On "Cambridge Round Table on Science and religion: Dr James Tour and Dr Lee Cronin" from 2023

The origin of the video to be discussed can be found on youtube but looking up "Cambridge Round Table on Science and Religion: Dr James Tour and Dr Lee Cronin" T here have been a lot of bold claims made about Origin of Life Research.In a recent study wherein 84% of the people were college educated with most having degrees, the following two claims found great acceptance. 1, Have scientists created Frogs in a lab? A third of the public said yes. 2, Have scientists working under simulations of Earth’s early atmosphere mixed molecules together in a laboratory to create single-cell life forms? (AKA bacteria) 67% of the public said yes. There has been an ongoing battle over whether these claims are true and whether the claims being made harm science. Lets meet some of the players. Dr James Tour is quite an accomplished synthetic organic scientist and professor. His bona fides are incredible and he is well recognized in his field of synthetic chemistry. As a rough gauge, scientists have what is known as their “H-index” which takes into account their peer-reviewed published papers, how often those are interacted with, cited and so forth. A score of 20 is 40, 40 impressive and by the time you reach 60 you are exceptional. One study showed that something like 84% of Nobel Prize winners in the science disciplines had a H-index of 60 or better. Tour sits at 150. I believe the highest ever recorded is 172…so…he is up there. He brings in a tremendous amount of funding for research to Rice University, in collaboration with his students they have started numerous businesses, hold a bunch of patents and they have invented some really cool things. Check out his “nanocars” as just one example. A few years ago he started to fall out of favor with a certain segment of the Origin of life scientific community. He had the temerity to notice that some claims that were being made were not what the papers being published said and he pointed that out. Repeatedly. As he began to object more strenuously, pointing out that the chemical interactions were impossible it drew the ire of an internet personality who calls himself “Professor Dave” on Youtube, and his name is Dave Farina. Things escalated to the point they had a public debate at Rice. The debate is hard to watch. Farina, completely out of his depth in the chemistry portion, resorts to ad hominem, profanity laced bromides while Tour, upset that Farina cannot see the chemistry Tour has written on the board for all to see, responds with an escalated voice and shouting. They then fire shot after shot on youtube. And from an informational and factual standpoint Tour absolutely destroys Farina. He goes into the papers that Farina has taken the abstract and point by point by point shows that the papers not only do not prove the claims in the abstract but often contradict them. Farina responds by calling Tour clueless and a fraud without showing an iota of evidence. He then manipulates some videos to make it look like experts in the field agree with him. Tour talks directly to the experts who mostly have never even heard of Farina much less talked to him and who universally say that Farina’s claims are wrong. Tour also goes and shows how each of Farina’s experts actually confer with Tour. And then he reaches the moment of truth. He lays out a challenge to 10 leaders in the research field, primarily those whose papers are the bulk of the debate. He selects 5 questions and the ten experts. Questions he weights heavily in their favor. He lays out 5 questions and suggests that if any of the ten key researchers can answer any of the 5 essential questions they are allowed to decide if they answered any of the 5 questions and if they so decide, he will remove all his content. He lets them start with a lof of stuff that could not exist in the conditions being discussed (more on this below) -All 19 canonical chiral amino acids, nucleotides, monosaccharides in 100% enantiomeric purity You have to make 1) Polypeptides 2) Polynucleotides 3) Polysachharides 4) Come up with the origin of specified information 5) Form them into textbook definition of a cell Answer any one of those. Of the 10 experts, 2 sort of engaged. Steve Benner claimed he could answer one of them in an hour. Tour offered to fly to his office while Benner did the work but he said because of health and time he could not solve it. Bold answer…something that has never been answered he can answer in an hour…but doesn’t have the time to. Okay. Lee Cronin did answer. This seems like a good time to meet Cronin, who is no slouch himself. He is a chemist professor at the University of Glasgow with an H-index of 81. In case you are curious…that puts him in the top 2% of people in his field. He is also one who as long ago as 2010 in a Ted Talk said he would make life in his lab within 2 years. (Others in the challenged list made similar time claims.) He is to be commended because, while he either could not or would not reveal the answer to any of the five questions (spoiler alert: could not as comes out in the video), he agreed to meet with Tour ina Cambridge Round Table on Science and Religion to be held at Harvard. That just happened and it was illuminating. So lets take a look at each person’s beliefs and what they are trying to do as it really colors what happens in the video. Tour makes no bones about it. He believes in God and believes deeply. He also is extremely scrupulous in his teaching, in his scientific research, and in his presentations to speak only from and about science. The only time you hear God brought up is people accusing him of putting God into it. He believes in the billions of years or “deep time” teaching and believes evolution did occur. He just thinks the research has not only not shown how life began, that it is nowhere close with any number of fatal