Absolutely. 'Professor' Dave is determined to portray James Tour a religious fundamentalist whatever he says, to play up to his fans and boost his YT channel. Farina is the only fundamentalist here, but in any case all that is really beyond the point. Tour's points should be considered on their own merits; it doesn't even matter that much who presents them.
Exactly. What bothers me are the people who watch Dave’s channel and walk away thinking this is how research is done. Like you said it doesn’t really matter who presents them, what matters are the arguments. If Dave thinks Tour isn’t able to consider the facts he should just ignore him. If he’s going to take the time and energy to “expose” him he should at least listen to his arguments.
I used to watch Dave Farina's videos myself (to brush up on my own chemistry knowledge) until I saw the way he insults people he doesn't agree with in some of his so-called 'debunks' and presents his own opinions as carved-in-stone facts. Then I decided there are plenty of other places on the internet offering similar videos without abusive hosts. Personally, I think his real mission is the so-called debunks and the educational videos are only there to draw supporters. I also posted some comments on his debate with James Tour on his own channel, but they didn't appear, whereas the ones I posted on Tour's channel did. Farina admitted in a podcast interview that he edits the comments.
@@Zanzopan will you give a syllogistic reason or two for your reasons for calling tour a liar. Will you prove that Tour "works" for The Discovery Institute?
I am trying to be as charitable as I possibly can be; however I agree with your conclusion and understand why others would not extend the same level of grace.
You need to learn what an ad hom is. Saying that someone is a bad faith liar is not an ad hom when he objectively is. Tour claims to be open to the idea yet his content that he puts out says the exact opposite.
@@Jdelli0916 no, you need to learn what an Ad Hominem is and it’s different forms. From Wikipedia (Dave has done most of not all of these) ibb.co/L5x8mQ4
Farina presents scientific papers, Tour doesn't address them. You are actually strawmanning Dave here. You protect Tour because you're a theist and a Rice student. Address the chemistry. You don't do that. Dishonest video.
I had encounters with Dave years ago and the way he reacted to any pushback on his claims felt like I was interacting with a sheltered middle schooler. Every reasoned response I made was met with accusations of me being clueless or an idiot. I was so careful to not get into namecalling or insults back with him but eventually he just blocked me.
hun the IS no reasonable argument debutting ether the age of the univerve,EARTH abigenesis or Evolution that U think that U as SOMEONE who think tour abiogenesis take is reasonable is laughable u disqualified yourself from the discussion stopped being about IF 50 years ago its about HOW now and ´god´ is not the answer also i wanna REEMIND YOU DAT YOUR BOOK DOES NOT EEVEN HAVE ABIOGENSIS INTO CELLS and so forth sp live with the FACT THAT THOSE ARE IRON AGE FABLES
Bahahaha he just did the same with me, and I looked at some recent comments and see he name calls everyone that disagrees ‘dipshits’ and ‘retards’ He said I wouldn’t respond refuting his ‘science’ so i did And he couldn’t answer 2 questions, crickets after that….
I love the way you stated your point properly, a thumbs up for that. Dave really needs to check what he's releasing as content because a lot of it is irrelevant or won't work in prebiotic fashion. He's just there dulling the minds of his followers.
Dulling the minds of his followers...from the comments made here by Farinas followers...their knowledge of history and science is woefully lacking but understandable as a result of their high priest hater.
Have you seen Dave’s follow-up video where he fact-checks James’ debate performance? I think that’s worth a watch. He actually responds to the claim that he committed nothing but ad hominem attacks during the debate right upfront in that video. Also, he claims his rude, smug demeanor he gives off when he talks down to and insults James’ fans (or fans of anyone he debunks) on Twitter or in his TH-cam comments is justified because he’s debunking pseudoscience and liars and that’s how ignorant idiots deserve to be spoken to. He gets really upset when you criticize that about him, and will claim you’re tone-policing him and that you shouldn’t be more offended by his tone than people like James lying about science.
Thanks for your comment. I have not seen the follow up video and I don’t intend to. It is quite a claim for Dave to argue others “deserve” to be spoken to a certain way simply because he doesn’t like their content (regardless of whether or not he thinks they are “ignorant idiots”). Dave is not an authority on the demarcation problem and his use of the term “pseudoscience” appears more emotive than substantive (has Dave offered an agreed upon criterion for what differentiates science from pseudoscience? Has he engaged with the literature from people like Laudan, Feyerabend, and McNally who argue there is no clear definition of science itself? Who elected or appointed Dave to represent what science is “legitimate,” especially considering his lack of background in Philosophy of Science?) Of course Dave’s tone has nothing to do with whether he is right or wrong, and in that case I do not intend to “tone police” him. Regardless, my issue is not his tone and instead his claims about Tour that are misrepresentations of Tour’s own views. My issue is also his use of accusations without defining an agreed-upon, working criteria for which to judge things. My issue is also the fact that as a science educator and communicator, his use of psychoanalysis is a poor example of what is actually done by scientists and how they get research accepted into journals.
@@hamster1717 Sure, mate. Dave broke down the primary literature in his videos. Just saying. A sincere question , why don't you put Tour through the same scrutiny in your video?
@@JazzyArtKL I think he does a good jobs of explaining the science the question is whether the science is relavent. The formose reaction reaction produces prebiotic chemicals but not in form or quantity that is relavent to biogensis.
Dave would have been laughed out of journal club in medical school. When asked to support his statements he says "it is in the title ". I would have been scored lowly if I argued from the abstract much less the title. I think Dave is still working his way up the first slope on the Dunning-Kruger Effect Curve. I truly don't intend that as an insult but his sophistry appears to be quite obvious.
The data presented (e.g. RNA world) is taking the best possible approach to this. When Dr. Tour's religious views are irrelevant to the origin of life research, then what did he add, that people working in the field do not know yet? Nobody claims, that we have already generated life via that. We are saying, that this is one possible explanation without claims of magic. You say, that Dr. Tour is not making those claims of magic/special creation. What the scientific community is saying is, that this is a pretty good approach within the amount of data, that can produce the most important biomolecules. It's wrong to say, that Dr. Tour's critique is justified. He did claim, that we are clueless. That is just not the case. Dr. Tour is trying to sneak creation in silently, because people not trained in the field will jump to the conclusion: "can NOT YET be explained naturally - therefore magic explains it".
Tour isn’t claiming he knows anything OOL researchers “don’t know.” Rather he’s claiming OOL researchers are overblowing their claims when communicating with the public. Tour isn’t “silently sneaking creationism” in any more than Dave is trying to appeal to some anti-teleological process to “solve all OOL problems.” In either case there are a lot of theories still on the table and lots of open problems.
Gee, I don't know how Dr. Tour can make his views more clearly. He has stated on numerous occasions that yes, science may in fact eventually be able to discover the origin of life or even be able to create life. He's just saying that the current state of science is nowhere near that.
@@1RedneckCajun "He's just saying that the current state of science is nowhere near that." Then he stated nothing, that researchers in the field do not yet already know. But he fueled the god of the gaps fallacy of many confused people, who will jump to the conclusion: "We don't know - therefore god.
@@MrLogo73 I disagree. Dr. Tour explicitly stated that he does not use God to explain origin of life. He approaches the issue solely through science. I don't how he can be more clear. Perhaps people will jump to the God of the gaps conclusion and that's their right. But it's not at Dr. Tour's encouragement. Dr. Tour also states that perhaps one day we'll understand the origin of life problem but we're currently nowhere near that.
@@1RedneckCajun His recent upload shows, that you're wrong. The video is titled: "Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity with Eitan Bar, Why Don't Jews Believe in Jesus?" So, he does argue in favor of Christianity and thus for the Christian deity. It's dishonest to hide that behind diffuse objections to abiogenesis, while he has not himself provided any mechanism for creation. Uttering the word 'magic' isn't providing such a mechanism. How would he even possibly provide that, when each and every act in his view is supposed to be 'supernatural'. So I can literally say, that he's clueless about how that deity actually made anything at all. This even includes being clueless about this deity itself.
That was a brilliant, thorough breakdown and analysis of a debate which had so much potential, but turned into a one sided character assault. Much obliged and subscribed.
tour slandered, dave showed papers tour lied like he did in his content and repeat yea no it looks like that because tour was a joke of a person but u want to belive him because u want him to push god
My opinions are these: (1) Dr. Tour should have ignored Farina from the very beginning, Farina is not a scientist, and he doesn't have enough scientific background (other than reading condensed versions from textbooks for his regular videos, although his animations are pretty good). Dr. Tour needs to spend his time to debate with a worthy opponent, he should not have spent a minute with Farina on the same stage, as Farina doesn't have anything worthwhile to offer, (2) So I hope hereafter Dr. Tour and everyone else will just ignore Farina. I think Farina's motive is money from TH-cam viewership, the more aggressive statements he makes, the more discussion follows and he eventually makes more money. It seems like a great plan for him. (3) Farina doesn't have the maturity to engage in any such debates, I think, especially when he declared in his opening statement "We are here because of James Tour. .....And that is why we are here, to highlight Jim’s fraudulence. There is nothing to debate. ...He is a toxic individual and a pathological liar ", obviously Farina doesn't seem to know that the debate was about OOL and not about James Tour. (4) If anyone makes even a mild criticism addressed at Farina in his channel, his immediate response is a few lines full of expletives, especially with his favorite f-word, augmented with other words like dumb, stupid, idiot, moron, etc., and after that, he will block the person who made the criticism. He doesn't even have the maturity, nor the decency to reply rationally with substance, (5) at the end, Farina doesn't represent science, he was never a science communicator for any reputed organizations as far as I know, he is just a self-declared science communicator. (6) I think Dr. Tour should go to court accusing Farina of slander to tarnish his reputation, on the basis of Farina's statements of lying and fraud. It is a very high bar to show that someone is lying, it is even higher for showing fraud.
Wow, you're biased towards ID, aren't you. I stand with Dave all the way, the science that is, but not with his delivery. Tour mixes in religion with science. Period. Paul states he hasn't proven that, bit that's also his Rice bias talking. Tour asked for the ABOLITION of the OOL field. That's not a point of concern? Please. Clear bias.
@@JazzyArtKL None of what I wrote above has anything to do with ID, in fact, it is just the opposite. My opinion is that Dr. Tour should debate with a respectable OOL scientist who will address Dr. Tour's questions directly and give a better explanation of OOL, rather than reading the titles of papers without giving any details of the mechanisms. Farina did not even answer one question clearly, other than saying there is this mountain of papers or data, and a reputed OOL researcher may do much better. So, with that context, what do you mean by "you're biased towards ID, aren't you."? " I stand with Dave all the way, the science that is," Two questions: so aren't you biased towards Farina, as he never showed much of any science? "Tour asked for the ABOLITION of the OOL field" Tour or anyone else can ask whatever he/she wants. You can ask to keep OOL funded. It is a free country.
@@JazzyArtKL No.. no.. he just had to show one paper with that explanation. A person working in this field could have given the answer with proper limitations, But Farina doesn't know the subject well and doesn't want to discuss the limitations.
Greetings DJ Paul Mayer. I have been following the Tour - Farina debate for a long time now. I have found Dr. Tour to have plenty of authority to discuss all aspects of his field as it pertains to OOL. Dr. Tour has shown (I believe successfully) that in order for OOL to succeed, it must first create the supportive base of inorganic and organic molecules that have the capability to move on towards the OOL and then towards evolution. Other scientists may state that Dr. Tour does not have the understanding to effectively discuss evolution and OOL, but I would think that the issue is the failure to understand what Dr. Tour has been saying. To get to their neighborhood of chemistry, they have to first pass through his area of chemistry. If they are unable to successfully do this, then like any other land locked country, they will never be able to get their ship to set sail. I wanted to say that I found your review of Dr. Tour and Mr. Farina to appear to be reasonably fair and balanced. You did ask some good questions that many sides of the community would be smart to at least review. I would just like to add though in the discussion of the Tour-Farina debate that there may be some breakdown by the moderator of the debate. That when a participant goes way off base from the subject that they should have stepped in and brought them back to the subject. Another was to help a bit more in moderating the emotional outbursts and aggressive personal, and participant, attacks. The other issue I had noted from the debate was when one of the debaters stated they had no intention of following the agreed upon format and had also brought in extra props that were outside the bounds of the agreed upon papers allowed for the debate and discussion. At that point, there wasn't going to be any kind of informative debate that the viewers were really hoping to see.
I am a Christian and I also love this debate so I take tours side 100 percent but even I was disappointed in Tour. I think he could have stayed calm and kept it formal. He got emotional and was shouting. Tour has the upper hand in this topic and he didn’t push his advantage as well as he could have. Tour also has never debated before. It’s not really what he does. He works on his research and teaches his class. As for Dave, sadly, I didn’t expect anything different from him. I was in one of the comment sections on one of his videos and Dave himself says some pretty disrespectful things. His videos are pretty much what you saw in the debate. He uses slides and pretty much just the titles of research papers to argue his case while also talking down about others who don’t agree with him.
I agree, I think Tour could have been more calm and even-headed and it would have helped his case in the public’s eyes. While I don’t think this invalidates any of the points he brought up, I do think it would have helped the debate if he didn’t shout.
Well said, Paul. Thank you. Also, I wonder if the real reason for Dr. Tour's skepticism is that he actually knows how difficult (and dangerous) it is to make molecules, and--judging from the patents he's associated with--he's really good at it. I love Dr. Tour and I hope Dave Farina gets the help he needs.
When Farina fails twice to achieve just a graduate degree, forget Ph.D. & post-docs, yet considers himself a "Professor", then help may not be possible. Below are Nobel laureates in biology Leland Hartwell & Sydney Altman, along with atheist/Medal of Freedom recipient Craig Venter ALL saying "it is impossible that humans will EVER know life's origin". You'll note Richard Dawkins sits silent as his entire sine qua non is destroyed:th-cam.com/video/xIHMnD2FDeY/w-d-xo.html
Yeah, I think Tour’s experience with organic molecules in particular helps him understand just how difficult the OOL problem is. I also think he is right to call out some of the claims by OOL researchers as overblown philosophy; some of the mechanisms proposed have not been demonstrated in a prebiotically relevant ways.
@@hamster1717 "Yeah, I think Tour’s experience with organic molecules in particular helps him understand just how difficult the OOL problem is." That is an example of ultracrepidarianism. James Tour has no experience in origin of life research and is wholly unqualified to judge its veracity.
Dave Farina doesn't need any help. He just presenting the science! You must be a Christian since it creates a clear bias away from science. Bit sad for a software developer tbh.
It’s not “I don’t know, therefore God’. Rather, It’s ‘I know God personally and have a relationship with Him, therefore the Bible is truth.’ As a born again Christian who met the Lord, I didn’t fully believe in the Bible until I knew God personally, and only then did I start reading the scriptures to try to better understand God’s word. James Tour had a similar experience and also met the Lord personally. He saw the resurrected Jesus with his own eyes, which caused him to believe the Bible as truth. This is irrespective of the scientific debate here, but an important distinction. As a scientist, if I didn’t know, I would just say that and not immediately impute that lack of understanding to ‘God doing it all’. Having said that, it is illogical to believe that the universe emerged out of nothing, because nothing can’t create everything. And it’s also illogical to look at any physical object in the world and not think that everything we see has a designer. And this becomes more and more clear the more we learn about the amazing complexities of biology. Scientifically speaking the law of the universe is Entropy, and entropy as far as we know, doesn’t naturally work in reverse. Evolution essentially breaks the second law of thermodynamics and defies Entropy by claiming to creating higher order from a lower ordered state through random natural interactions. That would only happen and be possible if the universe was going backwards through time and Entropy was working in reverse, which we know from science is not the case. Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, and as such is pseudoscience.
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." Max Planck For all of you guys, who so much try to hint that real scientists disregard Consciousness
When i was a teenager and a Christian I was deeply anxious about the things that the New Atheists would say in debates. When I worked up the courage to analyze them critically I realized that much of their postering was without substance. I understand that this debate isn't (or shouldn't be) a direct analogue to a religious one, but Dave brought it down to that level. I was genuinely angry at the way he treated Dr. Tour. Not because of his religious views but because he's manipulative and full of hate. Yeah, that's an ad hominem, but this isn't a debate its the TH-cam comment section lol
Thank you, Paul, and first off, good luck in getting your PhD. This is something that must be the most challenging part of your life: getting through your doctorate! The debate between James and Dave looked a lot like a guy (Dave) came into the debate after a road rage incident. But what is important here is that all of us are concerned in this debate. How DID life begin? What I have gleamed from Professor Tour's descriptions of the simplest cell has literally changed my outlook on life. Paul, can you even fathom this analysis that Dr Tour has stated? The outer membrane of a cell has 10 to the 78 billion possible combinations and only 1 (one) can work. Is this incredible or not? The carbohydrates on the outer membrane of the cell are more complex than the RNA and DNA combined! What on Earth is going on here? When a cell wants to transport material from one part of the cell to another it builds a sort of monorail system which then sends the necessary material to the other part of the cell and then the monorail dissolves. Is anybody listening? Also, all the lipids, proteins, amino acids and carbohydrates must come together at exactly the right time and place inside the cell for it to function, if the carbohydrates carmelize, nature does not keep a lab book to go and make more. Jim goes on and on about how the simplest bacterial cell is so unbelievably complex that for it to have happened spontaneously in some primordial pond is preposterous.
