bother? If the field of OOL research is as baseless and moribund as he suggests, why not ignore it, let it just wither and die of its own sterility? What harm could it possibly do?
Or could it be that, as with kf’s and BA77’s attacks on evolution, he fears OOL research as an existential threat to his own religious beliefs?
As for Professor Dave’s alleged rudeness, I suspect that this is simply trolling, pushing Tour’s buttons to trigger an eruption He understands that such debates are little more than a spectator sport. Each side gets its turn at bat and each side gets to declare victory at the end of the match because victory in such cases is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, nothing more