flaws, but he has explicitly stated many times, “I believe we will discover how it began. We just haven’t done that yet and we need to stop lying to people that we have.” Cronin on the other hand is a proud atheist whose hatred of God comes out in many of his videos, tweets and speeches. He also believes in deep time, evolution as originator and guide of development of life and will freely admit that we haven't discovered the answer yet. In a way, that is what makes this Round Table both funny and tragic. These guys believe the same thing but are arguing about it as if they don’t. When the video begins the moderator is unintentionally funny. There are two rules for this Round Table on Science and Religion. First, the speakers will only speak from science, no religion allowed. I mean…it is in the title…but okay. Your show, your rules and I actually think in this case it is a good one. And as the night goes on, Tour speaks exclusively from, by, and about science. Cronin takes at least three shots at God and those who believe and multiple panelists bring God into it, mostly trying to say Tour only challenges the science because of his belief in God. The second rule is even better. One person speaks at a time, both in the initial presentation, later in the smaller groups at the various tables, and then in the final panel. I have generally found debates to be worthless and largely because this rule is seldom followed. I have had people show me any number of videos from tabloids like CNN, Fox, the View, or professional agitators like Kendi, Shapiro or Kirk. They are pointless and valueless. Neither side allows the other to finish their question or expound on it, they almost inevitably devolve into both sides shouting past each other with little to no informational content and the person whose mind is changed by these bits of theater ought to have their head examined. That goes for the upcoming Presidential debates. Take a relatively simple idea…say what is inflation. Try to explain the causes, effects, and ramifications in an hour. Now condense that to 3 minutes when the opponent is spouting feel-good rehearsed sound bites that say nothing but win the crowd. Pointless. Well, Tour makes several excellent points that I will try really hard to condense and highlight without just repeating what he said. First off is he is looking at the definition of Abiogensis: Life springing from non-living matter taking into account earth as it existed 4 billion years ago and the materials must be pre-biotically relevant so you are restricted to the materials, procedures and conditions that might have been available on early earth. Well, lets take a look at just this opening salvo. Assumption 1) life springing from non-living matter It is shocking that in a world that has seen Louis Pasteur do his famous experiments on spontaneous generation that this is still considered legitimate. Well, not that shocking because as is replete in the scientific literature, the very scientific thought that “the other option is God and we know there is no God so it must have happened” shows why this base assumption is taken seriously. Assumption 2 “earth as it existed” Papers are continuously being written on what elements did or did not exist when the earth formed. Papers are constantly being written trying to figure out how the earth formed as…well, in the community it is a well known fact that under the Big Bang model, earth cannot exist as it does because the proximity to the sun would not allow water to stay in those conditions and the “planetary accretion model” that allegedly formed the earth has been disproven but we know the earth is here so even though there is no known way for it to have formed under the models, we assume the models are right. Look at the papers, I am not kidding, that is the situation. Assumption 3 “4 billion years ago” I could write so much on deep time but I don’t want to spoil a lot of the work I have been doing in preparation for next year. There are so many holes in the deep time hypothesis that we will just leave it at this; you can throw out whatever number you want and as long as it is long people will not argue it. They can’t show it and it is based on huge numbers of guesses and assumptions, but as long as it is billions you will find acceptance. Assumption 3 Pre-biotically relevant (sub-heading materials) This is several assumptions rolled into one.Nobody really knows, if the earth formed out of the elements thought to have been created by the Big Bang, which ones were present in what proportions. You can basically just plug and play and add a dash of this and a pinch of that to your heart's content knowing that since nobody knows, your guess is as good as theirs and is better since it is you and not them. Assumption 4 Procedures We think of there being 3 laws of Thermodynamics. This is not accurate but it is a thought. We also know of gravity, atoms, and so forth. When did these laws develop? How? What keeps them in place? These are important questions. For example, in the planetary accretion model it is thought that swirling clouds of gas and dust became small rocks. These rocks banged together and, improbably, instead of breaking into smaller ones, stuck together. This happened again and again until they became large enough to have their own gravity field large enough to pull in more material and behold, planets formed! Of course, gravity doesn’t work that way. For that matter, neither do rocks slamming into each other at high speed. So the procedures? Why, those are whatever we think might work and are, by definition, guesses and assumptions. Assumption 5: Conditions Not knowing the elements present, or the quantities they are in, or what laws of nature are functioning as they currently are believed to, how can you get to any reasonable facsimile of an intelligent guess at what the world was like? The “Prebiotic Soup” model will come