I came to comment only because you're a student at Rice because Farina says Tour planted Christians in the audience to boo and heckle him. As a complete outsider, I had the idea they boo'ed and heckled him because he said they couldn't read, couldn't understand anything they were talking about, didn't know anything about RNA, etc. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure the first time he was boo'ed was when he swore at the audience. From the statistics and Tweets you showed, it seems like the debate was open to all students, regardless of religious beliefs, and that many of them were NOT going to the debate thinking Dr. Tour would win. I would recommend you watch Dr. Paul Rimmer, who is in OoL research, critique Farina's science during the debate on the Capturing Christianity channel. Farina made many mistakes in the area of pre-biotic chemistry. Also, it's almost cringe to me to hear you call him "Professor" Dave, since he dropped out of grad school twice. However, I'm clearly biased in favor of Dr. Tour, but only because Farina attacks Tour's faith much, much more than his science, so as a Christian I just don't like the guy. It's interesting to hear your perspective. It seems to be honest, though much different than mine, and that is refreshing. As Christians, yes, we just want people to critique our work and not our faith. Francis Collins is one of the top biologists in the area of genetics in the world, and he talks about evolution being true often. That's his view on science, but he's also a Christian. Or faith can affect our view of science in some ways, but I don't know how many times Dr. Tour needs to explicitly say that he only uses methodological naturalism in his science and that it is possible to find a naturalistic explanation for the Origin of Life on this planet for Dave to stop attacking him personally. Every person needs to be treated as an individual. And saying someone uses God of the gaps when they have not said anything of the sort, is ridiculous. That's why I'm glad he's out of his depth when it comes to science when he goes against Dr. Tour.
That's right, most students were biased against Dr Tour going in and yet most who went (or watched the livestream, which was watched by thousands of current students) thought Tour was the winner. I will admit I am not a big fan of Dave Farina, especially after this debate. Meanwhile after talking to Dr Tour and corresponding with him over email in the last few months I believe he was a very reasonable person. It really does appear to me that Farina has something against Christians/Christianity that is clouding his views and judgement. Part of the problem seems to be Farina thinks naturalism/atheism is a "default position" and not one subject to historical and cultural factors. Someone could just as easily claim his ties with the CFI and collaborating with atheists/satanists like Aron Ra cloud *his* judgement, plus his lack of publications or having a PhD keep him from speaking as an authority on the matter. I am glad Dr. Tour did not go down this road, but I do think it is worth putting out. Farina's swearing at the audience pissed off a lot of current Rice students because they thought he was being disrespectful and insulting. I do not even think a majority of Rice students are Christian yet most polled after the debate were not a fan of his rhetoric and thousands complained they were put off by him swearing and insulting the audience. If Dave is claiming Tour stacked the audience and only people from Tour's "Bible Club" are booing and heckling him, he needs to provide evidence for this claim. I think it is categorically false, especially given what students said after the debate. I watched Rimmer's video and thought he was very reasonable and agreed with almost everything he said (at least about the research I understand). My girlfriend is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering who looks at polypeptide folding (Tour's first question) and explained why she thought Tour asked a very good question because this is her area of research. To be honest, I don't think you and I see much differently on any of this.
@@hamster1717 my brother has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering (and an MBA, but that of course was not a science degree). It's cool that your girlfriend is in that field. It's a very difficult major. She must be intelligent.
@@JazzyArtKL "Science is on Dave's side." First; there are very few OOL scientists. What of them there are may very well do lots and lots of science. Second; With all of the research that has been done, they are in fact just this side of clueless as to the chemistry and mechanisms required to make even a yeast cell. We need life for life to propagate. All of the splicing of dna of living cells doesn't count. And if you really thought about it you would have to admit that is the case.
Great video , you have articulated exactly what I felt when I watched the debate . Farina is an embarrassment to science education . In my view he clearly doesn’t understand the science at such a detailed level such that he was capable of getting up and educating the audience how the science could explain the origin of life at least in a way the laymen can at least understand the concept even at a simplistic level . As Feynman said if you can’t explain it then don’t really know it . Farina completely failed to explain anything or address any of tours questions . He spent 2 hours basically doing an adhominem attack on tour . He deserves nothing but scorn and as you articulate well in your video he completely fails to understand the entire basis for philosophy of science that has been built up over the last 400 to 500 years .
Cue 2:45 - Another alternative? Dave is so convinced that there is no Creator that he doesn't care what Dr. Tour believes, or says, or knows. Dave simply wants to shut down Tour and cripple Tour's impact on people who might come to believe in a Creator or confirm their belief. Dave simply hates Tour's effectiveness in challenging the state of science and Darwinian Evolution. The emphasis on God comes from Dave, his insistence in a material universe that doesn't allow the possibility for any kind of Creator/God. Your quotes from Dave reveal nothing about Tour...but reveal much about Dave. Following their debate, my biggest surprise is the refusal of Dave's fans to acknowledge Dave's refusal to address scientific questions, his nasty personal attacks lobbed at Tour, and Dave's mockery of faith and those who profess faith. My final take on Dave is that nothing about science matters if as long as Dave gains subscribers and fist-bumps from people who love hearing Dave's tirades.
Tour always says eventually we will discover how life originated scientifically, but we are very far from that, unlike other scientists claiming we already know
Begs the question means assumes what it should be proving and does not mean raises the question. Correct use : « When I asked the dealer why I should pay more for the German car, he said I would be getting 'German quality', but that just begs the question. »
I don’t think I articulated that point very well. What I meant to say is Dave can’t argue Tour’s views are wrong for his disagreement with consensus without presupposing consensus is correct. Since Tour already claims he has reasons he is disagreeing with consensus, what matters is not *that* he disagrees with consensus but his reasons for doing so. In other words, Dave’s argument would go like this P1: Scientific consensus is correct P2: Tour disagrees with scientific consensus C: Therefore Tour is wrong This would be begging the question against Tour because P1 already assumes/presupposes Tour is wrong a priori (and Tour agrees with P2).
Tour's dissent with evolution is enough for me to disregard him as a youtuber/blogger. There are plenty of better science communicators out there. I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider the religious tilt to his opinions as a science communicator, and I don't think he's immune to "overhyping" his opinions (as he criticizes other people of doing). "We're CLUELESS!" is just a different kind of hype. His critique of the underlying papers needs to cross into the realm of actual science before anyone should take his OoL opinions more seriously. There is a proper way to make those critiques, and his seeming inability to do so really sinks the whole premise.
I understand what you’re saying. I also wouldn’t use the term “clueless” either, though I do think we are pretty far from answering the big questions in OOL (for many reasons). Keep in mind Tour is never claiming to be knowledgeable about Evolution and the problem of evolution and abiogenesis are completely separate, in that a self-replicating cell is required for Darwinian evolution in the first place. His critique of OOL argues the same; that current claims in OOL are not “actual science” either in that many of the proposed explanations for abiogenesis have tenuous empirical support in a prebiotically relevant way. If Tour’s criticisms are not actual science, then clearly the speculative accounts offered abiogenesis are not either until they have more empirical support. My point in this video is simply to point out that Tour is unfairly targeted by Dave. Dave isn’t going after people like Francis Crick who argues origin-of-life makes more sense happening by the result of another alien life that “planted” life on earth due to similar probabilistic concerns. The science is far from being settled
Criticism of Abiogenesis as an idea predates Dr. James Tour whereas if you read the literature published by scientists over the last ten years you will notice that no one even attempts to provide a successful Abiogenesis event scenario.
@@sentientflower7891 That is factually incorrect. There are people attempting that with various working hypotheses(see the work of people like David Baum, or Nick Lane, or Moran Frenkel-Pinter, and there are others.) The problem is that Tour is at least partially right, at least in the sense that so far we really do only have very few clues to life's origins. But that also means there is an incredibly vast space of possible chemistries and physical conditions that needs to be explored and tested, and many effects and phenomena needs to be analyzed and understood. Scientists don't just want to show that it can happen under some specific conditions (or happen upon life's origins by some fluke they can't reproduce), they want to understand how it happens when it does. Instead of just blindly testing various combinations of settings systematically one after another-because there are so many possibilities-it would take forever to go through all of them. It is better to try to narrow down the relevant principles first, and then when these are understood, do are more narrow and educated exploration of the relevant conditions.
@@rumraket38 no, sorry, you haven't paid close attention. There are not multiple pathways to Abiogenesis. There isn't even a single pathway to Abiogenesis. All those pathways that Professor Dave mentioned do *not* lead to Abiogenesis and *cannot* lead to Abiogenesis either singly or by mixing. And this remains true even if you provide the Abiogenesis researchers with all the molecules essential to life in pure concentrated form sourced directly from cells. Abiogenesis remains impossible even if you slice a million cells open and dump all their contents in a flask and do *whatever* you wish with those molecules.
@@rumraket38 think you are looking at this all wrong on why he is calling them clueless. Take this example, you are talking to a mechanic about your car and you say to the mechanic, I know how to get my car running. You tell him a battery, the engine, some spark plugs and oil. The mechanic will look at you and will tell you, you're clueless on how a car works. Just knowing how a part of life is done doesn't mean your theory on how life starts is correct because you only know about just the one part and that's it. So I say James is right about the OoL group is clueless, but what you fail to realize is James is always saying that with enough time it will be figured out. He is not saying we won't figure it out and that we know nothing, he is just being the mechanic in the group and pointing out that they are clueless and stop making the claims we are close when they aren't or we know how to do it.
If you watch all relevant vids in chronological order, it’s blatantly obvious Dave argues against multiple straw men by either misunderstanding or deliberately misrepresenting James.
That's Dave's MO on everything I've seen him do, from arguing about transgenderism to the pandemic to defending himself against accusations of logical fallacies.
Dave is absolutely more about his worldview [naturalist] , and attacking apologist than his "science". He likes to attack other academics' education --- but went to two [2] low tier colleges, struggled to get a master's degree, changing majors to complete it --- and was a mediocre high school chemistry teacher. But, that does not mean "professor" Dave doesn't have anything to say on these matters. I am equally put-off by obnoxious apologist. Dr. Tour is one of the most published and peer-reviewed scientist in the world, so he equally has something to say on this matter. I am a person of faith, but like every other human that has lived, I am very curious about OOL. I believe that science can eventually answer this issue without it impacting any belief system. The sad thing is, post pandemic and climate change science trust issues (primarily at the hands of politicians) led me to want to re-establish trust in science, and what I may be able to do as a ordinary human about climate change. Stumbling in to this debate certainly hasn't helped. Peace be with all of you.
Great presentation. I used to follow Dave as an undergrad watching his educational videos pertaining to chemistry and biology. Honestly, those contents were great helpful materials. However, when he started targeting various religious personalities, this was a massive red flag. The guy is infantile, rude, haughty and vulgar, even in the comments feed. Anyone who calls him out or begs to differ from his viewpoint is brushed off as an idiot and a religious drone. Somehow ppl who disagree with him deserve to be treated rudely. Childish. And religious-affiliated ppl aren't trustworthy in educating physical sciences. Why? Because they believe in "fairy tales". Give me a break. That debate with Dr Tour was a trainwreck, a bloody disaster and an insult to scholarship. It's a loud quarrel between two grown men. The guy seems that have some vendetta and prejudice against religious beliefs. Anyway, I stopped following him for a long while now.
I also see some of Tour's critique echoed in some of the professional literature criticising the RNA World hypothesis. It also appears to me that if scientists are undecided on the RNA world, then this is a good indicator about a host of unsolved problems Wet Dry cycles are also seemingly in conflicr with Hydrothermal Vent scenarios. So again, to a non-expert like myself, these are indicators of vast inferential gulfs. Obviously the structure of this debate made it nearly impossible for Professor Dave to say "we just don't know" very much. Lee Cronin on Unbelievable with Perry Marshall seemed much more candid and (though optimistic) humble about where we are.
Since all the components of living systems can now be purchased (via harvest from living things), and the Origin of Life researchers are not even trying to make a living thing, I feel "clueless" is a reasonable descriptor.
I was desperately wanting substance in the debate. I wanted to learn. Instead I saw one man relentlessly throwing insults while the other was losing composure. An eager-to-learn audience would've learned nothing except that we're apparently too stupid to comprehend anything. It was a clown show.
Thanks for your honest review of this. I watched the debate and was disappointed that Dr Tour allowed himself to get so upset. He may have appeared to many people to be reacting because he realised he was wrong. I don’t think this is the case. He was reacting out of frustration with not being listened to by Dave Farina. Dr Tour is 100% correct about the abysmal state of origin of life research and it amazes me that Dave still can’t see that.
also i love how tour pretends he made any points it the debate all is saw was dave showing him papers that DO THAT and tour going nunununu i dont want it nununun take chalk nununununu god did it @@nzadventurefamily3728
That's ironic coming from someone who also didn't bother to take one single look at the science. And we're just gonna agree to disagree about "Dave losing."
@@ollaitsrealgood- Are you suggesting Dave "won" something? I took quite few looks at "the science", and saw all sorts of weakass BS being put out by Dave, in addition to the attacks based on his faith. It's a valid way to estimate the win/lose aspect when you see a lot of "personal attacks" from one side. Not dispositive, but a generally good indicator, it seems obvious to me.
@@chbu7081 completely wrong. It was obvious Dave came to the debate without any arguments. He came not to argue the science, but to denigrate Jim. It was nothing but ad hominem attack after ad hominem attack. Frankly it was embarrassing for Dave.
Dave is a youtube persona. he has no qualifications at all and just takes stuff other people say and packages it into youtube videos for others to watch
@@galileog8945 has he >Taught BS level in colleges >Published in any scientific journals Did he not >Drop out twice by his own admission You know what "AFAIK" means, right, I don't need to study someone's biography to make a comment
@@isaacclarkefan In his video he said he stopped his MS program to follow a career in music. So he is not a college dropout. What he taught and his puiblication record is not the issue. Yes, you need to know what you are talking about before slandering someone. Otherwise, I would be fully justified in saying that, AFAIK, you are a child molester.
Dave filled his time with a lot of deflective noise so that he doesn't have to deal with the question of where did life come from and have they succeeded in replicating it in a laboratory. It wouldn't matter if James Tour stated that he did it for religious motives. Dave wanted the debate to be about the term "clueless" rather than "Have they created life in the laboratory?" I don't think those who attended or watched the debate are ignorant of the topic, therefore blame science for Dave's shortcomings.
Right? And the fact this guy said he thinks the ID people are "behaving more scientifically than people who advocate evolution do," is absolutely adorable. For someone who prattles on about the "P in PhD standing for Philosophy," he sure demonstrates an utter lack of epistemic reasoning.
Haha you seem to be the one who’s butthurt that your fake pseudo-intellectual idol got exposed. The fact you can’t refute anything Paul says in this video speaks volumes
@@ollaitsrealgoodExplain where he’s wrong then? You dave fanboys are pathetic. You’re in denial because you know he’s been exposed as the quack and pseudo-intellectual that he is.
Great video. Someone who can make nanocars (at the atomic level) might just have a clue about the level of difficulty of putting together something that is even vaguely close to being "alive."
This video is a defense of the integrity and credibility of Dr Tour. Who cares what you of Davevthinkm about Janes Your or his motivations? Why not spend your time and mine focusing on the substance of the scientific claims about the science that spawned the debate? Let's say Dave is wrong about what he thinks are Dr Tour's motivations. Do you have anything to say about the science that Dr Tour says "we are clueless!" about?
Farina needed his nappy changed and carried on like a Baskin Robbins salesman.Tour stepped up as an angry parent, he wanted to care for Farina but should have just let him do his funky stuff.
There is a lot we don’t know, science is provisional, and there are massive unanswered questions. I’m sorry about the Farina/Tour “debates,” there is a tendency on both of their parts to get loud and angry. Tour should keep going, but engage with people with actual curiosity.
That’s a fair point, and I see where you are coming from. I don’t want it to appear that I have some bias against Farina (based on his name or otherwise). He does have some graduate training in research (as do I). At the same time as I mention in the video, a PhD is important, in that you are able to convince a committee of professors you can do independent research and understand how it is done.
@@JazzyArtKL Sigh.....Sure Tour was shouting a lot and very upset - had his buttons pushed hard by Farina - however, it's TOUR doing the science and Farina doing the insults - without any science other than quoting the headings.
He gave it himself. For damage control, he also explains in one of his videos that he isn't really a professor, but deliberately hides it away in corner of his channel few people will go to. I watched several dozen of his videos, thinking he was a professor, before I found it.
Dave Farina has published a two hour video claiming success at the debate and ehich includes several dialogues with scientists engaged in Abiogenesis research which I encourage everyone to watch paying especially close attention to what the sciebtists say and what they don't say.
I’ll check it out. Paul Rimmer did a recap of the debate on this channel called Capturing Christianity; he seemed like a pretty reasonable guy and was careful to qualify his claims too
@@sentientflower7891 Rimmer is a Astrochemist at Cambridge who does work on prebiotic chemistry. He agrees with Dr. Tour that we are no where close but wouldn’t use the word “clueless.” He was quick to point out where he disagreed with Tour and Farina in his video. As a result he isn’t really “siding” with either of them as much as discussing the chemistry
@@hamster1717 "Clueless" is an ambiguous term and that alone invalidates the debate as a serious intellectual endeavor. Regarding Abiogenesis having a clue isn't enough. Astrobiologists ought to know that much. Anyone seriously engaged in astrobiology would actually need at least one and preferably many demonstrably successful paths to a successful Abiogenesis event. Should no authentic successful pathways be known in the year 2023 an astrobiologists might as well conclude that no such pathways exist.