up a bunch…and for good reason. It can be whatever the paper writer wants it to be knowing nobody can prove it wrong. They can’t show it right…but since so many levers can be pulled, it can’t be conclusively shown wrong. As becomes a theme, “you can’t prove a negative.” As Tour continues, he states one goal: Paraphrased, he says, “We are seeking an experimentally verifiable hypothesis of how life might have originated.” I can appreciate that. They are not even trying to determine what happened, just one of however many ways it could have happened. They are trying to find out if it is even possible. That feels like a far cry from “all life arose from a single celled organism to become rabbits, radishes, rhinocereous, and guys named Rand.” Care to guess whether the public believes that is already known as a proven fact? Tour uses some of Cronin’s statements and it is one Tour agrees with…a shocking theme on the evening I am not sure the two of them even realize. They believe the same thing. HEre is the paraphrase: The most basic unit of matter that could undergo Darwinian Evolution is the cell. It must exhibit these features: Genetic code Mating Metabolism Adaptation Homeostasis He reiterates his theme, which I emphasize because of how many times he says it and how as we will see people do not understand what he is trying to do. Tour: “I think that we will one day find out how life began. But I don’t think we are anywhere close.” He then makes some excellent points: we have learned a lot about the cell, how it is assembled, how it works and functions. But as we learn one thing, it opens us to previously unknown questions. Answering one question might give rise to 3, 5, 10 or more questions. Solve one of those and even more are opened up. As the night goes on at one point he demonstrates that given all the components of a cell we don’t know how to assemble one. Think of the ramifications of that. A lot of well-funded, very smart people working in teams in sophisticated labs with incredibly powerful computational devices in all their wisdom cannot assemble what they think happened by being randomly put together in incredibly hostile environments that would not allow time for it to survive much less reproduce. He then addresses another key point that is well worth thinking on. “Chemistry is the language of living systems”. Most of the rest of his opening statement is pointing out issues that have arisen: -molecules have never been known to move toward life, either on their own or through deliberate research efforts - reaction chemistry is really hard to force toward life if even possible He also points out a basic flaw, and while he cites Cronin you will find this is true in the Origin of Life community as a whole: “..calls the “Probiotic Soup Model’ a good model without any rationale as to what makes it a good model”. This is part of a sub-theme. He calls a key Cronin paper, “Formation of Oligopeptides in High Yield Under Simple Programmable Conditions” garbage and has similar words about “Taming the Combinatorial Explosion of the Formose Reaction via Recursion Within Mineral Environments”. This hurts Cronin’s feelings and as he later says, paraphrased, “Calling a paper garbage without saying why it is garbage is garbage.” Valid point and he is right to be hurt. But both elements are there: models aren’t good “because I say so” or bad for the same reason. Show the strong points and date or the weak points and contradictions. He then sets out a series of problems of which any single one is a fatal blow to any claim that we have established Origin of Life and how it even could have happened, much less how it did Nobody has shown a method to make the 4 elements (Lipids, Polysaccharides, Polynucleotides, and polypeptides) Nobody has shown a way we can use substances that landed on earth via meteorites Nobody has solved the mass transfer problem in chemical transformation from small molecules to a cell Nobody has shown probiotic route to polymerization You can’t hook the sugars together to get there Nobody has solved the side chain issue Nobody has solved the protein folding problem to do even one and you need to have several; it would take 10 to the 95th power to fold one, we think 10/40 is time allowed and 10 to the 19th is the estimated number of elements in the universe Nobody has solved the polymer stability problem when dealing with single molecules….time is the enemy Example: RNA molecule lifetime is 4 hours in a pristine lab…if the right Rna and DNA happen to form in “early earth conditions” you need 13 days and you have 4 hours at most Nobody has solved the problem with half of the amino acids needing side chain protection Nobody has solved the code problem for ordering the nucleotides/saccharides/proteins One of my favorites, nobody has ever shown that life could form with lower enantiomeric-excess mixtures which would mitigate the need for chiral induced spin selectivity… Nobody has made any higher order structures; he lists 12, of which none have been made for even the simplest cell Nobody, even if given the 4 classes of molecules, in any order desired order and being given the informational code coupe prepare even the most simple cell He spends some time discussing the 5-question challenge he laid out and addresses Cronin’s email reply where Cronin says, “I don’t even agree with the questions. The emergence of life goes beyond these narrow questions.” A fine answer that loses a bit when you realize he has published papers on two of them and addressed two others recently in podcasts. So he at the least thinks about them. Then we get into some sniping where he uses quotes Cronin has made about him not understanding information and making use of a lengthy Cronin quote about Origin of Life research being a scam. Cronin will pass that off as a joke. Read his statement or watch the video where he says it…interpret for yourself if it is a joke. Whether he meant it to be or not, he makes some really telling points about the gap between what people say they have done and what they have done, between what they say they know and what the research shows is known… And coming toward the latter portion, Tour spends time talking about Cronin’s recent publication “Assembly Theory”. He then quotes responses to it that pretty much call it a fatally flawed theory that is a pale imitation of Huffman’s coding scheme that counts repetitions in strings of data and quotes a statement, “though, unlike Assembly Theory, Huffman actually counts correctly…” Ouch. But Tour also points out that Assembly Theory abandons reaction chemistry, the underlying point being that reaction chemistry is what these guys believe makes the first non-living cell suddenly become living work. So that is a pretty telling accusation. Tour is nearing the end of his opening statement and he lays out a series of predictions: Cronin, a chemist, will not discuss anything tonight about the chemical reaction leading to life’s origin Cronin will remain silent on polypeptides, polynucleotides, and polysaccharides or any sort of polymerization Asks will people leave with more understanding of cell assembly. Let's throw up a big, blinking neon “Spoiler Alert” sign here: Cronin will not discuss chemical Reactions. He will not discuss the 4 elements. He will not explain in any meaningful way how cells could assemble. He then clearly, explicitly states his goals. This is a huge moment; he has said this repeatedly.. He has said it in published papers. He has said it in his debate versus Farina. He has said it in numerous videos. He said it earlier on this evening. Stop overambitious projections regarding the state of Origin of Life research. Don’t Abandon the basic reactions of chemistry. Concede that we do not YET (emphasis his) sufficiently understand chemical reactions to project toward life. There are enormous scientific mysteries left to unfold and we might still be hundreds of years from understanding. This last point is one he has mentioned several times in his videos, lectures, and so forth. A favorite example of his has to do with 250 years ago it was not even known there was such a thing as a human genome and now it is mapped. That is a tremendous leap forward in knowledge that has raised even more questions. Consider the progress and how much more we need to learn but what will we know in 100, 200, 300 years from now? And he concludes with a joke, “I agree with Lee Cronin.” and he shows a Cronin tweet that simply says, “Origin of Life Research is a scam.” Lee Cronin Opening Statement So then Cronin gets his time to present his case. He addresses a key theme for him early. As mentioned earlier, he addresses the “calling a paper garbage without saying why it is garbage is garbage.” Note that he does not defend the paper. In fact, as he goes on he will defend none of his work including Assembly Theory, admitting it “might be wrong” without countering the things that show it to be wrong. His issue is more how the statement that it is wrong is presented. He interjects this thought repeatedly. As he starts a wandering diatribe on how our galaxy or solar system is now seen as heliocentric. He takes time to talks about “All the problems? Yes, we can solve them” without explaining how or addressing that people believe them solved. This is the central point of disagreement. He and Tour both know there are problems. They both know the public has been deceived. To Tour this is a big deal and to Cronin the big deal is not even what Tour says but how he says it. Which brings us back to his discussion of the heliocentric. Without understanding his issue with Tour, the digression makes zero sense. What he is trying to do is show that once perhaps it was thought the earth was thought the center of the universe and then it became known the earth orbits the sun. Progress! The problem was only a problem for a time. In other words, as per his email, he is taking the time honored tactic of not answering the question asked but rather answering the question you wish was asked. He takes another shot at the volume Tour delivered his remarks in due to his passion. He cannot assail the content so he makes ad hominem attacks and tongue in cheek insults and is fine with his way of doing it because it isn’t loud. It is pretty ingenious and a deep level of hypocrisy that he will not be called out on over the course of the evening. He goes on to make assumption after assumption after assumption…”What we see here is a product of evolution, learning and selection.” His point is the tables, tablecloths, dishes and utensils are a result of evolution. These inanimate objects were designed and assembled by people who his assumption says are a product of evolution, learning and selection. Get used to that word selection., It is Cronin’s god within his god of evolution and make no mistake…they are his gods. He returns to two of his themes: the insults and whether problems are problems, saying Tour says “I am a bad chemist. I am here to say these aren’t problems, they are opportunities. We can solve them.” Again…he is in agreement with Tour that these things will be solved, it is just not known when. It is hilarious and sad at the same time how much these two agree with each other but don’t see it because of the approach. Reframing a problem as an “opportunity” is a nice bit of terminology sleight of hand. An opportunity to learn? Sure. Something that investigation may reveal heretofore unknown knowledge, issues and potentially solutions? Yes…but they are still fatal problems as the state of the field now stands and simply renaming them does not change that basic fact. Therein lies their disagreement. Starting to sound familiar? He has a very insightful remark when he says of Perceptual Filters that when new “technologies of perception emerge, they allow us to see