@@sentientflower7891 That's Rimmer's point, at a certain place you end up over semantics of the word "clueless" and are playing a word game. In Dr. Tour's opening statement he clarified what he meant by "clueless" and, in my view, did a very good job detailing the big open problems that lack experimental support. Dr. Rimmer compared it to going from the 2nd floor of a building to the first while the solution is at the center of the earth.
i didn't make it all the way through the video... however i can clearly see the flaw in the logic used. Knowing the chemistry is a detrimental part of being able to determine who is fudging things (intentionally or not). Paul admits that he is not a chemist and is removing that part from his analysis, which is a huge error. there are so many analogies that could be made but i would think simply thinking it through would lead most people to believe they couldn't make a determination on who is speaking out from a good faith position with out in depth research.
@@JazzyArtKL The video was never intended about science itself. It was intended to focus on the philosophy of science. And it did a good job in this regard.
-But Tour is not an origin of life researcher and he attempts to discredit the works of actual origin of life researchers despite having no experience in the field. All he does is argue from authority. -The thing about religion here is that it is clear that Tour interprets research using his religion as a hidden presupposition. -Then the thing about publications is that yes Dave has no publications in the field. But the point is that he does not lie about the field as Tour does. He does not slander researchers. Something that James Tour does often. It's about who is representing the field accurately and it's not James Tour. -I believe that what you said about Dave not offering any substantive critique of Tour is flat false. All the response videos to Tour that Dave made were all substance with actual origin of life researchers explaining how Tour got things wrong.
Far from the mark. Tour is simply looking at the chemistry involved and the claims made by the OOL researchers - and he shows up the extreme lack of proper procedure and jumping to far-fetched, totally unwarranted conclusions given all the steps they've left unexplained. Someone's bias is showing.
@@kevinrtres it's not about the conclusions. Tour ignores research that is uncomfortable for him. Like how in the debate, he pretended like systems chemistry is not a thing. You can't claim that we are clueless about the origin of life if you won't address all the relevant research and instead accuse researchers of fraudulence.
@@fayadrahman552 Well, if it's not about the conclusions then what on earth are research papers for? So maybe Dr Tour didn't like the systems chemistry because he is unfamiliar with it. That doesn't change anything. Dr Tour is highlighting the fraudulent claims that have been going around in text books for 70 years now - and he is going purely by the so-called conclusions reached via the chemistry research. Does systems chemistry make any difference? Does it somehow make life magically appear from non-life? It doesn't and cannot and never will bring about spontaneous eruption of life as we know it. The reason is simple - the chemistry in the cell prohibits exactly such spontaneous events from disturbing it and furthermore - even when all chemical compositions or all required structures are in place there's still that tiny little detail of how it all gets put into motion. So far no one has even given that idea the faintest of thought, they are too busy speculating ( fruitlessly I might add ) about how things can arise spontaneously.
@@JazzyArtKL I think Paul's bias is simply based on what he sees from both sides - and seeing Dave's total lack of respect for the actual science involved in total contrast to James. As I said above - Tour is tackling the lack of integrity regarding the actual chemistry and so he doesn't have to have "experience in the field". IT's just as well he doesn't have any experience in the field - otherwise he'd be following along with the crowd in their duplicity.
This is not a persuasive defense. You quote Farina’s bottom-line conclusions while ignoring the literal hours of video where Farina substantiates them. Farina makes no “a priori” claims, and it is difficult to believe you sincerely think he does if you watched his videos. 1) Farina systematically debunked Tour’s chemistry-related arguments, and showed that he was talking about a topic outside his field. Farina explained at length why synthetic chemistry and origin of life are separate fields. You address exactly zero of this evidence or argument. 2) Farina showed Tour, in his own words, crediting the Adam and Eve story and the authority of scripture. He even doubted the age of the earth and of the dinosaurs, based on a false claim about fresh dinosaur blood being found. 3) Tour gets very angry and shouts a lot when discussing this topic, including in the debate. It is not at all a reach to conclude that Tour’s religious views are coloring his views of scientific topics outside his field of expertise. It’s also not a stretch to conclude that, when Tour constantly argues (badly) against natural explanations of life’s origins, he is trying to carve out space for a divine explanation. Farina also demonstrates that Tour changes his message depending on his audience, so the fact that he doesn’t literally tell you that he thinks God created life and the world, and naturalism couldn’t, is beside the point.
Also, Farina acknowledged Tour’s argument in his video that the public holds some incorrect views regarding science’s ability to create life, and notes that it is beside the point. Tour spreading phony objections to origin of life research isn’t going to help educate the public.
I’ve watched ALL of Dave’s so called responses to Tour’s videos. At no time does Dave ever demonstrate that Tour is incorrect in his understanding of the chemistry. Dave routinely over represents the claims of OOL research. Dave simply accepts OOL arguments as a matter of faith.
"It is not at all a reach to conclude that Tour’s religious views are coloring his views of scientific topics outside his field of expertise..." is correct but is a major understatement. Whoever does not see this is either totally stupid or is a victim of the same type of cognitive dissonance afflicting Tour.
The real issue is that the existence of the natural world (time, space, matter, information) is what rules out a naturalistic explanation. Origin of life, evolution, and intelligent design each presume the existence of a natural world so none of them address the real issue. Dave and other atheists speakers must put on a show to avoid the real issue. They have had tremendous success doing it.
I would also add logic and mathematics to this list; both of these consistently defy naturalistic explanations. I recently finished reading Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos" and while I disagree with Nagel on some things his issues with materialistic/naturalistic reductionism were well stated. He is also good buddies with Alvin Plantinga and I think the two of them are some of the greatest philosophers in the past century (I realize this is a very strong claim). Plantinga's work on epistemology has influenced my approach to research significantly.
Well, that's what science and spiritual approach to life should have been doing, however its hard when science is dominated by ideology of materialism and spiritual approach is hijacked by religious ideologies. Any ideology claims some final understanding on the world. However people still have gazillion of questions unanswered so clearly those ideologies are not complete and do not answer deepest questions about life, they are just hindrance on the path to understanding. take materialism that claims - mindless nature without any goal created a wing for an animal that understands aerodynamic - what? Take Christianity that says God did it. What kind of an answer is that? What is even God to begin with... And people supposed to be content with a few scriptures. Neither explain anything, they claim bold conclusions but provide no explanations.
The atheist has an emotional investment in natural causes for the origin of life. However The believer knows that God upholds all things by His power. Therefore miracles are not absolutely necessary.
It is unclear that Tour "stacked" the audience any more than Dave "stacked" the audience with his atheist/satanist buddies. All the posts I displayed were from Rice students only (they need a student email to participate in the discussion).
Maybe he and I will start a band Edit: now I need to go and see which ones he uses. I tend to do more electronic music so my synths are all digital (like the Virus). I also have a few desktop units that aren’t shown here :)
Your video is not a helpful contribution. When you watch Tour's videos, you will see that he is almost always exagerating the gaps of knowledge in the OOL field and misrepresenting the literature. Apart from that there are many points in your video showing that you do not really understand the scientific approach. At 17:03: "Dr. Tour (at least in his debate) never appealed to Professor Dave's academic credentials to lack of citations in the field". Tour did that exact thing in his videos, like a lot. But this is not how science works, you don't need to be one of the Top10 experts in the field with hundreds of papers to understand and comment on OOL research, even Tour should know that. The knowledge is all in the papers and most biology, chemics, geology etc. students will understand them if they dig into the research field. Tour has never brought up any relevant paper supporting his claims, but Dave did, and he is doing a great job summarizing all the research in the field.
Tour is simply pointing out the extreme gap between what the researchers would like the public to believe and what their actual processes produced. The gap is indeed so extreme as requiring proper exaggeration.
@@kevinrtres The OOL researchers are not exagerating anything. No one claims to have understood every single step needed to make a cell. There are lot of questions left and there will be publications for decades, describing solutions to open questions. You might mean the hypotheses which propose a model, concept or solution to specific problems are exagerated. Hypotheses make predictions and will be tested, it might turn out, that a hypothesis is false. Then scientists will come up with a new or improved one. This is how science works. I doubt that you could show us any exagerated claim in a scientific publication.
Thank you for logically laying out why the thrust of Dave's arguments are fallacious and not scientific. Tour is not the flat-earth YEC he wants him to be, and I think that it is causing some cognitive dissonance. It's unfortunate that he won't bother to understand the arguments before he tries to disparage the man. I do really feel sorry for Dave and whatever has caused him to become this kind of person.
Thanks for your comment. I think Dave Farina believes he is doing the right thing, and certainly has a moral thrust to his argument. But I do not think he has taken the time to really listen to Dr Tour’s position. Like you said, Dr Tour is not the flat-earth YEC Farina thinks he is. It is too bad the debate has reached such an aggressive tone
@@1RedneckCajun If you actually did rely on the science, Dave Farina makes James Tour look like a motherf**king idiot. Also, the only reason it seems that way is because James is literally sticking his fingers in his ears and going "LALALALALA." Dave doesn't make himself look better by insisting as vehemently as he does, but that doesn't make him wrong. No one comes away from a sh**-wrestling competition smelling like roses and James Tour couldn't be helped but to literally fill the arena with sh**. Dave Farina is the one bringing science and evidence and James and his sycophantis are the ones complaining that "all he does is read paper titles," demonstrating in real time that they can't even go **that far** because if they did, they'd realize the very titles of the papers discredit and disprove the claims that James Tour makes. Make absolutely no mistake. James Tour does not represent the science in any measurable way when it comes to OOL. He is not correct and he is either pretending to be ignorant of information that has been provided to him (unlikely) or he is deliberately misrepresenting information (and quote-mining people like Lee Cronin to do it) and is telling lies. It must be one or the other and it can't be both. If it's the former, he has no credibility to speak on the subject. If it's the latter, he has no credibility to speak *on any subject at all.*. It doesn't look good for him, and the only reason you think it could is because you are either loosely affiliated with him through Rice University or you are flirting with Christian apologetics and you lack critical thinking skills. Have a good day.
The claim Dr. Tour consistently makes is that origin of life researchers exaggerate the success of their research and that the media are exacerbating the situation. I've heard Dr. Tour say that he does not promote intelligent design and has no opinion about the age of the earth. He also told me that it is conceivable that scientists may one day synthesize life.
When I went to Tour's talk, he said the same thing about not necessarily ruling out naturalistic explanations. I agree with Tour's claim about public Origin of Life perception and he has provided solid evidence for why the public thinks this way (some of the research about the public's perception of OOL is in prepublication).
You know no chemistry. Ergo you couldn't possibly grasp on what they're talking about. James Tour denial is invisible to you. You're left only with the rhetoric. Sorry.
That's a pretty fair assessment. I wouldn't have been so kind to Professor Dave. I saw that whole debate twice along with the Q&A. I'm really not seeing how Farina is not totally embarrassed.
Just to boil it down: Tour's claim that OOL life researchers are "clueless" is not only absurd and indefensible, it's also the deliberate mischaracterization of an entire field of research by someone who ought to know better.
Considering that there are OOL life researchers who have been echoing the same thing that Dr. Tour has been saying about OOL research, it is not a mischaracterization at all. Dr. Tour is just saying what the facts are.
@@shassett79 Pier Luigi Luisi who wrote the book: The Emergence of Life Harold J Morowitz who wrote the book: The Origin and Nature of life on Earth And James A. Shapiro who wrote the book: Evolution: A view from the 21st century
@@BhikPersonal > Pier Luigi Luisi who wrote the book: The Emergence of Life Just so I'm clear: The claim you're making is that Luisi- a guy who literally wrote a book which purportedly "presents a systematic course discussing the successive stages of self-organisation, emergence, self-replication, autopoiesis, synthetic compartments and construction of cellular models, in order to demonstrate the spontaneous increase in complexity from inanimate matter to the first cellular life forms"- thinks OOL researchers are "clueless?" Really? Can you give me a relevant quote?
@@shassett79 Well you have a lot to be worried considering that you would genuinely think that he would view abiogenesis positively. But he indirectly agrees with Dr James Tour. Here is the quote from Pier Luigi Luisi's book The Emergence of Life in the page Introduction xiii: "...but you can have all the low molecular weight compounds of this world, in any quantity you wish, and you will never be able to make life."
tour: screams and cries and ignores literature dave: shows the literature and calls tour out for being a grifter tours fans: DAVE IS WRONG bro like open your eyes and ears for once
"shows the literature and calls tour out for being a grifter" Dave literally argued that simply because the title and abstract of the paper say so. Therefore he is right and Tour. Dave didn't read those papers beyond the titles and the abstract.
@@aetheriox463 He did read the papers unlike Dave Farina. Dr Tour knows the content of those papers. Also Dave Farina broke the agreement with Dr Tour by bringing additional papers which Dr Tour did not read. Apart from that Dr Tour spent all night reading the content of the papers that Dave Farina showed in his videos unlike Dave Farina.
@@sabhishek9289 tour did NOT read the papers, if he had he wouldnt have agreed to the debate because he wouldve understood how indefensible a position he holds.
@aetheriox463 No, he DID read the content of those papers. The authors of those papers deliberately mislead the readers about what they did. The fact is the authors of those papers cheated.
Yeah, unfortunately it is impossible (or at least difficult) to separate the content one is putting out from the medium itself. While such content makes sense for TH-cam (a medium revolving around entertainment, being visual in nature), it does not belong in a university designed to teach students how to become competent scientific researchers able to look at the data and filter all the rhetoric.
Hey@@richardscott982 the notification of your reply came moments after I had commented on another thread. Sorry for my confusion. Also, chill. No rage goggles here.
I think Dave will ultimately win the argument. There are too many good reasons to suspect that the abiogenesis needle will be found in the naturalistic haystack. But Dave makes the argument too much about Tour, and therefore too much about himself. Even if he was fully justified by the facts, the classy position is to focus on the long game and the context that justifies abiogenesis research to begin with. There are counters to Tour's objections that take the high road and win respect in the process.
Keep in mind Tour doesn’t rule out a naturalistic explanation for abiogenesis. I think instead he wishes to communicate “we don’t know how it happened yet” not “we will never know how it happened under naturalism.” The last time I brought this up with him over email he confirmed this.
@@hamster1717 Like I said in other comments, Tour is lying to you. You don't work with the DI and not believe in creationism. Also Tour wrote clueless on each of the 5 points he was arguing for even though OOL researchers are not "clueless" on any of them. Additionally Tour even admitted OOL research achieved 1 during his hysterical yelling AND STILL wrote clueless on it. You cannot take Tour as an honest actor.
Farina is hardly a Professor...he couldn't hold the job..whereas Dr. Tour is a PHD Professor with and endowed chair at RIce university having dozens of patents to his name while having published nearly 800 peer reviewed paper. Farina is way out of his league but he does have a large following of gullibles that follow his diatribes. There is an old saying, "It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it." Farina is a prime example of this.
I had no context on Dave. When I learned he had a TH-cam channel, I was like, "Aha". It explains why he seemed to be performing. Exaggerated arrogance you'd really only see in a movie. Someone like that is much more motivated to keep an audience by any means, than to risk engaging in a debate fairly (which could potentially impact his channel negatively if he genuinely got into it).
I am not sure how much science Dave knows (he has a very good science channel) but he is clearly also a showman. If you look at Tour on google, he has had several debunks against him: channels, blogs...scholarly people who denounced him, politely of course, for what he is: a charlatan and liar for Jesus. Dave does it with pizzazz, has a huge audience, and you may not like it, but it has made a splash and activated the damage-control machine BIG TIME. Tour has always ignored his other critics, but he is in panic mode now. His stupidity, ignorance, mendacity have all been exposed in front of a million people. All he can say is that Dave does not understand science, whereas the discussions, if you are educated, clearly prove the opposite. Way to go Dave!
- Farina is hardly a Professor...he couldn't hold the job..whereas Dr. Tour is a PHD Professor with and endowed chair at RIce university having dozens of patents to his name while having published nearly 800 peer reviewed paper. - You know that the number of papers James Tour published on the field of chemistry which was the topic of the debate - Origin of Life Research - is exactly equal to the number of paper Dave has published? Zero. The difference being that Dave Farina was showing dozens of papers published by respected scientists in the field. James Tour offered nothing but yelling and pointing his chalk at Dave
If you're claiming I'm misrepresenting Dave's views, you need to provide evidence (though if I am, please do point this out). With that being said every single quote I provided from Dave was taken directly from his videos.