more of reality.” This is so true. More powerful microscopes have allowed us to delve ever further into the world of atoms. Particle Accelerators allowed us to find quarks. More powerful telescopes are showing further into space and (as I quite enjoy) causing a spate of new research articles pointing out the new James Webb images are causing a raging debate where some scientists, seeing they new distant images don’t fit the model declaring the Big Bang model dead while others are saying those people don’t know what they are talking about… See, the new perceptions and seeing more of reality then fall into the realm of interpretation. As many scientists like to say, “science doesn’t say anything. It produces data to be interpreted” or similar phrases. Well, part of Cronin’s new technology of perception is his recent paper on Assembly Theory. His defense of it is amazing. He doesn’t address the problems, he doesn’t say they are incorrect. He says, “Yes, there may be problems, but look at the engagement. Yes, it might be wrong, but it might be less wrong.” As he goes on about it he makes a fascinating statement that, again, shows him in agreement with Tour who in his remarks talks about finding a way life might have begun. Cronin: “...why I think it is not relevant to look at THE origin of life, is I want to accept that chemistry, and I am a chemist, chemistry does not take billions of years to produce a life form. Evolution does take a long time, but reaction chemistry seems faster. So there’s a quandary here.” This is as close as he comes to discussing chemistry. Potentially this is a partial response to Tour pointing out all the claimed time in the universe is not enough time for a single protein to fold, that there is not enough time for a cell to form before the elements would kill it, that said cell even if it somehow miraculously formed would not have time to reproduce. Cronin’s answer? “Well, it is fast.” The answer he gives to it is not fast enough is…”it is fast.” Color me convinced! No further questions, your honor. I mean, sure, it doesn’t address the problem, just gives a GM Hand Wave and off we go. He then invokes his god to dismiss any other God, saying, “If we aren’t in a simulation and not some other fictitious creation, then there is another process going on.” See, some people who have seen the numerous fatal problems the Big Bang has going on have proposed a couple of really fun ideas to explain how we exist. One is the “multiverse” where there are infinite universes where every possible thing that could happen, no matter how unlikely, has happened…including one where I am typing this, exact in every detail except I have one fewer hair in my left eyebrow and another where I have no eyebrow and another where… And if this is not ridiculous enough, then knowing how hard it is for non-life to produce life, the idea is we are not alive at all. You don’t exist, I don’t exist…except as a computer program. Some hyper-intelligent race has developed such computing power that they are running a program simulating what life would be like under thus and such circumstances. Not thinking that idea is stupid enough yet? Well, Simulation Theory then posits that inside that simulation is a society so market they have their own simulation so we might be in that one…or the one that one created… We are well past any even thought of science and into the realm of science fiction with a healthy does of banality. It also just moves the problem of initial life to whoever started the first simulation. Well, Cronin is not going down the road of simulation. He is not going down the road of figuring out how life started. He wants to talk about the problem of what does exist. Did you see the sleight of hand he used to completely shift it? He purports to be an Origin of Life researcher. But he is not going to research how it started. He is going to start after life has already developed. See, he has never left his thoughts on Assembly Theory even as he takes these side trips. See, with Assembly Theory, you assume you have whatever building blocks you want. If say…a saccharide ever existed, the universe has a memory of it. How does a universe that has no guiding force, no mind, no goal, no end it is working toward, no brain or storage function have memory? It just does, so stop asking questions. Remember, problems aren’t problems, they are opportunities. There will now be a brief pause as I rolled my eyes so hard they are in the other room. See, he likes to say the universe is big, but combinatorial space is bigger. And so random peptides and saccharides and lipids form…not all at once…but the universe has a memory of them and with all that time and so many chances at some point they combine and abracadabra, you have a cell. I use Abracadabra because it is the word he uses to dumb down Assembly Theory for us mere mortals. Count the A’s. Once you have one, why, you can use it as much as you want. Oh, look, AB in combination…we have almost spelled Abracadabra. It is that easy to assemble these parts! My sarcasm gene is in high gear at this point. And he goes on with a series of guesses.. “If this…if this…if that…then maybe”. Color me convinced that this incredibly unlikely thing that violates pretty much every scientific principle happened because otherwise how can we explain it? Guesses and saying how it might have happened are enough! And then, knowing how weak his argument is, he brings in his god while mocking God the Creator in one go. “...some other designer…NO. It was made by one process and one process alone…selection and evolution. The watchmaker was evolved, was he not?” Well…no, no he was not. See, Cronin holds so tightly to the idea that this mindless force selection moves things towards success. How do you define success when you have no goal and no intellect pushing it? Well, one process and one process alone…selection and evolution. Let me