@@hamster1717 Sure thing! I present to you your literal entire video as evidence, rofl! The first thing I want to say is that by deliberately admitting you are not going to address the chemistry directly in your video, you are admitting that you do not care about the substance of the actual debate. In my opinion, this means you're really only concerned with freedom-of-speech arguments and tone-policing. Fair enough. I guess that's what I can expect from someone who sat in a crowd that mocked a guest speaker and couldn't take it when they got mocked back. Rules for me, but not for thee! Also, don't be an asshole, you know just as well as I do that you can absolutely directly quote someone and take them completely out of context. This is called "quote mining." There's also not a whole lot of you doing direct quotes; you appear to be keeping your usage of the actual terms and subjects brought up in the debate to a bare minimum (I wonder why that is, are you afraid of the substance of the debate?) You did this when you accused Dave of arguing against James as if James was a Young Earth Creationist. You, yourself, are accusing Dave of Strawmanning Mister Tour. Dave has never once accused James Tour of being a YEC. He accused him of believing in Intelligent Design, *which he absolutely does, undeniably.* You are not Steelmanning his position, which is what it takes to "misrepresent someone's views." In order to Steelman Dave's positition, you need to actually address the chemistry directly. Until you do this, your opinion is literally epistemically unjustifiable, if it's that Dave is "misrepresenting 'Dr' Tour." Simply, if Dave is saying James is a liar and James is demonstrably lying, Dave has a point and isn't an asshole and has every right to respond to the vitriol you all displayed him as a guest speaker the way he did. I get the feeling that if you were to actually Steelman his position, it would involve reading all those papers you and your adorable little "teacher" love to misrepresent or ignore. Especially when he writes for pseudoscientific outlets like The Discovery Institute, who directly advocates for Intelligent Design. I guess you didn't get around to asking Jim about that when you talked to him in person. I mean, why ask hardball questions and hold his feet to the fire about things he has actually said about people like Donna Blackmond and Lee Cronin? That would just be too hard, amirite? Furthermore, James' views on OOL research *are* religiously motivated and relevant to this discussion and to pretend that they're not just means that the only things you've bothered to listen to from your own professor are his lectures in the very B-tier school you attend and that you live in an echochamber. *James himself agreed that they were relevant as part of the terms to the debate.* He also runs a website literally titled "jesusandscience.org." th-cam.com/video/WsMxmYW0ci4/w-d-xo.html This is why it's important for you to directly address the chemistry because concepts like "preexisting information," which he wrote on the chalkboard, are garbage pseudoscience that no serious systems chemist takes into account. Look at this (th-cam.com/play/PLILWudw_84t0scCNBJMZLjuUdFowl9Hc2.html ): Or how about irrelevant amino acid sketches on a chalkboard? Isn't that the equivalent argument of "Engineers don't know how to synthesize bricks, you need a kilnmaster for that, therefore Engineers are clueless as to how to build bridges?" He literally says, "because OOL researchers cannot aqueously synthesize an L-amino acid (a lie, we can, Dave even showed a paper), we do not have a clue." Sticking your fingers in your ears and going, "LA LA LA LA LA" does not absolve either you, or James Tour, from the burden of proof from *that* positive claim, friend. Comparing him to Galileo is also borderline ridiculous too, because the current scientists presenting OOL research are *not dogmatic* (no matter how much your dogmatist professor says they are) and James can be completely open about his views without fear of even the slightest bit of meaningful persecution (he won't be Brett Weinstein'd). Frankly, it's more accurate to compare James and Rice University to the establishment and to compare Professor Dave to Galileo, in this particular instance. It's literally amazing. You seem in love with this guy! Furthermore, Dave did not once use a single ad hominem attack in the entire video. He has actually literally never ad hominem attacked James Tour *literally ever.* He may have used some language you did not appreciate. He may have even personally insulted your little "professor." But ad hominem? Absolutely none of that occurred, and you accusing Dave of that is literally the exact definition of what you asked me for earlier. You are demonstrably and empirically, and in all other measurable and conceivable ways, incorrect when it comes to your usage and understanding of what an ad hominem attack actually is. The fact you accussed Dave of ad hominem attacking when he did not perform one single ad hominem attack is exactly you putting words and context into Dave's mouth. If that is not a misrepresentation of his views, then fuck man, *I don't know what is* and I don't think *anyone* does! *PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!* *Accusing people of being "clueless" because you, yourself, either do not fully read or comprehend or deliberately misrepresent the current state of OOL research is not quite an ad hominem, but it certainly is pretty slimy and it's exactly what your professor does.* Of course you get the impression you get from him when you talk to him IRL, him being James. You didn't even know how to ask him the right questions and all you did was softball him! I restate my opinion. You are merely concerned with the *way* he argues and not the actual *substance* of his arguments. Frankly, Dave is 100% correct when he says, "I am here, representing the science. You are literally denying it. You are a science denier and a liar." And your professor has to Strawman people who aren't even technically involved with OOL research, like Lee Cronin, to do it! Would you care to address that at all? Or any of the science in the papers? Would you care to watch any of the videos that occurred outside of the scope of this debate, including your "professor" and Dave's educational videos? Would you care to address the fact that James is the one who made this personal, by deliberately misrepresenting the actual state of science and by calling people like Donna Blackmond, Matthew Powner, Loren Williams or Jack Szostack liars and frauds by implication? *Jack Szostack does not agree with James about this subject* and James Tour made the claim he did! He literally lied, in real time, to every single one of you, to your faces, and you have the testicular fortitute to accuse Professor Dave of both ad hominem attacks and Strawman arguments when he calls James Tour a liar, to his face?... Bravo, dude. Bravo. I hope you hear me clapping for you all the way out here in California. I really encourage you to learn what an ad hominem attack actually is, too, before you ever accuse anyone of ever having performed one again. That was very embarassing to see you do, frankly, especially after having seen you unironically use the word "philosophy" in a sentence in reference to PhDs. You really should learn to Steelman people's arguments instead of just being a sycophant for your solipsistic little monkey in a suit you call "teacher." See what I did there? You might also want to learn about something called "The Fallacy-Fallacy." You are personally guilty of it. Understanding my response here is to understand why. Never make that mistake again, otherwise you can be called not just naive, but also a fool, and it will be an epistemically justified label, not just an insult. Also, accusing Dave of not "focusing on the science" because he refused to address your cute little "teacher's" completely irrelevant undergrad's acid sketch is a blatant mischaracterization of what happened. Let's not get this twisted. It is a matter of fact, not just anyone's epistemically justifiable opinion, that *YOUR PROFESSOR* is the one here who "refuses to deal with the science." He is not the arbiter of what is and isn't "the science" in this situation because he himself doesn't actually understand it. Professor Dave isn't even claiming to be the arbiter either. He's simply asking why *James seems to MISUNDERSTAND, MISQUOTE, MISREPRESENT so many people.* Before you ever make that argument again, you absolutely need to address the science yourself. Just prattling on about the value of a PhD degree and how "Ph stands for Philosophy" doesn't mean you have a good grasp of what you witnessed. You were clearly in emotional fight-or-flight mode when you wrote the script for this video. Almost no rational thought went into this. I would really appreciate it if you would actually respond to *this* (th-cam.com/video/YAm2W99Qm0o/w-d-xo.html) video in your next engagement with this subject, if you do at all. I think you have good intentions in mind, but I do think you let a person manipulate you and you didn't apply your critical thinking skills. I'm also willing to have a discussion with you about this subject, in video call. That is, if you're brave enough to actually go over some of this chemistry, some opinions from some other people, and some tertiary/ancillary evidence that exists outside of the scope of the debate, whether you or James Tour want it to or not. We'd talk about epistemology, the Scientific Method, peer-review and logical fallacy definitions. Cheers!
dude "God of the gaps" is "We don't know, therefore god", not "We don't know because of god". Tour does not have to argue *anything* from god to be making a GotG argument. However, he is more sophisticated with his manipulation: he does not explicitly make the "we don't know, therefore god", he stops after "we don't know", after putting a LOT of work to make people believe that, and lets others (including himself, to himself) finish the argument with "therefore god" and he gaslights people who point this out. In the debate he was asked, whether he denounces this thinking/argument, he dodged the question with somewhat virtue-signally "they can think whatever they want to think". "being organic chemist means tours views are invalid" Dave never said or implied that, what Dave said was that OoL is an interdisciplinary field with many mechanics that Tour has no knowledge of and no experience with. Tour's opinion is not entirely irrelevant, but he is absolutely not in a position to dunk on the field the way he does. "contradicts scientific mainstream" There is research that addresses what Tour has problems with. Galileo is not a valid analogy. Tour himself explicitly states on his website, that "faith and belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist", referring to himself. You can search that quote and you should be able to find it. We are clearly here, for all practical purposes (don't gaslight me with the philosophy BS, I know that you know exactly what I mean). If life did not arise by naturalistic processes, then what is the alternative? Exactly, we were engineered by a dying alien species and railgunned into deep space to keep life in the universe/galaxy going, and just happened to land here! :D From the evidence we have, it's definitely more plausible than any god hypothesis. Tour's claim that "we are clueless" is demonstrably false and most people objecting to that have fallen for the manipulations of that malignant narcissist. Dave got 3 more OoL-involved experts agreeing with him that, while we indeed do not have the full picture, we are far from clueless on OoL, in his fact-check of the debate. "The public has been misled" I'd probably agree with this and I think Dave also acknowledged this point, though, this is irrelevant to the actual science. "ad-hominem" Calling a liar, a liar is not an ad-hominem. There is a causal link between what Tour says about OoL and his religion, so that is also not an irrelevant point, though it gets closer to being an ad-hominem. However, it is clear that christians stick together, applying their expertise through the lens of their religion. This is not philosophy, buddy - it's psychology. See `TheraminTrees - debunking prophets P1` for useful context in terms of psychology. And Dave *did* address the science - he had papers, remember? Or were you one of the christian flock that tuned out whenever Dave opened his mouth? Do you also think that Dave not drawing anything on the board with chalk somehow shows that he's wrong and that Tour's dead-air time-wasting drawings somehow show that he's right? I have a personal vendetta against teachers that waste time with drawings on a chalkboard, when they could just learn to use a computer and show the same picture on the screen. I've had some and it's incredibly infuriating. "Dave's calling people names in the comments" How about you include the messages he was replying to? This looks like a serious misrepresentation of the actual situation. I've seen the comments he makes this sort of replies to - they are ABSOLUTELY called for and if you showed the messages he was responding to, it would be quite clear. Nobody has actually corrected Dave on anything specific, they all just go "you're wrong" or "you'll burn in hell" or similar crap. .... Dave did actually start out rather polite for Tour - his first piece actually had some respect. However, Tour's gaslighty responses started poisoning the well, and, well Dave wasn't having it, it seems. "naturalism of the gaps" Well, buddy, so far every gap where god was supposed to be hiding in has been filled with naturalistic explanations, while god has not been found in any one of them. This, of course, does not invalidate the idea that god won't be in the next gap, but that's a weak position, just waiting to be dismantled. Naturalism, on the other hand, has a pretty good track record with explaining stuff. And, well, there may be a god that has never in any way interacted with the universe, nor did it even start it off, which would be impossible to disprove. However, at this point, we have to consider what makes -information- knowledge valuable, which you should know - ability to make predictions. The concept of a god does not let us predict anything, at least it hasn't so far. Naturalism, again, has a much better track record here. To quote R. Dawkins: "It works. Bitches." ...oh no, I said a bad word, does this mean that you are now amnesticised, blind and deaf to anything that I say? ...aaand you end with the "everyone can believe what they want" line, _a la_ The fourth kind (stupid movie posing as documentary). I have watched Dave's content. I watched the debate, live and once more later. I tried to watch something from Tour, but the video I watched 2/3rds of was a whole lot of lack of actually relevant content, if you actually care about science (or Tour's science communication skills are catastrophic and any student forced to have him as a teacher would be better off in a north-korean prison camp than be forced to sit in his class). So far, what Dave has said checks out, within my ability to understand it, while Tour keeps ringing alarm bells whenever he talks. Also, you're giving Tour plenty of passes here as well, like many christians have already. The debate _was_ quite the mess, but Dave brought papers, while Tour yelled, dodged questions, changed topics and wasted time. wow, this got long... If you lasted through the whole thing, you really deserve these: 🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔
Ad hom just means and arguement directed at person. In this case you can call a lier a lier but you cannot say they lying because they are Christian. It might be true but it's still an adhomin because adhominen just means towards the person. It is when you direct arguement towards a person rather then arguement. It might rhetorically good, even valid, its just doesn't follow logically as it's not sound arguementation. I think saying he trying to 'manipulate his audience' is an adhom attack not that he is misrepresenting the science itself. In the debate I want to know what was lying about not generally why he would lie. The slander laws a think are good interms of understanding when 'calling a lier [out] is permissable'. While truth is revalent like you can call a lier a lier does cerment your case but i think, the truth docrine. You have to clear in showwing the lies, otherwise you have to express its an oppinion which kind of irelavent. The point that is easier show he wrong then he trying to manipulate people, because it not just that he lying but he knows he is lying. The secondary claim is the one designed to do reputational damage. Which falls in the category of malicious publication or when you publish something to damage their reputation which I think this counts as, because the implication is that he a bad actor.
@@sadface7457 -I wonder if this guy has watched/reacted to any debates involving kent hovind... Tour is kind of on the same level regarding his tactics, and Dave has made a mistake in the past of trying to engage with hovind as if it were a good-will debate. That, along with the context of Dave/Tour situation, may have set this one up the way it was - there's good reasons for what happened, but it did render into a trainwreck.- I thought this was a different video... your (lack of) profile picture made me confuse you with someone else.
One makes one's mistakes and hopefully learns from them. He certainly did not come across very well. However, I am still aboard the science he presents. Dave Farina falls flat on his face.
You really show your true identity as a religious bigot. In this debate the topic has nothing to do with denying Christianity. This protective and impulsive reaction from you shows how you immediately begin to deny science when it has something to do with a process/phenomenon that doesn't match with your mystical book. Bigotry at its finest
You are partly right and partly wrong. Dave provided written documentation to support his assertions. You seem to have missed all that somehow. On the other hand, you are relying only on personal anecdotes in support of Dr. Tour, and you can do much better than that.
Really? Did dave provide documentation to support his assertions or were his citations off point and irrelevant as Dr. Tour pointed out? The bottom line is that there were a couple of telling points that should tell us who was right. Why didn't dave walk up to the chalkboard and answer Dr. Tour's questions regarding the two chemical equations Dr. Tour presented? I would think these should have been two occasions dave would have welcomed. Like wow, finally-here's my opportunity to show Dr. Tour is wrong. I'm familiar with the literature (that was cited) so I know how to show Dr. Tour is wrong by walking up to the chalkboard and showing how it's done. But dave didn't do that. Why? Was it because he couldn't?
Absolutely. 'Professor' Dave is determined to portray James Tour a religious fundamentalist whatever he says, to play up to his fans and boost his YT channel. Farina is the only fundamentalist here, but in any case all that is really beyond the point. Tour's points should be considered on their own merits; it doesn't even matter that much who presents them.
Exactly. What bothers me are the people who watch Dave’s channel and walk away thinking this is how research is done. Like you said it doesn’t really matter who presents them, what matters are the arguments. If Dave thinks Tour isn’t able to consider the facts he should just ignore him. If he’s going to take the time and energy to “expose” him he should at least listen to his arguments.
I used to watch Dave Farina's videos myself (to brush up on my own chemistry knowledge) until I saw the way he insults people he doesn't agree with in some of his so-called 'debunks' and presents his own opinions as carved-in-stone facts. Then I decided there are plenty of other places on the internet offering similar videos without abusive hosts. Personally, I think his real mission is the so-called debunks and the educational videos are only there to draw supporters. I also posted some comments on his debate with James Tour on his own channel, but they didn't appear, whereas the ones I posted on Tour's channel did. Farina admitted in a podcast interview that he edits the comments.
Tour works for the Discovery Institute. You can't do that without being a fundamentalist and a liar.
@@Zanzopan will you give a syllogistic reason or two for your reasons for calling tour a liar. Will you prove that Tour "works" for The Discovery Institute?
@@jasonpowell7622 You mean besides the obvious logical fallacy Tour used as the basis of the argument of his debate?
I am not so charitable. Dave Farina works in bad faith and attacks Dr. Tour ad hominem. Enough said.
I am trying to be as charitable as I possibly can be; however I agree with your conclusion and understand why others would not extend the same level of grace.
You need to learn what an ad hom is. Saying that someone is a bad faith liar is not an ad hom when he objectively is. Tour claims to be open to the idea yet his content that he puts out says the exact opposite.
@@Jdelli0916 no, you need to learn what an Ad Hominem is and it’s different forms. From Wikipedia (Dave has done most of not all of these) ibb.co/L5x8mQ4
Farina presents scientific papers, Tour doesn't address them. You are actually strawmanning Dave here. You protect Tour because you're a theist and a Rice student. Address the chemistry. You don't do that. Dishonest video.
@@Jdelli0916 It is when you say it's because they are christian or something to that effect. 😏
I had encounters with Dave years ago and the way he reacted to any pushback on his claims felt like I was interacting with a sheltered middle schooler. Every reasoned response I made was met with accusations of me being clueless or an idiot. I was so careful to not get into namecalling or insults back with him but eventually he just blocked me.
hun the IS no reasonable argument debutting ether the age of the univerve,EARTH abigenesis or Evolution that U think that U as SOMEONE who think tour abiogenesis take is reasonable is laughable u disqualified yourself from the discussion stopped being about IF 50 years ago its about HOW now and ´god´ is not the answer also i wanna REEMIND YOU DAT YOUR BOOK DOES NOT EEVEN HAVE ABIOGENSIS INTO CELLS and so forth sp live with the FACT THAT THOSE ARE IRON AGE FABLES
Bahahaha he just did the same with me, and I looked at some recent comments and see he name calls everyone that disagrees ‘dipshits’ and ‘retards’
He said I wouldn’t respond refuting his ‘science’ so i did
And he couldn’t answer 2 questions, crickets after that….
i know why, that because your questions are a joke i repeat THERE IS NO RESONABLE ARGUMENT TO GO NUHUHUHUHUHU GOD DID IT@@Practicalinvestments
sad, very sad his behaviour
@@Practicalinvestments LMAO. I'd like to know what your questions even were.
I love the way you stated your point properly, a thumbs up for that. Dave really needs to check what he's releasing as content because a lot of it is irrelevant or won't work in prebiotic fashion. He's just there dulling the minds of his followers.
Dulling the minds of his followers...from the comments made here by Farinas followers...their knowledge of history and science is woefully lacking but understandable as a result of their high priest hater.
Ooh, just regurgitating the lie that your favorite charlatan spews, “not in prebiotic fashion” yes sounds a lot like James
Have you seen Dave’s follow-up video where he fact-checks James’ debate performance? I think that’s worth a watch. He actually responds to the claim that he committed nothing but ad hominem attacks during the debate right upfront in that video. Also, he claims his rude, smug demeanor he gives off when he talks down to and insults James’ fans (or fans of anyone he debunks) on Twitter or in his TH-cam comments is justified because he’s debunking pseudoscience and liars and that’s how ignorant idiots deserve to be spoken to. He gets really upset when you criticize that about him, and will claim you’re tone-policing him and that you shouldn’t be more offended by his tone than people like James lying about science.
Thanks for your comment. I have not seen the follow up video and I don’t intend to. It is quite a claim for Dave to argue others “deserve” to be spoken to a certain way simply because he doesn’t like their content (regardless of whether or not he thinks they are “ignorant idiots”). Dave is not an authority on the demarcation problem and his use of the term “pseudoscience” appears more emotive than substantive (has Dave offered an agreed upon criterion for what differentiates science from pseudoscience? Has he engaged with the literature from people like Laudan, Feyerabend, and McNally who argue there is no clear definition of science itself? Who elected or appointed Dave to represent what science is “legitimate,” especially considering his lack of background in Philosophy of Science?)
Of course Dave’s tone has nothing to do with whether he is right or wrong, and in that case I do not intend to “tone police” him. Regardless, my issue is not his tone and instead his claims about Tour that are misrepresentations of Tour’s own views. My issue is also his use of accusations without defining an agreed-upon, working criteria for which to judge things. My issue is also the fact that as a science educator and communicator, his use of psychoanalysis is a poor example of what is actually done by scientists and how they get research accepted into journals.
@@hamster1717 Weak move. You're not open to counter arguments. It's a very well made video.
@@JazzyArtKL I have better things I can do with my time, like read the primary literature
@@hamster1717 Sure, mate. Dave broke down the primary literature in his videos. Just saying. A sincere question , why don't you put Tour through the same scrutiny in your video?
@@JazzyArtKL I think he does a good jobs of explaining the science the question is whether the science is relavent. The formose reaction reaction produces prebiotic chemicals but not in form or quantity that is relavent to biogensis.
Dave would have been laughed out of journal club in medical school. When asked to support his statements he says "it is in the title ". I would have been scored lowly if I argued from the abstract much less the title. I think Dave is still working his way up the first slope on the Dunning-Kruger Effect Curve. I truly don't intend that as an insult but his sophistry appears to be quite obvious.
The data presented (e.g. RNA world) is taking the best possible approach to this. When Dr. Tour's religious views are irrelevant to the origin of life research, then what did he add, that people working in the field do not know yet? Nobody claims, that we have already generated life via that. We are saying, that this is one possible explanation without claims of magic. You say, that Dr. Tour is not making those claims of magic/special creation. What the scientific community is saying is, that this is a pretty good approach within the amount of data, that can produce the most important biomolecules. It's wrong to say, that Dr. Tour's critique is justified. He did claim, that we are clueless. That is just not the case. Dr. Tour is trying to sneak creation in silently, because people not trained in the field will jump to the conclusion: "can NOT YET be explained naturally - therefore magic explains it".
Tour isn’t claiming he knows anything OOL researchers “don’t know.” Rather he’s claiming OOL researchers are overblowing their claims when communicating with the public. Tour isn’t “silently sneaking creationism” in any more than Dave is trying to appeal to some anti-teleological process to “solve all OOL problems.” In either case there are a lot of theories still on the table and lots of open problems.
Gee, I don't know how Dr. Tour can make his views more clearly. He has stated on numerous occasions that yes, science may in fact eventually be able to discover the origin of life or even be able to create life. He's just saying that the current state of science is nowhere near that.
@@1RedneckCajun "He's just saying that the current state of science is nowhere near that."
Then he stated nothing, that researchers in the field do not yet already know. But he fueled the god of the gaps fallacy of many confused people, who will jump to the conclusion: "We don't know - therefore god.
@@MrLogo73 I disagree. Dr. Tour explicitly stated that he does not use God to explain origin of life. He approaches the issue solely through science. I don't how he can be more clear. Perhaps people will jump to the God of the gaps conclusion and that's their right. But it's not at Dr. Tour's encouragement. Dr. Tour also states that perhaps one day we'll understand the origin of life problem but we're currently nowhere near that.
@@1RedneckCajun His recent upload shows, that you're wrong. The video is titled: "Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity with Eitan Bar, Why Don't Jews Believe in Jesus?" So, he does argue in favor of Christianity and thus for the Christian deity. It's dishonest to hide that behind diffuse objections to abiogenesis, while he has not himself provided any mechanism for creation. Uttering the word 'magic' isn't providing such a mechanism. How would he even possibly provide that, when each and every act in his view is supposed to be 'supernatural'. So I can literally say, that he's clueless about how that deity actually made anything at all. This even includes being clueless about this deity itself.
That was a brilliant, thorough breakdown and analysis of a debate which had so much potential, but turned into a one sided character assault. Much obliged and subscribed.
tour slandered, dave showed papers tour lied like he did in his content and repeat yea no it looks like that because tour was a joke of a person but u want to belive him because u want him to push god
My opinions are these: (1) Dr. Tour should have ignored Farina from the very beginning, Farina is not a scientist, and he doesn't have enough scientific background (other than reading condensed versions from textbooks for his regular videos, although his animations are pretty good). Dr. Tour needs to spend his time to debate with a worthy opponent, he should not have spent a minute with Farina on the same stage, as Farina doesn't have anything worthwhile to offer, (2) So I hope hereafter Dr. Tour and everyone else will just ignore Farina. I think Farina's motive is money from TH-cam viewership, the more aggressive statements he makes, the more discussion follows and he eventually makes more money. It seems like a great plan for him. (3) Farina doesn't have the maturity to engage in any such debates, I think, especially when he declared in his opening statement "We are here because of James Tour. .....And that is why we are here, to highlight Jim’s fraudulence. There is nothing to debate. ...He is a toxic individual and a pathological liar ", obviously Farina doesn't seem to know that the debate was about OOL and not about James Tour. (4) If anyone makes even a mild criticism addressed at Farina in his channel, his immediate response is a few lines full of expletives, especially with his favorite f-word, augmented with other words like dumb, stupid, idiot, moron, etc., and after that, he will block the person who made the criticism. He doesn't even have the maturity, nor the decency to reply rationally with substance, (5) at the end, Farina doesn't represent science, he was never a science communicator for any reputed organizations as far as I know, he is just a self-declared science communicator. (6) I think Dr. Tour should go to court accusing Farina of slander to tarnish his reputation, on the basis of Farina's statements of lying and fraud. It is a very high bar to show that someone is lying, it is even higher for showing fraud.
I learnt a lot from James his videos address Dave.
Wow, you're biased towards ID, aren't you. I stand with Dave all the way, the science that is, but not with his delivery. Tour mixes in religion with science. Period. Paul states he hasn't proven that, bit that's also his Rice bias talking. Tour asked for the ABOLITION of the OOL field. That's not a point of concern? Please. Clear bias.
@@JazzyArtKL None of what I wrote above has anything to do with ID, in fact, it is just the opposite. My opinion is that Dr. Tour should debate with a respectable OOL scientist who will address Dr. Tour's questions directly and give a better explanation of OOL, rather than reading the titles of papers without giving any details of the mechanisms. Farina did not even answer one question clearly, other than saying there is this mountain of papers or data, and a reputed OOL researcher may do much better. So, with that context, what do you mean by "you're biased towards ID, aren't you."?
" I stand with Dave all the way, the science that is," Two questions: so aren't you biased towards Farina, as he never showed much of any science?
"Tour asked for the ABOLITION of the OOL field" Tour or anyone else can ask whatever he/she wants. You can ask to keep OOL funded. It is a free country.
@@Laura_Daniels You didn't watch any of Dave's videos with the science explained. How do you expect him to present 100+ papers in 2 hours?
@@JazzyArtKL No.. no.. he just had to show one paper with that explanation. A person working in this field could have given the answer with proper limitations, But Farina doesn't know the subject well and doesn't want to discuss the limitations.
Greetings DJ Paul Mayer. I have been following the Tour - Farina debate for a long time now. I have found Dr. Tour to have plenty of authority to discuss all aspects of his field as it pertains to OOL. Dr. Tour has shown (I believe successfully) that in order for OOL to succeed, it must first create the supportive base of inorganic and organic molecules that have the capability to move on towards the OOL and then towards evolution. Other scientists may state that Dr. Tour does not have the understanding to effectively discuss evolution and OOL, but I would think that the issue is the failure to understand what Dr. Tour has been saying. To get to their neighborhood of chemistry, they have to first pass through his area of chemistry. If they are unable to successfully do this, then like any other land locked country, they will never be able to get their ship to set sail. I wanted to say that I found your review of Dr. Tour and Mr. Farina to appear to be reasonably fair and balanced. You did ask some good questions that many sides of the community would be smart to at least review. I would just like to add though in the discussion of the Tour-Farina debate that there may be some breakdown by the moderator of the debate. That when a participant goes way off base from the subject that they should have stepped in and brought them back to the subject. Another was to help a bit more in moderating the emotional outbursts and aggressive personal, and participant, attacks. The other issue I had noted from the debate was when one of the debaters stated they had no intention of following the agreed upon format and had also brought in extra props that were outside the bounds of the agreed upon papers allowed for the debate and discussion. At that point, there wasn't going to be any kind of informative debate that the viewers were really hoping to see.
I am a Christian and I also love this debate so I take tours side 100 percent but even I was disappointed in Tour. I think he could have stayed calm and kept it formal. He got emotional and was shouting. Tour has the upper hand in this topic and he didn’t push his advantage as well as he could have. Tour also has never debated before. It’s not really what he does. He works on his research and teaches his class.
As for Dave, sadly, I didn’t expect anything different from him. I was in one of the comment sections on one of his videos and Dave himself says some pretty disrespectful things. His videos are pretty much what you saw in the debate. He uses slides and pretty much just the titles of research papers to argue his case while also talking down about others who don’t agree with him.
I agree, I think Tour could have been more calm and even-headed and it would have helped his case in the public’s eyes. While I don’t think this invalidates any of the points he brought up, I do think it would have helped the debate if he didn’t shout.
@@hamster1717 it was hard for me to watch tour get like that because I was just thinking the entire time about how others will see it.
Can you prove wrong anything that Dave said, or can you only whine about what a big meanie he was, like a pathetic little child?
But Tour is always passionate about science. So I don’t mind the passion. He doesn’t name call at all. Unlike Dave, who gives personal insults.
@@kevinpinball So passionate that he has to lie about it to justify his apologetics! Rofl
Well said, Paul. Thank you. Also, I wonder if the real reason for Dr. Tour's skepticism is that he actually knows how difficult (and dangerous) it is to make molecules, and--judging from the patents he's associated with--he's really good at it. I love Dr. Tour and I hope Dave Farina gets the help he needs.
When Farina fails twice to achieve just a graduate degree, forget Ph.D. & post-docs, yet considers himself a "Professor", then help may not be possible. Below are Nobel laureates in biology Leland Hartwell & Sydney Altman,
along with atheist/Medal of Freedom recipient Craig Venter ALL saying "it is impossible that humans will EVER know life's origin". You'll note Richard Dawkins sits silent as his entire sine qua non is destroyed:th-cam.com/video/xIHMnD2FDeY/w-d-xo.html
Yeah, I think Tour’s experience with organic molecules in particular helps him understand just how difficult the OOL problem is. I also think he is right to call out some of the claims by OOL researchers as overblown philosophy; some of the mechanisms proposed have not been demonstrated in a prebiotically relevant ways.
@@hamster1717 "Yeah, I think Tour’s experience with organic molecules in particular helps him understand just how difficult the OOL problem is."
That is an example of ultracrepidarianism. James Tour has no experience in origin of life research and is wholly unqualified to judge its veracity.
Dave Farina doesn't need any help. He just presenting the science! You must be a Christian since it creates a clear bias away from science. Bit sad for a software developer tbh.
what? tour does NOT have any bio relevan tpatents
It’s not “I don’t know, therefore God’. Rather, It’s ‘I know God personally and have a relationship with Him, therefore the Bible is truth.’ As a born again Christian who met the Lord, I didn’t fully believe in the Bible until I knew God personally, and only then did I start reading the scriptures to try to better understand God’s word. James Tour had a similar experience and also met the Lord personally. He saw the resurrected Jesus with his own eyes, which caused him to believe the Bible as truth. This is irrespective of the scientific debate here, but an important distinction. As a scientist, if I didn’t know, I would just say that and not immediately impute that lack of understanding to ‘God doing it all’. Having said that, it is illogical to believe that the universe emerged out of nothing, because nothing can’t create everything. And it’s also illogical to look at any physical object in the world and not think that everything we see has a designer. And this becomes more and more clear the more we learn about the amazing complexities of biology. Scientifically speaking the law of the universe is Entropy, and entropy as far as we know, doesn’t naturally work in reverse. Evolution essentially breaks the second law of thermodynamics and defies Entropy by claiming to creating higher order from a lower ordered state through random natural interactions. That would only happen and be possible if the universe was going backwards through time and Entropy was working in reverse, which we know from science is not the case. Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, and as such is pseudoscience.
The debate between James tour and Lee Chronin was better.
by far.
Because Cronin is a scientist after all, not a fake professor like Dave.
Chronin did address the matters at hand too
Thank you for capturing that observation.
Wow! Impressive analysis and refocus on the real deal. Thank you.
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
Max Planck
For all of you guys, who so much try to hint that real scientists disregard Consciousness
When i was a teenager and a Christian I was deeply anxious about the things that the New Atheists would say in debates. When I worked up the courage to analyze them critically I realized that much of their postering was without substance. I understand that this debate isn't (or shouldn't be) a direct analogue to a religious one, but Dave brought it down to that level. I was genuinely angry at the way he treated Dr. Tour. Not because of his religious views but because he's manipulative and full of hate. Yeah, that's an ad hominem, but this isn't a debate its the TH-cam comment section lol
Thank you, Paul, and first off, good luck in getting your PhD. This is something that must be the most challenging part of your life: getting through your doctorate! The debate between James and Dave looked a lot like a guy (Dave) came into the debate after a road rage incident. But what is important here is that all of us are concerned in this debate. How DID life begin? What I have gleamed from Professor Tour's descriptions of the simplest cell has literally changed my outlook on life. Paul, can you even fathom this analysis that Dr Tour has stated? The outer membrane of a cell has 10 to the 78 billion possible combinations and only 1 (one) can work. Is this incredible or not? The carbohydrates on the outer membrane of the cell are more complex than the RNA and DNA combined! What on Earth is going on here? When a cell wants to transport material from one part of the cell to another it builds a sort of monorail system which then sends the necessary material to the other part of the cell and then the monorail dissolves. Is anybody listening? Also, all the lipids, proteins, amino acids and carbohydrates must come together at exactly the right time and place inside the cell for it to function, if the carbohydrates carmelize, nature does not keep a lab book to go and make more. Jim goes on and on about how the simplest bacterial cell is so unbelievably complex that for it to have happened spontaneously in some primordial pond is preposterous.
I came to comment only because you're a student at Rice because Farina says Tour planted Christians in the audience to boo and heckle him. As a complete outsider, I had the idea they boo'ed and heckled him because he said they couldn't read, couldn't understand anything they were talking about, didn't know anything about RNA, etc. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure the first time he was boo'ed was when he swore at the audience.
From the statistics and Tweets you showed, it seems like the debate was open to all students, regardless of religious beliefs, and that many of them were NOT going to the debate thinking Dr. Tour would win.
I would recommend you watch Dr. Paul Rimmer, who is in OoL research, critique Farina's science during the debate on the Capturing Christianity channel. Farina made many mistakes in the area of pre-biotic chemistry. Also, it's almost cringe to me to hear you call him "Professor" Dave, since he dropped out of grad school twice. However, I'm clearly biased in favor of Dr. Tour, but only because Farina attacks Tour's faith much, much more than his science, so as a Christian I just don't like the guy. It's interesting to hear your perspective. It seems to be honest, though much different than mine, and that is refreshing.
As Christians, yes, we just want people to critique our work and not our faith. Francis Collins is one of the top biologists in the area of genetics in the world, and he talks about evolution being true often. That's his view on science, but he's also a Christian. Or faith can affect our view of science in some ways, but I don't know how many times Dr. Tour needs to explicitly say that he only uses methodological naturalism in his science and that it is possible to find a naturalistic explanation for the Origin of Life on this planet for Dave to stop attacking him personally. Every person needs to be treated as an individual. And saying someone uses God of the gaps when they have not said anything of the sort, is ridiculous. That's why I'm glad he's out of his depth when it comes to science when he goes against Dr. Tour.