do a quick count…selection, that is one, evolution, that is one…yep, the math checks out. I know, cheap shot, but some of his cheap shots really irritated me and this was pretty low hanging fruit. Especially as he would consider selection as part of evolution. This seems like an excellent time to point out another major problem with his philosophy. Evolution as he believes it to be has no intellect, no mind, no brain, no goal, no structure…evolution to him is a name to explain what he believes we see has happened. And yet he assigns it every trait one would expect of his mortal enemy (and mine, truth be told), “Intelligent Design”. This selection he harps about…it is not a law of nature. It is, for Cronin, inextricable from evolution as it occurred, and inviolable. It guides and steers, corrects and creates. And of course he has to return to two of his favorite themes. “I like making provocative statements to get people to think, not to get people to shout at me until they are hoarse.” A clear shot at the volume and passion Tour has. And then, referring to his paper, “When the Creationists got unhappy because it wasn’t creation-y enough, I was like, take a day off, my job is done.” There may be someone somewhere that objects for that reason. He would know. The objections I saw from Creationists were because of the major, major issues Assembly Theory has. Problems, I repeat, he never says are not actual problems, problems he admits are there, problems he does not try to solve. But that is okay, even if it is bad science, even if it is untenable, if it gets the right people upset then it is good enough for him. This is a major, major problem in the scientific community we will return to in the panel questions when talking about citations. It is not about their accuracy but who is using them… I particularly like, in his explanation and definition oAssembly Theory, the very well researched, very well developed, extremely well thought out explanation of how having previously had that building block works. “You can reuse any memory. You somehow have a memory…so it is not like Hofman coding.” Well…that settles it nicely. You have memory for the time-honored parental reason. “Because I said so.” Well…he sure told me! As he is winding down, he returns to a favorite topic. Paraphrased, he says, “You have a problem. You develop a theory. You experiment. You get an explanation. Yes, you may not be accurate but that is the process. We want criticism.” The unspoken part is “but just the right criticism from the right people. When we overstate what we know and can do, don’t call us out on that. And certainly don’t do it with a loud voice. And when what we say is pure unadulterated horse droppings, don’t point that out. And if you must point it out, don’t shout.” He then closes with his picture of a bunch of Lego bricks that have a diagram assembling them to build a man. See? If you just have all the Legos, it is easy to build a Lego Man. I don’t think he even realizes how this diagram makes Tour’s point, not his. Think about this, for a few moments. Legos are made of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene.. This is an engineered thermoplastic created from three polymers. Do you know what a polymer is? Britannica will tell you is is “any of a class of natural or synthetic substances composed of very large molecules, call macromolecules, that are multiples of simpler chemical units called monomers.”(1) Now, we start out several steps up the chain already in Cronin’s building block example. Worse, think of all the other missing pieces: to build a single Lego pieces, you don’t just need to get these monomers to combine to make the polymers, you then need to mold them. Go look up the Lego plant in Billund Denmark. It is incredibly cool to look at. Check out all the machines required to get the ABS ready to mold into the various shapes. Consider how those are assembled. Think about how the material for the walls, the nails and brackets in the walls, the roofing material, siding material were made. Consider all the transport vehicles and how much technology and design those have in them. The fuel for the plant, the fuel for the machines, the electricity for the lights… We are talking millions and millions of things that had to be discovered, researched, experimented on, carefully designed to make the plant that takes a material which itself needs much of that to produce that building block of a brick. Sure, building a Lego man is easy if you just assume all that is in place. The cell is more complicated than all of these things combined… Look up some version of “How complicated is a cell”. You will get answers ranging from “more complicated than rush hour in New York City” to “more complicated than the space shuttle” to “the cell is more complex than the biggest city we have ever built”. But for Cronin…eh, don’t sweat the small stuff. We can’t explain how something so complex spontaneously formed in impossible conditions but we know it did because it is here so we will just jump ahead millions of steps and start with a functional cell.” So to sum up his opening statement: He is saying yes, James Tour, all the problems you mention and more exist and we don’t know the answers but don’t say it while shouting. We can’t explain it so we will just skip it with a hand wave but anyone who says God did it is a moron. My science may have been shown to be defective but it might be less defective than some other science. Be nice. Criticize, but only in the ways and of which subjects I approve. The video then moves to the Dinner Table Segment Dinner Table The overall moderator is at the table with Cronin and Tour and makes a telling admission. He admits it “never occurred to me that evolution might have its flaws”. He is, whether advertently or not admitting that when Tour says the overclaims are miseducating the public it is being done and done effectively. Indeed, even if anyone reads all this that I write, I suspect there will be those among the readers who believe Darwinian Evolution, from non-life to single celled organism to descent with modification into species where all life comes from that initial cell is a proven fact. It demonstrably is not. It is a patchwork of guesswork, assumptions, overriding evidence, and loud statements. What it is not in any way, shape, or form is proven. Far from it. As Tour pointed out, the more we learn the further we are from being even remotely close to being able to prove any of it and there is not only no evidence of life spontaneously generating, there is no evidence, no observed case, no case reproducible int he fossil record of any species ever becoming another species. And yet people are hardline convinced it has been proven. During the table conversation Cronin makes two interesting statements. The first is that Darwinian Evolution “is not about more complex, it is about fitness in the niche” and expounds on it explaining that sometimes it is a move towards the simple that fits the niche rather than something more complex. There are so many ramifications there a book could easily be written about that concept alone. The second is a scathing indictment of evolution even though he does not realize it. He points out, “If I can’t measure or falsify it, it is garbage.” Darwinian Evolution has never been observed. It has never been measured. It is never been reproduced. And it is carefully framed in such a way as to make it so it cannot be falsified. Any experiment that is done that shows the impossibility of change between species gets the same generic handwave. “Oh, it may not have happened that way but we know it happened.” It is a magnificent defense that sidesteps the scientific process, all history of knowledge, and anything that goes against it. The round table is great as first one of the other people at the table breaks loose with, “since this is a round table on science AND (his emphasis) religion, what are the stakes for you?” TOur points out, “I did not inject religion into it all,” and starts talking about a relatively recent discovery from the last 25 years about something we did not know about previously, spin-induced chirality. But Tour also points out the problem with the overclaims is claims that life has been successfully created have made it into text books from middle school on up through university and says this is bad…but not because it is false, but because if people think it is solved they will not go into the field. Weird bit of reasoning. I understand what he is saying but I think it is a serious problem that things people know are false are intentionally placed in textbooks to deliberately teach lies and falsehoods to kids and the problem is not, “We are lying”, it is “people might not keep doing this thing that leads to lies.” As the conversation goes on both Tour and Cronin keep going to the “there is a lot we have yet to learn” but the goal of it differs for them; to Tour it is “stop making claims we are close. There is a long way to go.” For Cronin it continues to be “don’t disagree THAT way” He keeps pushing his “selection guides everything” idea along with “combination”. They also have an exchange that I wonder how many people caught. In discussing how molecules decay too rapidly to have a second generation to form in any specific time, the answer is, “Jim doesn’t look over a long enough time scale”. Sure, it may be impossible in each specific segment of time but if you just stretch out the time long enough you can claim it could have happened at some point in that time frame. It is another neat dodge that allows a monstour handwave…”yes, being able to perform the necessary functions is impossible in any set amount of time but over long enough the impossible can be done because…time.” Pe3r Cronin’s own words”it is garbage”. What you can measure and falsify says it can’t happen so you just say, “with more time it did happen without being able to measure or falsify it”. I genuinely wonder if he does not see the logical and factual holes in his thoughts or if he is outright dishonest. I think there are clues in some of his other videos that show a lot of his views and assumptions but I am not in his head so will not go so far as to say I know. The Panel They move to a panel with the moderator, Cronin and Tour and three or four people who will be allowed to ask questions one at a time. Right out the gate Randy Isaac points out it is a round table on science and religion and asks what the stakes are for religion in the debate. Note how when the science is discussed it was pretty clear…with what is currently known, it is impossible for life to arise from non-life. There is a tremendous amount of work being done with varying amounts of forward progress but the more is learned, the further it ends up from showing any method by which life could have spontaneously generated, how life could have survived, how it could have developed, how it could have learned how to make eyes, lungs, hearts, veins, blood vessels, etc…and the answer is, “but religion”. Why do they keep going back to the religious question? Because it is obvious that there are two options, life was a random, chance occurrence that defied the odds to exist at all and yet functions as if designed quite carefully…or it was created that way. The inference is if you point out a flaw in the spontaneous generation, your motivation is not scientific progress but rather trying to prove God even if you never mention Him, allude to Him, or address Him. Even if you speak from and about science for the purpose of advancing science you must be trying to bring in God. Cronin does, however, respond with some real insight when in his response to it he says “it is about culture. It is about understanding how special or common we are. It is about understanding what life is.” Tour