That's right, most students were biased against Dr Tour going in and yet most who went (or watched the livestream, which was watched by thousands of current students) thought Tour was the winner. I will admit I am not a big fan of Dave Farina, especially after this debate. Meanwhile after talking to Dr Tour and corresponding with him over email in the last few months I believe he was a very reasonable person. It really does appear to me that Farina has something against Christians/Christianity that is clouding his views and judgement. Part of the problem seems to be Farina thinks naturalism/atheism is a "default position" and not one subject to historical and cultural factors. Someone could just as easily claim his ties with the CFI and collaborating with atheists/satanists like Aron Ra cloud *his* judgement, plus his lack of publications or having a PhD keep him from speaking as an authority on the matter. I am glad Dr. Tour did not go down this road, but I do think it is worth putting out.
Farina's swearing at the audience pissed off a lot of current Rice students because they thought he was being disrespectful and insulting. I do not even think a majority of Rice students are Christian yet most polled after the debate were not a fan of his rhetoric and thousands complained they were put off by him swearing and insulting the audience. If Dave is claiming Tour stacked the audience and only people from Tour's "Bible Club" are booing and heckling him, he needs to provide evidence for this claim. I think it is categorically false, especially given what students said after the debate.
I watched Rimmer's video and thought he was very reasonable and agreed with almost everything he said (at least about the research I understand). My girlfriend is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering who looks at polypeptide folding (Tour's first question) and explained why she thought Tour asked a very good question because this is her area of research. To be honest, I don't think you and I see much differently on any of this.
@@hamster1717 my brother has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering (and an MBA, but that of course was not a science degree). It's cool that your girlfriend is in that field. It's a very difficult major. She must be intelligent.
Nobody cares about your infatuation with Tour. Science is on Dave's side.
@@JazzyArtKL so that is your argument? That I’m “infatuated” with Tour? How scientific.
@@JazzyArtKL "Science is on Dave's side."
First; there are very few OOL scientists. What of them there are may very well do lots and lots of science. Second; With all of the research that has been done, they are in fact just this side of clueless as to the chemistry and mechanisms required to make even a yeast cell. We need life for life to propagate. All of the splicing of dna of living cells doesn't count. And if you really thought about it you would have to admit that is the case.
Great video , you have articulated exactly what I felt when I watched the debate . Farina is an embarrassment to science education . In my view he clearly doesn’t understand the science at such a detailed level such that he was capable of getting up and educating the audience how the science could explain the origin of life at least in a way the laymen can at least understand the concept even at a simplistic level . As Feynman said if you can’t explain it then don’t really know it . Farina completely failed to explain anything or address any of tours questions . He spent 2 hours basically doing an adhominem attack on tour . He deserves nothing but scorn and as you articulate well in your video he completely fails to understand the entire basis for philosophy of science that has been built up over the last 400 to 500 years .
I enjoyed listening to your perspective, and to me, it seems thorough and objective. thanks for your critique
Cue 2:45 - Another alternative? Dave is so convinced that there is no Creator that he doesn't care what Dr. Tour believes, or says, or knows. Dave simply wants to shut down Tour and cripple Tour's impact on people who might come to believe in a Creator or confirm their belief. Dave simply hates Tour's effectiveness in challenging the state of science and Darwinian Evolution. The emphasis on God comes from Dave, his insistence in a material universe that doesn't allow the possibility for any kind of Creator/God. Your quotes from Dave reveal nothing about Tour...but reveal much about Dave. Following their debate, my biggest surprise is the refusal of Dave's fans to acknowledge Dave's refusal to address scientific questions, his nasty personal attacks lobbed at Tour, and Dave's mockery of faith and those who profess faith. My final take on Dave is that nothing about science matters if as long as Dave gains subscribers and fist-bumps from people who love hearing Dave's tirades.
Tour always says eventually we will discover how life originated scientifically, but we are very far from that, unlike other scientists claiming we already know
Which scientist has published that we already know?
Begs the question means assumes what it should be proving and does not mean raises the question. Correct use : « When I asked the dealer why I should pay more for the German car, he said I would be getting 'German quality', but that just begs the question. »
I don’t think I articulated that point very well. What I meant to say is Dave can’t argue Tour’s views are wrong for his disagreement with consensus without presupposing consensus is correct. Since Tour already claims he has reasons he is disagreeing with consensus, what matters is not *that* he disagrees with consensus but his reasons for doing so.
In other words, Dave’s argument would go like this
P1: Scientific consensus is correct
P2: Tour disagrees with scientific consensus
C: Therefore Tour is wrong
This would be begging the question against Tour because P1 already assumes/presupposes Tour is wrong a priori (and Tour agrees with P2).
Tour's dissent with evolution is enough for me to disregard him as a youtuber/blogger. There are plenty of better science communicators out there. I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider the religious tilt to his opinions as a science communicator, and I don't think he's immune to "overhyping" his opinions (as he criticizes other people of doing). "We're CLUELESS!" is just a different kind of hype.
His critique of the underlying papers needs to cross into the realm of actual science before anyone should take his OoL opinions more seriously. There is a proper way to make those critiques, and his seeming inability to do so really sinks the whole premise.
I understand what you’re saying. I also wouldn’t use the term “clueless” either, though I do think we are pretty far from answering the big questions in OOL (for many reasons). Keep in mind Tour is never claiming to be knowledgeable about Evolution and the problem of evolution and abiogenesis are completely separate, in that a self-replicating cell is required for Darwinian evolution in the first place.
His critique of OOL argues the same; that current claims in OOL are not “actual science” either in that many of the proposed explanations for abiogenesis have tenuous empirical support in a prebiotically relevant way. If Tour’s criticisms are not actual science, then clearly the speculative accounts offered abiogenesis are not either until they have more empirical support.
My point in this video is simply to point out that Tour is unfairly targeted by Dave. Dave isn’t going after people like Francis Crick who argues origin-of-life makes more sense happening by the result of another alien life that “planted” life on earth due to similar probabilistic concerns. The science is far from being settled
Criticism of Abiogenesis as an idea predates Dr. James Tour whereas if you read the literature published by scientists over the last ten years you will notice that no one even attempts to provide a successful Abiogenesis event scenario.
@@sentientflower7891 That is factually incorrect. There are people attempting that with various working hypotheses(see the work of people like David Baum, or Nick Lane, or Moran Frenkel-Pinter, and there are others.) The problem is that Tour is at least partially right, at least in the sense that so far we really do only have very few clues to life's origins.
But that also means there is an incredibly vast space of possible chemistries and physical conditions that needs to be explored and tested, and many effects and phenomena needs to be analyzed and understood.
Scientists don't just want to show that it can happen under some specific conditions (or happen upon life's origins by some fluke they can't reproduce), they want to understand how it happens when it does. Instead of just blindly testing various combinations of settings systematically one after another-because there are so many possibilities-it would take forever to go through all of them. It is better to try to narrow down the relevant principles first, and then when these are understood, do are more narrow and educated exploration of the relevant conditions.
@@rumraket38 no, sorry, you haven't paid close attention. There are not multiple pathways to Abiogenesis. There isn't even a single pathway to Abiogenesis. All those pathways that Professor Dave mentioned do *not* lead to Abiogenesis and *cannot* lead to Abiogenesis either singly or by mixing.
And this remains true even if you provide the Abiogenesis researchers with all the molecules essential to life in pure concentrated form sourced directly from cells. Abiogenesis remains impossible even if you slice a million cells open and dump all their contents in a flask and do *whatever* you wish with those molecules.
@@rumraket38 think you are looking at this all wrong on why he is calling them clueless. Take this example, you are talking to a mechanic about your car and you say to the mechanic, I know how to get my car running. You tell him a battery, the engine, some spark plugs and oil. The mechanic will look at you and will tell you, you're clueless on how a car works. Just knowing how a part of life is done doesn't mean your theory on how life starts is correct because you only know about just the one part and that's it. So I say James is right about the OoL group is clueless, but what you fail to realize is James is always saying that with enough time it will be figured out. He is not saying we won't figure it out and that we know nothing, he is just being the mechanic in the group and pointing out that they are clueless and stop making the claims we are close when they aren't or we know how to do it.
If you watch all relevant vids in chronological order, it’s blatantly obvious Dave argues against multiple straw men by either misunderstanding or deliberately misrepresenting James.
That's Dave's MO on everything I've seen him do, from arguing about transgenderism to the pandemic to defending himself against accusations of logical fallacies.
Dave is absolutely more about his worldview [naturalist] , and attacking apologist than his "science". He likes to attack other academics' education --- but went to two [2] low tier colleges, struggled to get a master's degree, changing majors to complete it --- and was a mediocre high school chemistry teacher. But, that does not mean "professor" Dave doesn't have anything to say on these matters. I am equally put-off by obnoxious apologist. Dr. Tour is one of the most published and peer-reviewed scientist in the world, so he equally has something to say on this matter. I am a person of faith, but like every other human that has lived, I am very curious about OOL. I believe that science can eventually answer this issue without it impacting any belief system. The sad thing is, post pandemic and climate change science trust issues (primarily at the hands of politicians) led me to want to re-establish trust in science, and what I may be able to do as a ordinary human about climate change. Stumbling in to this debate certainly hasn't helped. Peace be with all of you.
Well put together thoughts on this. Thanks.
Great presentation.
I used to follow Dave as an undergrad watching his educational videos pertaining to chemistry and biology. Honestly, those contents were great helpful materials.
However, when he started targeting various religious personalities, this was a massive red flag.
The guy is infantile, rude, haughty and vulgar, even in the comments feed. Anyone who calls him out or begs to differ from his viewpoint is brushed off as an idiot and a religious drone.
Somehow ppl who disagree with him deserve to be treated rudely. Childish. And religious-affiliated ppl aren't trustworthy in educating physical sciences. Why? Because they believe in "fairy tales".
Give me a break. That debate with Dr Tour was a trainwreck, a bloody disaster and an insult to scholarship. It's a loud quarrel between two grown men.
The guy seems that have some vendetta and prejudice against religious beliefs. Anyway, I stopped following him for a long while now.
Spot on! After Tour gave Farina a gift only for Farina to just lay into him like that, I thought was appalling.
I also see some of Tour's critique echoed in some of the professional literature criticising the RNA World hypothesis.
It also appears to me that if scientists are undecided on the RNA world, then this is a good indicator about a host of unsolved problems
Wet Dry cycles are also seemingly in conflicr with Hydrothermal Vent scenarios. So again, to a non-expert like myself, these are indicators of vast inferential gulfs. Obviously the structure of this debate made it nearly impossible for Professor Dave to say "we just don't know" very much.
Lee Cronin on Unbelievable with Perry Marshall seemed much more candid and (though optimistic) humble about where we are.
Since all the components of living systems can now be purchased (via harvest from living things), and the Origin of Life researchers are not even trying to make a living thing, I feel "clueless" is a reasonable descriptor.
I was desperately wanting substance in the debate. I wanted to learn. Instead I saw one man relentlessly throwing insults while the other was losing composure. An eager-to-learn audience would've learned nothing except that we're apparently too stupid to comprehend anything. It was a clown show.
Thanks for your honest review of this. I watched the debate and was disappointed that Dr Tour allowed himself to get so upset. He may have appeared to many people to be reacting because he realised he was wrong. I don’t think this is the case. He was reacting out of frustration with not being listened to by Dave Farina. Dr Tour is 100% correct about the abysmal state of origin of life research and it amazes me that Dave still can’t see that.
nah tour is 1000% lying and upset dave did NOT LET HIM LIE
@@rbzuuka7948 You're joking, right?
nope im not joking@@nzadventurefamily3728
also i love how tour pretends he made any points it the debate all is saw was dave showing him papers that DO THAT and tour going nunununu i dont want it nununun take chalk nununununu god did it @@nzadventurefamily3728
@@nzadventurefamily3728No he actually is not. Lol, even school teaches us that life has evolved the way Dave explains. Haven't you learnt it bro?
The reason you know Dave has lost is because he doesn’t focus on the science….instead he tries to attack him based on his faith.
That's ironic coming from someone who also didn't bother to take one single look at the science.
And we're just gonna agree to disagree about "Dave losing."
@@ollaitsrealgood- Are you suggesting Dave "won" something? I took quite few looks at "the science", and saw all sorts of weakass BS being put out by Dave, in addition to the attacks based on his faith. It's a valid way to estimate the win/lose aspect when you see a lot of "personal attacks" from one side. Not dispositive, but a generally good indicator, it seems obvious to me.
@@ollaitsrealgood LOL, nice emotional deflection you did there.
James Tour doesn't focus on the science, he argues from his faith and tries to justify it with his version of science.
@@chbu7081 completely wrong. It was obvious Dave came to the debate without any arguments. He came not to argue the science, but to denigrate Jim. It was nothing but ad hominem attack after ad hominem attack. Frankly it was embarrassing for Dave.
Well argued presentation.
For me to poop on.
I enjoyed.
Could someone explain to me if Dave Farina is a real professor with an actual academic background in the material he educates others?
Dave is a youtube persona. he has no qualifications at all and just takes stuff other people say and packages it into youtube videos for others to watch
He is a twice college dropout afaik, not a real professor
@@isaacclarkefan Apparently he has a BS in chemistry from Carleton and a Master's degree in chemical education. Why talk without knowing the facts?
@@galileog8945 has he
>Taught BS level in colleges
>Published in any scientific journals
Did he not
>Drop out twice by his own admission
You know what "AFAIK" means, right, I don't need to study someone's biography to make a comment
@@isaacclarkefan In his video he said he stopped his MS program to follow a career in music. So he is not a college dropout. What he taught and his puiblication record is not the issue. Yes, you need to know what you are talking about before slandering someone. Otherwise, I would be fully justified in saying that, AFAIK, you are a child molester.
Dave filled his time with a lot of deflective noise so that he doesn't have to deal with the question of where did life come from and have they succeeded in replicating it in a laboratory.
It wouldn't matter if James Tour stated that he did it for religious motives. Dave wanted the debate to be about the term "clueless" rather than "Have they created life in the laboratory?"
I don't think those who attended or watched the debate are ignorant of the topic, therefore blame science for Dave's shortcomings.
Translation, "Professor Dave represents James Tour pretty accurately and now I'm crying about it".
Right? And the fact this guy said he thinks the ID people are "behaving more scientifically than people who advocate evolution do," is absolutely adorable. For someone who prattles on about the "P in PhD standing for Philosophy," he sure demonstrates an utter lack of epistemic reasoning.
Haha you seem to be the one who’s butthurt that your fake pseudo-intellectual idol got exposed. The fact you can’t refute anything Paul says in this video speaks volumes
Explain how he represents him accurately. You’re just butthurt your idol got his ass handed to him and can’t refute anything Paul says in this video
Okay, Dave’s alt account
@@ollaitsrealgoodExplain where he’s wrong then? You dave fanboys are pathetic. You’re in denial because you know he’s been exposed as the quack and pseudo-intellectual that he is.
Sorry, I can't accept any of your arguments because you didn't write them on a chalkboard.
Great video. Someone who can make nanocars (at the atomic level) might just have a clue about the level of difficulty of putting together something that is even vaguely close to being "alive."
What's your course in Rice?
I’m studying Electrical and Computer Engineering
@@hamster1717 nice . . . . as far as logic is concerned not far
This video is a defense of the integrity and credibility of Dr Tour. Who cares what you of Davevthinkm about Janes Your or his motivations?
Why not spend your time and mine focusing on the substance of the scientific claims about the science that spawned the debate?
Let's say Dave is wrong about what he thinks are Dr Tour's motivations. Do you have anything to say about the science that Dr Tour says "we are clueless!" about?
Those two pie charts about abiogenesis is scary beyond belief. The devil is busy at work. Lord help us
Farina needed his nappy changed and carried on like a Baskin Robbins salesman.Tour stepped up as an angry parent, he wanted to care for Farina but should have just let him do his funky stuff.
There is a lot we don’t know, science is provisional, and there are massive unanswered questions. I’m sorry about the Farina/Tour “debates,” there is a tendency on both of their parts to get loud and angry. Tour should keep going, but engage with people with actual curiosity.
It is said, a little knowledge is dangerous, more so if you have millions of followers.
Please stop calling Dave Farina "Professor". He is nothing of the kind. In fact I'd go so far as to say the use of that title is pure fraud.
That’s a fair point, and I see where you are coming from. I don’t want it to appear that I have some bias against Farina (based on his name or otherwise). He does have some graduate training in research (as do I). At the same time as I mention in the video, a PhD is important, in that you are able to convince a committee of professors you can do independent research and understand how it is done.
@@hamster1717 Just next time just point out that it's his channel name but otherwise excellent video
@@sadface7457Excellent video? Only criticizing Farina without addressing Tour hysterical and science ignoring? Bias.
@@JazzyArtKL Sigh.....Sure Tour was shouting a lot and very upset - had his buttons pushed hard by Farina - however, it's TOUR doing the science and Farina doing the insults - without any science other than quoting the headings.
I suggest digging a little deeper than asking the proven liar if he is misrepresenting himself.
Funny "professors dave" isnt a professor "who's the liar i dont know who gave him that moniker.
He gave it himself. For damage control, he also explains in one of his videos that he isn't really a professor, but deliberately hides it away in corner of his channel few people will go to. I watched several dozen of his videos, thinking he was a professor, before I found it.
He calls himself that because it gets him closer to the children he wants to "date"
Exactly. He only uses insults and is very deceptive. Just looking at his comments section there is a cesspool of hate from that man.
Dave Farina has published a two hour video claiming success at the debate and ehich includes several dialogues with scientists engaged in Abiogenesis research which I encourage everyone to watch paying especially close attention to what the sciebtists say and what they don't say.