in his turn states he believes the Scripture that “all things were created by Him and for Him” and then goes right back to talking about, “you don’t have to be a believer to do great science.” His takeaway is the stakes for him are a greater appreciation WHEN (emphasis his) we figure out how life originated and evolved. Isaac then tips his hand. “Tour, you don’t agree with Intelligent Design, but they use your work.” They have an exchange where Tour points out his work is published. He neither gives nor denies anyone permission to cite his papers. It is simply there to be read, discussed, cited.. This causes Isaac great consternation. See, Isaac cannot point out any flaws in the science people are doing but he hates their world view and thinks it is terrible they are allowed to cite scientific work. This is a key issue. If you don’t think “the right way” then anything you do cannot be real science. You might use real data, perform real experiments, show real results but since you are not coming from their world view, and although they cannot find or point to a single flaw in your work, it is reprehensible in the eyes of people like Isaac that they be allowed to use the work of “real scientists”. To people like Isaac, the No True Scotsman logic fallacy is their guiding principle. Bow at the altar of and worship Darwinian Evolution or you are not a real scientist. Point out the flaws in Darwinian Evolution and you are not a real scientist. Find data, perform experiments, write papers that do not match up with Darwinian Evolution and you are not a real scientist. In fact, one favorite attack of people like Isaac…I don’t say Isaac, I know little about him…but for the Darwinian Evolution community, they dismiss Creationists out of hand because “you are not published in these journals”. That is generally a true statement. What is not revealed is they do not accept submissions from Creationists. So it is impossible to get published in those journals. Pretty neat trick.We don;t let you publish here and since you can’t publish here you have no credibility because you aren’t published here. Now, that is just another in the many flaws we see in the whole “peer review” process. Tour elsewhere has talked about how many things are submitted to him to “peer review” and freely admits he doesn’t have time to study the research, tables, data etc to verify it, “no one does”. Even a far-left publication like the Guardian talked about how the nearly 5500 retractions in 2022 was nearly certain to be a vast underrepresentation of the amount of “research misconduct and error”. Look up the article Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus published in August of 23 pointing out the massive problem. Remember how Elizabeth Holmes built Theranos, the fraudulent blood-testing business? Blatant fraud in full public view that took years to discover. In this case they did not publish through normal channels… But Diederiik Stapel did. Repeatedly. And fraudulently. Hwanf Woo-suk ring a bell? 25 articles from Dipak Das telling you how healthy red wine is? You can find hundreds of such cases. Peer review is a pretty obviously flawed system that gatekeepers use to keep excellent scientists from publishing while allowing outright fraud to go through just fine. Well done. Melissa Franklin creates a hypothetical on another subject that sums it up nicely. When Tour replies, she says, “That’s not what I want to hear, “ and explains what he should say. Tour chides her, “you know what you want to hear” indicating she is not asking a legitimate question but instead asking a question that she will only accept her predetermined answer for. She then switches tacts and says, :Should we be thinking more about time?” Tour again points out it would take longer than the universe has existed for a single protein to fold, yet there are several proteins that need to fold just to get a molecule. Cronin, never tired of making the same mistake, says, “I think protein folding is a category error. Proteins do not fold in isolation. Selection promotes molecules that can exist for a long enough time…” And Later in the statement, :As soon as chemistry could start remember the selection process started”. Do you see the massive, glaring holes? Proteins make up a molecule. Cronin wants to skip all that and jump ahead, the molecule already developed. It doesn’t matter how. It doesn;t matter that it is impossible to make the steps that lead to the molecule…we HAVE the molecule so even though they are impossible, those steps happened. Ask yourself, does chemistry have a brain? What is the mysterious, guiding force that has no brain, has no agenda, has no sense of time or reality, yet has memory and guides selection? This is Cronin’s god. This is his unyielding assumption that defies all logic, that defies all reality. If you just say that “selection”, and undefined process with no purpose or rules, in combination with “memory” that exists nowhere, combined with time, you have the impossible. In the final word of the evening Tour says something interesting. “I have seen changes, they are a lot more measured.” He is referring to claims of origin of life researchers. On the whole, it was an interesting evening. I would be shocked indeed if anyone had their mind changed. This is particularly true as both Tour and Cronin do believe life spontaneously occurred billions of years ago in some unknown fashion that led from a single molecule forming everything from a carrot to a rabbit, from a stinkbug to a potato, from bacteria to you and I. They just disagree on how claims should be presented to the public. I am not sure they see that. And yet if you just look at what was said on the evening and look at the foundations of what they are saying you can clearly see that in the depths of their belief they themselves show so many fatal flaws in Darwinian Evolution. https://www.britannica.com/science/polymer