I’ll check it out. Paul Rimmer did a recap of the debate on this channel called Capturing Christianity; he seemed like a pretty reasonable guy and was careful to qualify his claims too
@@hamster1717 I am not familiar with Paul Rimmer or what he represents. What viewpoint was he advocating?
@@sentientflower7891 Rimmer is a Astrochemist at Cambridge who does work on prebiotic chemistry. He agrees with Dr. Tour that we are no where close but wouldn’t use the word “clueless.” He was quick to point out where he disagreed with Tour and Farina in his video. As a result he isn’t really “siding” with either of them as much as discussing the chemistry
@@hamster1717 "Clueless" is an ambiguous term and that alone invalidates the debate as a serious intellectual endeavor.
Regarding Abiogenesis having a clue isn't enough. Astrobiologists ought to know that much. Anyone seriously engaged in astrobiology would actually need at least one and preferably many demonstrably successful paths to a successful Abiogenesis event.
Should no authentic successful pathways be known in the year 2023 an astrobiologists might as well conclude that no such pathways exist.
@@sentientflower7891 That's Rimmer's point, at a certain place you end up over semantics of the word "clueless" and are playing a word game. In Dr. Tour's opening statement he clarified what he meant by "clueless" and, in my view, did a very good job detailing the big open problems that lack experimental support. Dr. Rimmer compared it to going from the 2nd floor of a building to the first while the solution is at the center of the earth.
i didn't make it all the way through the video... however i can clearly see the flaw in the logic used. Knowing the chemistry is a detrimental part of being able to determine who is fudging things (intentionally or not). Paul admits that he is not a chemist and is removing that part from his analysis, which is a huge error. there are so many analogies that could be made but i would think simply thinking it through would lead most people to believe they couldn't make a determination on who is speaking out from a good faith position with out in depth research.
Good critique
Great summary!
Good analysis.
No, it's not. It doesn't address the science, only the delivery and very lopsided, no critique on Dr.Tour.
@@JazzyArtKL Feel free to do your own. I don't think you can though.
@@JazzyArtKL The video was never intended about science itself. It was intended to focus on the philosophy of science. And it did a good job in this regard.
-But Tour is not an origin of life researcher and he attempts to discredit the works of actual origin of life researchers despite having no experience in the field. All he does is argue from authority.
-The thing about religion here is that it is clear that Tour interprets research using his religion as a hidden presupposition.
-Then the thing about publications is that yes Dave has no publications in the field. But the point is that he does not lie about the field as Tour does. He does not slander researchers. Something that James Tour does often. It's about who is representing the field accurately and it's not James Tour.
-I believe that what you said about Dave not offering any substantive critique of Tour is flat false. All the response videos to Tour that Dave made were all substance with actual origin of life researchers explaining how Tour got things wrong.
Far from the mark. Tour is simply looking at the chemistry involved and the claims made by the OOL researchers - and he shows up the extreme lack of proper procedure and jumping to far-fetched, totally unwarranted conclusions given all the steps they've left unexplained. Someone's bias is showing.
@@kevinrtres it's not about the conclusions. Tour ignores research that is uncomfortable for him. Like how in the debate, he pretended like systems chemistry is not a thing. You can't claim that we are clueless about the origin of life if you won't address all the relevant research and instead accuse researchers of fraudulence.
@@fayadrahman552 Well, if it's not about the conclusions then what on earth are research papers for? So maybe Dr Tour didn't like the systems chemistry because he is unfamiliar with it. That doesn't change anything. Dr Tour is highlighting the fraudulent claims that have been going around in text books for 70 years now - and he is going purely by the so-called conclusions reached via the chemistry research. Does systems chemistry make any difference? Does it somehow make life magically appear from non-life? It doesn't and cannot and never will bring about spontaneous eruption of life as we know it. The reason is simple - the chemistry in the cell prohibits exactly such spontaneous events from disturbing it and furthermore - even when all chemical compositions or all required structures are in place there's still that tiny little detail of how it all gets put into motion. So far no one has even given that idea the faintest of thought, they are too busy speculating ( fruitlessly I might add ) about how things can arise spontaneously.
Agreed. Paul is not addressing this part in his video at all, which shows a very clear bias to Tour.
@@JazzyArtKL I think Paul's bias is simply based on what he sees from both sides - and seeing Dave's total lack of respect for the actual science involved in total contrast to James. As I said above - Tour is tackling the lack of integrity regarding the actual chemistry and so he doesn't have to have "experience in the field". IT's just as well he doesn't have any experience in the field - otherwise he'd be following along with the crowd in their duplicity.
10:43 it is also an appeal to emotion
This is not a persuasive defense. You quote Farina’s bottom-line conclusions while ignoring the literal hours of video where Farina substantiates them. Farina makes no “a priori” claims, and it is difficult to believe you sincerely think he does if you watched his videos.
1) Farina systematically debunked Tour’s chemistry-related arguments, and showed that he was talking about a topic outside his field. Farina explained at length why synthetic chemistry and origin of life are separate fields. You address exactly zero of this evidence or argument.
2) Farina showed Tour, in his own words, crediting the Adam and Eve story and the authority of scripture. He even doubted the age of the earth and of the dinosaurs, based on a false claim about fresh dinosaur blood being found.
3) Tour gets very angry and shouts a lot when discussing this topic, including in the debate.
It is not at all a reach to conclude that Tour’s religious views are coloring his views of scientific topics outside his field of expertise. It’s also not a stretch to conclude that, when Tour constantly argues (badly) against natural explanations of life’s origins, he is trying to carve out space for a divine explanation.
Farina also demonstrates that Tour changes his message depending on his audience, so the fact that he doesn’t literally tell you that he thinks God created life and the world, and naturalism couldn’t, is beside the point.
Also, Farina acknowledged Tour’s argument in his video that the public holds some incorrect views regarding science’s ability to create life, and notes that it is beside the point. Tour spreading phony objections to origin of life research isn’t going to help educate the public.
I’ve watched ALL of Dave’s so called responses to Tour’s videos. At no time does Dave ever demonstrate that Tour is incorrect in his understanding of the chemistry. Dave routinely over represents the claims of OOL research. Dave simply accepts OOL arguments as a matter of faith.
"It is not at all a reach to conclude that Tour’s religious views are coloring his views of scientific topics outside his field of expertise..." is correct but is a major understatement. Whoever does not see this is either totally stupid or is a victim of the same type of cognitive dissonance afflicting Tour.
The real issue is that the existence of the natural world (time, space, matter, information) is what rules out a naturalistic explanation. Origin of life, evolution, and intelligent design each presume the existence of a natural world so none of them address the real issue. Dave and other atheists speakers must put on a show to avoid the real issue. They have had tremendous success doing it.
I would also add logic and mathematics to this list; both of these consistently defy naturalistic explanations. I recently finished reading Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos" and while I disagree with Nagel on some things his issues with materialistic/naturalistic reductionism were well stated. He is also good buddies with Alvin Plantinga and I think the two of them are some of the greatest philosophers in the past century (I realize this is a very strong claim). Plantinga's work on epistemology has influenced my approach to research significantly.
Well, that's what science and spiritual approach to life should have been doing, however its hard when science is dominated by ideology of materialism and spiritual approach is hijacked by religious ideologies. Any ideology claims some final understanding on the world. However people still have gazillion of questions unanswered so clearly those ideologies are not complete and do not answer deepest questions about life, they are just hindrance on the path to understanding.
take materialism that claims - mindless nature without any goal created a wing for an animal that understands aerodynamic - what?
Take Christianity that says God did it. What kind of an answer is that? What is even God to begin with... And people supposed to be content with a few scriptures.
Neither explain anything, they claim bold conclusions but provide no explanations.
Just to boil it down:
Farina reads out the titles of papers and launches into attack-the-motive ad hominem.
You just show how some people really don't know what ad hominem means...
@@ordinaryindividual6246 You just show how some people really don't know what ad hominem means...
The atheist has an emotional investment in natural causes for the origin of life. However The believer knows that God upholds all things by His power. Therefore miracles are not absolutely necessary.
Good points, but if you look at Dave's explanations in his analysis afterwards, you'll see that Tour stacked the audience.
It is unclear that Tour "stacked" the audience any more than Dave "stacked" the audience with his atheist/satanist buddies. All the posts I displayed were from Rice students only (they need a student email to participate in the discussion).
And you are deceived once again by Dave
Rad how both you and Dave are into Synths :p
Maybe he and I will start a band
Edit: now I need to go and see which ones he uses. I tend to do more electronic music so my synths are all digital (like the Virus). I also have a few desktop units that aren’t shown here :)
Your video is not a helpful contribution. When you watch Tour's videos, you will see that he is almost always exagerating the gaps of knowledge in the OOL field and misrepresenting the literature. Apart from that there are many points in your video showing that you do not really understand the scientific approach.
At 17:03: "Dr. Tour (at least in his debate) never appealed to Professor Dave's academic credentials to lack of citations in the field". Tour did that exact thing in his videos, like a lot. But this is not how science works, you don't need to be one of the Top10 experts in the field with hundreds of papers to understand and comment on OOL research, even Tour should know that. The knowledge is all in the papers and most biology, chemics, geology etc. students will understand them if they dig into the research field. Tour has never brought up any relevant paper supporting his claims, but Dave did, and he is doing a great job summarizing all the research in the field.
Tour is simply pointing out the extreme gap between what the researchers would like the public to believe and what their actual processes produced. The gap is indeed so extreme as requiring proper exaggeration.
@@kevinrtres The OOL researchers are not exagerating anything. No one claims to have understood every single step needed to make a cell. There are lot of questions left and there will be publications for decades, describing solutions to open questions. You might mean the hypotheses which propose a model, concept or solution to specific problems are exagerated. Hypotheses make predictions and will be tested, it might turn out, that a hypothesis is false. Then scientists will come up with a new or improved one. This is how science works. I doubt that you could show us any exagerated claim in a scientific publication.
Thank you for logically laying out why the thrust of Dave's arguments are fallacious and not scientific. Tour is not the flat-earth YEC he wants him to be, and I think that it is causing some cognitive dissonance. It's unfortunate that he won't bother to understand the arguments before he tries to disparage the man. I do really feel sorry for Dave and whatever has caused him to become this kind of person.
Thanks for your comment. I think Dave Farina believes he is doing the right thing, and certainly has a moral thrust to his argument. But I do not think he has taken the time to really listen to Dr Tour’s position. Like you said, Dr Tour is not the flat-earth YEC Farina thinks he is. It is too bad the debate has reached such an aggressive tone
As someone who doesn't take sides, I think that both sides aren't actually listening to each other due to biases and beliefs.
Then rely on the science, that's all Dr. Tour is asking!
@@1RedneckCajun If you actually did rely on the science, Dave Farina makes James Tour look like a motherf**king idiot.
Also, the only reason it seems that way is because James is literally sticking his fingers in his ears and going "LALALALALA." Dave doesn't make himself look better by insisting as vehemently as he does, but that doesn't make him wrong. No one comes away from a sh**-wrestling competition smelling like roses and James Tour couldn't be helped but to literally fill the arena with sh**. Dave Farina is the one bringing science and evidence and James and his sycophantis are the ones complaining that "all he does is read paper titles," demonstrating in real time that they can't even go **that far** because if they did, they'd realize the very titles of the papers discredit and disprove the claims that James Tour makes.
Make absolutely no mistake. James Tour does not represent the science in any measurable way when it comes to OOL. He is not correct and he is either pretending to be ignorant of information that has been provided to him (unlikely) or he is deliberately misrepresenting information (and quote-mining people like Lee Cronin to do it) and is telling lies. It must be one or the other and it can't be both. If it's the former, he has no credibility to speak on the subject. If it's the latter, he has no credibility to speak *on any subject at all.*.
It doesn't look good for him, and the only reason you think it could is because you are either loosely affiliated with him through Rice University or you are flirting with Christian apologetics and you lack critical thinking skills.
Have a good day.
The claim Dr. Tour consistently makes is that origin of life researchers exaggerate the success of their research and that the media are exacerbating the situation. I've heard Dr. Tour say that he does not promote intelligent design and has no opinion about the age of the earth. He also told me that it is conceivable that scientists may one day synthesize life.
When I went to Tour's talk, he said the same thing about not necessarily ruling out naturalistic explanations. I agree with Tour's claim about public Origin of Life perception and he has provided solid evidence for why the public thinks this way (some of the research about the public's perception of OOL is in prepublication).
Dave's arguments can be boiled down to: Tour is a liar. That is his science in this debate
Then posting pictures of the titles of papers he hasn't read.
You know no chemistry. Ergo you couldn't possibly grasp on what they're talking about. James Tour denial is invisible to you. You're left only with the rhetoric. Sorry.
@@plamenferdinandov5083 It appears you know very little about logic and debate
@@orthochristos just because you say so? :D
@@plamenferdinandov5083 Thanks for confirming what I said...
Are you really an epistemologist?
No, I’m a researcher, but I do know the basics of epistemology. For instance I’ve read Quine, Plantinga, Chisholm, BonJour, etc
@@hamster1717 Researcher in which area of investigation?
That's a pretty fair assessment. I wouldn't have been so kind to Professor Dave. I saw that whole debate twice along with the Q&A. I'm really not seeing how Farina is not totally embarrassed.
Just to boil it down:
Tour's claim that OOL life researchers are "clueless" is not only absurd and indefensible, it's also the deliberate mischaracterization of an entire field of research by someone who ought to know better.
Considering that there are OOL life researchers who have been echoing the same thing that Dr. Tour has been saying about OOL research, it is not a mischaracterization at all. Dr. Tour is just saying what the facts are.
@@BhikPersonal Who are these OOL researchers who characterize the field as "clueless?"
@@shassett79 Pier Luigi Luisi who wrote the book: The Emergence of Life
Harold J Morowitz who wrote the book: The Origin and Nature of life on Earth
And James A. Shapiro who wrote the book: Evolution: A view from the 21st century
@@BhikPersonal > Pier Luigi Luisi who wrote the book: The Emergence of Life
Just so I'm clear: The claim you're making is that Luisi- a guy who literally wrote a book which purportedly "presents a systematic course discussing the successive stages of self-organisation, emergence, self-replication, autopoiesis, synthetic compartments and construction of cellular models, in order to demonstrate the spontaneous increase in complexity from inanimate matter to the first cellular life forms"- thinks OOL researchers are "clueless?"
Really? Can you give me a relevant quote?
@@shassett79 Well you have a lot to be worried considering that you would genuinely think that he would view abiogenesis positively. But he indirectly agrees with Dr James Tour. Here is the quote from Pier Luigi Luisi's book The Emergence of Life in the page Introduction xiii:
"...but you can have all the low molecular weight compounds of this world, in any quantity you wish, and you will never be able to make life."
tour: screams and cries and ignores literature
dave: shows the literature and calls tour out for being a grifter
tours fans: DAVE IS WRONG
bro like open your eyes and ears for once
"shows the literature and calls tour out for being a grifter"
Dave literally argued that simply because the title and abstract of the paper say so. Therefore he is right and Tour. Dave didn't read those papers beyond the titles and the abstract.
@@sabhishek9289 okay and? tour didnt read the papers at all, and claimed theyre wrong despite that.
@@aetheriox463 He did read the papers unlike Dave Farina. Dr Tour knows the content of those papers. Also Dave Farina broke the agreement with Dr Tour by bringing additional papers which Dr Tour did not read. Apart from that Dr Tour spent all night reading the content of the papers that Dave Farina showed in his videos unlike Dave Farina.
@@sabhishek9289 tour did NOT read the papers, if he had he wouldnt have agreed to the debate because he wouldve understood how indefensible a position he holds.
@aetheriox463 No, he DID read the content of those papers. The authors of those papers deliberately mislead the readers about what they did. The fact is the authors of those papers cheated.
He was playing to his (TH-cam) audience. The more belligerent, the more clicks, subs, money.
Yeah, unfortunately it is impossible (or at least difficult) to separate the content one is putting out from the medium itself. While such content makes sense for TH-cam (a medium revolving around entertainment, being visual in nature), it does not belong in a university designed to teach students how to become competent scientific researchers able to look at the data and filter all the rhetoric.
You mean James, right?
@Philisnotretired James Biden? Who the hell is that? Perhaps if you took your red rage goggles off once in a while, you could see straight.
James Tour was the one screaming like a madman. "Take the chalk. Do something with it!!!"
I'd have shoved it up his ar$e.
Hey@@richardscott982 the notification of your reply came moments after I had commented on another thread. Sorry for my confusion. Also, chill. No rage goggles here.
I think Dave will ultimately win the argument. There are too many good reasons to suspect that the abiogenesis needle will be found in the naturalistic haystack. But Dave makes the argument too much about Tour, and therefore too much about himself. Even if he was fully justified by the facts, the classy position is to focus on the long game and the context that justifies abiogenesis research to begin with. There are counters to Tour's objections that take the high road and win respect in the process.
Keep in mind Tour doesn’t rule out a naturalistic explanation for abiogenesis. I think instead he wishes to communicate “we don’t know how it happened yet” not “we will never know how it happened under naturalism.” The last time I brought this up with him over email he confirmed this.
@@hamster1717 Like I said in other comments, Tour is lying to you. You don't work with the DI and not believe in creationism. Also Tour wrote clueless on each of the 5 points he was arguing for even though OOL researchers are not "clueless" on any of them. Additionally Tour even admitted OOL research achieved 1 during his hysterical yelling AND STILL wrote clueless on it. You cannot take Tour as an honest actor.
If this is what is getting produced at Rice these days. Well, I like the cut of that institution's jib.
Farina is hardly a Professor...he couldn't hold the job..whereas Dr. Tour is a PHD Professor with and endowed chair at RIce university having dozens of patents to his name while having published nearly 800 peer reviewed paper. Farina is way out of his league but he does have a large following of gullibles that follow his diatribes. There is an old saying, "It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it." Farina is a prime example of this.
I had no context on Dave. When I learned he had a TH-cam channel, I was like, "Aha". It explains why he seemed to be performing. Exaggerated arrogance you'd really only see in a movie. Someone like that is much more motivated to keep an audience by any means, than to risk engaging in a debate fairly (which could potentially impact his channel negatively if he genuinely got into it).
I am not sure how much science Dave knows (he has a very good science channel) but he is clearly also a showman. If you look at Tour on google, he has had several debunks against him: channels, blogs...scholarly people who denounced him, politely of course, for what he is: a charlatan and liar for Jesus. Dave does it with pizzazz, has a huge audience, and you may not like it, but it has made a splash and activated the damage-control machine BIG TIME. Tour has always ignored his other critics, but he is in panic mode now. His stupidity, ignorance, mendacity have all been exposed in front of a million people. All he can say is that Dave does not understand science, whereas the discussions, if you are educated, clearly prove the opposite. Way to go Dave!
- Farina is hardly a Professor...he couldn't hold the job..whereas Dr. Tour is a PHD Professor with and endowed chair at RIce university having dozens of patents to his name while having published nearly 800 peer reviewed paper. -
You know that the number of papers James Tour published on the field of chemistry which was the topic of the debate - Origin of Life Research - is exactly equal to the number of paper Dave has published? Zero.
The difference being that Dave Farina was showing dozens of papers published by respected scientists in the field.
James Tour offered nothing but yelling and pointing his chalk at Dave
Irony is misrepresenting Dave's views so you can accuse him of misrepresenting your fraud of a professor's views. rofl
If you're claiming I'm misrepresenting Dave's views, you need to provide evidence (though if I am, please do point this out). With that being said every single quote I provided from Dave was taken directly from his videos.
@@hamster1717 Sure thing!
I present to you your literal entire video as evidence, rofl!
The first thing I want to say is that by deliberately admitting you are not going to address the chemistry directly in your video, you are admitting that you do not care about the substance of the actual debate. In my opinion, this means you're really only concerned with freedom-of-speech arguments and tone-policing. Fair enough. I guess that's what I can expect from someone who sat in a crowd that mocked a guest speaker and couldn't take it when they got mocked back. Rules for me, but not for thee!
Also, don't be an asshole, you know just as well as I do that you can absolutely directly quote someone and take them completely out of context. This is called "quote mining." There's also not a whole lot of you doing direct quotes; you appear to be keeping your usage of the actual terms and subjects brought up in the debate to a bare minimum (I wonder why that is, are you afraid of the substance of the debate?) You did this when you accused Dave of arguing against James as if James was a Young Earth Creationist. You, yourself, are accusing Dave of Strawmanning Mister Tour. Dave has never once accused James Tour of being a YEC. He accused him of believing in Intelligent Design, *which he absolutely does, undeniably.* You are not Steelmanning his position, which is what it takes to "misrepresent someone's views."
In order to Steelman Dave's positition, you need to actually address the chemistry directly. Until you do this, your opinion is literally epistemically unjustifiable, if it's that Dave is "misrepresenting 'Dr' Tour." Simply, if Dave is saying James is a liar and James is demonstrably lying, Dave has a point and isn't an asshole and has every right to respond to the vitriol you all displayed him as a guest speaker the way he did.
I get the feeling that if you were to actually Steelman his position, it would involve reading all those papers you and your adorable little "teacher" love to misrepresent or ignore. Especially when he writes for pseudoscientific outlets like The Discovery Institute, who directly advocates for Intelligent Design. I guess you didn't get around to asking Jim about that when you talked to him in person. I mean, why ask hardball questions and hold his feet to the fire about things he has actually said about people like Donna Blackmond and Lee Cronin?
That would just be too hard, amirite?
Furthermore, James' views on OOL research *are* religiously motivated and relevant to this discussion and to pretend that they're not just means that the only things you've bothered to listen to from your own professor are his lectures in the very B-tier school you attend and that you live in an echochamber. *James himself agreed that they were relevant as part of the terms to the debate.* He also runs a website literally titled "jesusandscience.org."
th-cam.com/video/WsMxmYW0ci4/w-d-xo.html
This is why it's important for you to directly address the chemistry because concepts like "preexisting information," which he wrote on the chalkboard, are garbage pseudoscience that no serious systems chemist takes into account.
Look at this (th-cam.com/play/PLILWudw_84t0scCNBJMZLjuUdFowl9Hc2.html ):
Or how about irrelevant amino acid sketches on a chalkboard? Isn't that the equivalent argument of "Engineers don't know how to synthesize bricks, you need a kilnmaster for that, therefore Engineers are clueless as to how to build bridges?"
He literally says, "because OOL researchers cannot aqueously synthesize an L-amino acid (a lie, we can, Dave even showed a paper), we do not have a clue." Sticking your fingers in your ears and going, "LA LA LA LA LA" does not absolve either you, or James Tour, from the burden of proof from *that* positive claim, friend.
Comparing him to Galileo is also borderline ridiculous too, because the current scientists presenting OOL research are *not dogmatic* (no matter how much your dogmatist professor says they are) and James can be completely open about his views without fear of even the slightest bit of meaningful persecution (he won't be Brett Weinstein'd). Frankly, it's more accurate to compare James and Rice University to the establishment and to compare Professor Dave to Galileo, in this particular instance.
It's literally amazing. You seem in love with this guy!
Furthermore, Dave did not once use a single ad hominem attack in the entire video. He has actually literally never ad hominem attacked James Tour *literally ever.* He may have used some language you did not appreciate. He may have even personally insulted your little "professor."
But ad hominem? Absolutely none of that occurred, and you accusing Dave of that is literally the exact definition of what you asked me for earlier. You are demonstrably and empirically, and in all other measurable and conceivable ways, incorrect when it comes to your usage and understanding of what an ad hominem attack actually is. The fact you accussed Dave of ad hominem attacking when he did not perform one single ad hominem attack is exactly you putting words and context into Dave's mouth. If that is not a misrepresentation of his views, then fuck man, *I don't know what is* and I don't think *anyone* does!
*PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!*
*Accusing people of being "clueless" because you, yourself, either do not fully read or comprehend or deliberately misrepresent the current state of OOL research is not quite an ad hominem, but it certainly is pretty slimy and it's exactly what your professor does.*
Of course you get the impression you get from him when you talk to him IRL, him being James. You didn't even know how to ask him the right questions and all you did was softball him!
I restate my opinion. You are merely concerned with the *way* he argues and not the actual *substance* of his arguments. Frankly, Dave is 100% correct when he says, "I am here, representing the science. You are literally denying it. You are a science denier and a liar." And your professor has to Strawman people who aren't even technically involved with OOL research, like Lee Cronin, to do it!
Would you care to address that at all? Or any of the science in the papers? Would you care to watch any of the videos that occurred outside of the scope of this debate, including your "professor" and Dave's educational videos? Would you care to address the fact that James is the one who made this personal, by deliberately misrepresenting the actual state of science and by calling people like Donna Blackmond, Matthew Powner, Loren Williams or Jack Szostack liars and frauds by implication?
*Jack Szostack does not agree with James about this subject* and James Tour made the claim he did! He literally lied, in real time, to every single one of you, to your faces, and you have the testicular fortitute to accuse Professor Dave of both ad hominem attacks and Strawman arguments when he calls James Tour a liar, to his face?...
Bravo, dude. Bravo. I hope you hear me clapping for you all the way out here in California.
I really encourage you to learn what an ad hominem attack actually is, too, before you ever accuse anyone of ever having performed one again. That was very embarassing to see you do, frankly, especially after having seen you unironically use the word "philosophy" in a sentence in reference to PhDs. You really should learn to Steelman people's arguments instead of just being a sycophant for your solipsistic little monkey in a suit you call "teacher." See what I did there?
You might also want to learn about something called "The Fallacy-Fallacy." You are personally guilty of it. Understanding my response here is to understand why. Never make that mistake again, otherwise you can be called not just naive, but also a fool, and it will be an epistemically justified label, not just an insult.
Also, accusing Dave of not "focusing on the science" because he refused to address your cute little "teacher's" completely irrelevant undergrad's acid sketch is a blatant mischaracterization of what happened.
Let's not get this twisted. It is a matter of fact, not just anyone's epistemically justifiable opinion, that *YOUR PROFESSOR* is the one here who "refuses to deal with the science." He is not the arbiter of what is and isn't "the science" in this situation because he himself doesn't actually understand it. Professor Dave isn't even claiming to be the arbiter either. He's simply asking why *James seems to MISUNDERSTAND, MISQUOTE, MISREPRESENT so many people.*
Before you ever make that argument again, you absolutely need to address the science yourself. Just prattling on about the value of a PhD degree and how "Ph stands for Philosophy" doesn't mean you have a good grasp of what you witnessed. You were clearly in emotional fight-or-flight mode when you wrote the script for this video. Almost no rational thought went into this.
I would really appreciate it if you would actually respond to *this* (th-cam.com/video/YAm2W99Qm0o/w-d-xo.html) video in your next engagement with this subject, if you do at all. I think you have good intentions in mind, but I do think you let a person manipulate you and you didn't apply your critical thinking skills.
I'm also willing to have a discussion with you about this subject, in video call. That is, if you're brave enough to actually go over some of this chemistry, some opinions from some other people, and some tertiary/ancillary evidence that exists outside of the scope of the debate, whether you or James Tour want it to or not. We'd talk about epistemology, the Scientific Method, peer-review and logical fallacy definitions.
Cheers!
Show the evidence if you're gonna make the claim.
dude
"God of the gaps" is "We don't know, therefore god", not "We don't know because of god". Tour does not have to argue *anything* from god to be making a GotG argument. However, he is more sophisticated with his manipulation: he does not explicitly make the "we don't know, therefore god", he stops after "we don't know", after putting a LOT of work to make people believe that, and lets others (including himself, to himself) finish the argument with "therefore god" and he gaslights people who point this out. In the debate he was asked, whether he denounces this thinking/argument, he dodged the question with somewhat virtue-signally "they can think whatever they want to think".
"being organic chemist means tours views are invalid"
Dave never said or implied that, what Dave said was that OoL is an interdisciplinary field with many mechanics that Tour has no knowledge of and no experience with. Tour's opinion is not entirely irrelevant, but he is absolutely not in a position to dunk on the field the way he does.
"contradicts scientific mainstream"
There is research that addresses what Tour has problems with. Galileo is not a valid analogy.
Tour himself explicitly states on his website, that "faith and belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist", referring to himself. You can search that quote and you should be able to find it.
We are clearly here, for all practical purposes (don't gaslight me with the philosophy BS, I know that you know exactly what I mean). If life did not arise by naturalistic processes, then what is the alternative?
Exactly, we were engineered by a dying alien species and railgunned into deep space to keep life in the universe/galaxy going, and just happened to land here! :D From the evidence we have, it's definitely more plausible than any god hypothesis. Tour's claim that "we are clueless" is demonstrably false and most people objecting to that have fallen for the manipulations of that malignant narcissist. Dave got 3 more OoL-involved experts agreeing with him that, while we indeed do not have the full picture, we are far from clueless on OoL, in his fact-check of the debate.
"The public has been misled"
I'd probably agree with this and I think Dave also acknowledged this point, though, this is irrelevant to the actual science.
"ad-hominem"
Calling a liar, a liar is not an ad-hominem. There is a causal link between what Tour says about OoL and his religion, so that is also not an irrelevant point, though it gets closer to being an ad-hominem. However, it is clear that christians stick together, applying their expertise through the lens of their religion. This is not philosophy, buddy - it's psychology. See `TheraminTrees - debunking prophets P1` for useful context in terms of psychology. And Dave *did* address the science - he had papers, remember? Or were you one of the christian flock that tuned out whenever Dave opened his mouth? Do you also think that Dave not drawing anything on the board with chalk somehow shows that he's wrong and that Tour's dead-air time-wasting drawings somehow show that he's right?
I have a personal vendetta against teachers that waste time with drawings on a chalkboard, when they could just learn to use a computer and show the same picture on the screen. I've had some and it's incredibly infuriating.
"Dave's calling people names in the comments"
How about you include the messages he was replying to? This looks like a serious misrepresentation of the actual situation. I've seen the comments he makes this sort of replies to - they are ABSOLUTELY called for and if you showed the messages he was responding to, it would be quite clear. Nobody has actually corrected Dave on anything specific, they all just go "you're wrong" or "you'll burn in hell" or similar crap.
....
Dave did actually start out rather polite for Tour - his first piece actually had some respect. However, Tour's gaslighty responses started poisoning the well, and, well Dave wasn't having it, it seems.
"naturalism of the gaps"
Well, buddy, so far every gap where god was supposed to be hiding in has been filled with naturalistic explanations, while god has not been found in any one of them. This, of course, does not invalidate the idea that god won't be in the next gap, but that's a weak position, just waiting to be dismantled. Naturalism, on the other hand, has a pretty good track record with explaining stuff.
And, well, there may be a god that has never in any way interacted with the universe, nor did it even start it off, which would be impossible to disprove. However, at this point, we have to consider what makes -information- knowledge valuable, which you should know - ability to make predictions. The concept of a god does not let us predict anything, at least it hasn't so far. Naturalism, again, has a much better track record here. To quote R. Dawkins: "It works. Bitches."
...oh no, I said a bad word, does this mean that you are now amnesticised, blind and deaf to anything that I say?
...aaand you end with the "everyone can believe what they want" line, _a la_ The fourth kind (stupid movie posing as documentary).
I have watched Dave's content. I watched the debate, live and once more later. I tried to watch something from Tour, but the video I watched 2/3rds of was a whole lot of lack of actually relevant content, if you actually care about science (or Tour's science communication skills are catastrophic and any student forced to have him as a teacher would be better off in a north-korean prison camp than be forced to sit in his class). So far, what Dave has said checks out, within my ability to understand it, while Tour keeps ringing alarm bells whenever he talks.
Also, you're giving Tour plenty of passes here as well, like many christians have already. The debate _was_ quite the mess, but Dave brought papers, while Tour yelled, dodged questions, changed topics and wasted time.
wow, this got long... If you lasted through the whole thing, you really deserve these:
🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔
Ad hom just means and arguement directed at person. In this case you can call a lier a lier but you cannot say they lying because they are Christian. It might be true but it's still an adhomin because adhominen just means towards the person. It is when you direct arguement towards a person rather then arguement. It might rhetorically good, even valid, its just doesn't follow logically as it's not sound arguementation.
I think saying he trying to 'manipulate his audience' is an adhom attack not that he is misrepresenting the science itself. In the debate I want to know what was lying about not generally why he would lie. The slander laws a think are good interms of understanding when 'calling a lier [out] is permissable'. While truth is revalent like you can call a lier a lier does cerment your case but i think, the truth docrine. You have to clear in showwing the lies, otherwise you have to express its an oppinion which kind of irelavent. The point that is easier show he wrong then he trying to manipulate people, because it not just that he lying but he knows he is lying.
The secondary claim is the one designed to do reputational damage. Which falls in the category of malicious publication or when you publish something to damage their reputation which I think this counts as, because the implication is that he a bad actor.
@@sadface7457 -I wonder if this guy has watched/reacted to any debates involving kent hovind... Tour is kind of on the same level regarding his tactics, and Dave has made a mistake in the past of trying to engage with hovind as if it were a good-will debate. That, along with the context of Dave/Tour situation, may have set this one up the way it was - there's good reasons for what happened, but it did render into a trainwreck.-
I thought this was a different video... your (lack of) profile picture made me confuse you with someone else.
Tour looked like a belligerent clown instead of a graceful host. He was screaming like a desperate madman. I thought he was going to have a stroke 😂
One makes one's mistakes and hopefully learns from them. He certainly did not come across very well. However, I am still aboard the science he presents. Dave Farina falls flat on his face.
I'm more interested why Dave in 2 hours never demonstrated any scientific data that disproves James's claims. People yell, truth remains.
You really show your true identity as a religious bigot. In this debate the topic has nothing to do with denying Christianity. This protective and impulsive reaction from you shows how you immediately begin to deny science when it has something to do with a process/phenomenon that doesn't match with your mystical book. Bigotry at its finest
😂😂😂
You are partly right and partly wrong.
Dave provided written documentation to support his assertions. You seem to have missed all that somehow.
On the other hand, you are relying only on personal anecdotes in support of Dr. Tour, and you can do much better than that.
Really? Did dave provide documentation to support his assertions or were his citations off point and irrelevant as Dr. Tour pointed out? The bottom line is that there were a couple of telling points that should tell us who was right. Why didn't dave walk up to the chalkboard and answer Dr. Tour's questions regarding the two chemical equations Dr. Tour presented? I would think these should have been two occasions dave would have welcomed. Like wow, finally-here's my opportunity to show Dr. Tour is wrong. I'm familiar with the literature (that was cited) so I know how to show Dr. Tour is wrong by walking up to the chalkboard and showing how it's done. But dave didn't do that. Why? Was it because he couldn't?