Every time an intelligent design scholar appears on a popular show, I like to write something about it. We’ve been blessed lately to hear the case for design presented on Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan and Ben Shapiro. So, people are starting to learn about the origin of life, the fossil record, the structures inside the cell, and other pieces of evidence that are terrible for naturalism. And now another big show (Tucker Carlson) has had Dr. James Tour on.
Here’s the video: (1 hour and 40 minutes)
Topics:
- Tour’s professional background: Professor at Rice University teaching organic chemistry and nanotechnology, with appointments in chemistry, materials science, nanoengineering, and computer science; conducts research, mentors PhD students, publishes papers, and has founded companies in pharmaceuticals, materials, electronics, including AI computing and memory chips.
- Active involvement in scientific research beyond teaching, spending most time on research rather than lecturing.
- No internal conflict between science and Christian faith; scientific understanding enhances belief in God.
- Molecular basis for wood’s properties: polysaccharides strands held by hydrogen bonds providing impact strength, explaining why a tree withstands a car crash better than the car.
- Comparison of wood’s durability (1,000-year-old structures) vs. plastics decomposing in 5-10 years, highlighting divine material design.
- Challenges in building robots from biological molecules (polysaccharides, polypeptides, lipids, nucleic acids) vs. using plastics, wires, silicon; humans mimic nature but can’t replicate molecular construction.
- Photosynthesis in leaves: magnesium atom in porphyrin funnels light, ejects electron, processes CO2 into tree structure and releases O2.
- Vision mechanism: rhodopsin molecules change configuration upon photon impact, relax back to enable sight.
- Memory formation: electronic interactions lead to protein synthesis, which during sleep forms hardwired brain interconnects.
- Scientists sometimes worship creation (e.g., trees) instead of the creator, per G.K. Chesterton quote.
- Private admissions by scientists: no full understanding of life, origins, or mechanisms; some privately agree with Tour but stay silent.
- Community pressures: exclusion from societies and academies for admitting uncertainties or diverging from norms.
- Science requires honesty and admitting unknowns, but COVID revealed dishonesty, eroding credibility.
- Peer review biases: papers challenging established views often rejected, especially if contradicting reviewer’s career work.
- Grant funding tied to aligning with certain narratives; hard to introduce field-shaking ideas.
- Evolutionary process lacks detailed chemical explanation; molecular interactions for changes not clarified.
- Two-day meeting in St. Louis with colleague to discuss evolutionary chemistry, but left unconvinced.
- Characteristics of life: responsive to environment, growth/change, metabolism, homeostasis, cellular composition, trait inheritance.
- Efforts to redefine life minimally to claim synthetic creation, but such claims lack full characteristics like homeostasis (e.g., maintaining internal temperature, pH, ATP production).
- Origin-of-life researchers use “proto-life” to hype lab results; media exaggerates to “scientists created life.”
- Challenges to researchers: inability to link two amino acids or glucose molecules prebiotically without interference.
- Unfulfilled predictions: e.g., Jack Szostak (2014: life in 3-5 years), Dmitry Tarseslav (5 years), Steve Benner (paradoxes solved), Lee Cronin (2011: life in couple years)—none achieved.
- Creating life: turning inorganic to living meeting life criteria.
- Four compound classes for life: lipids (cell membranes), polysaccharides (energy/channels), nucleotides (RNA/DNA), polypeptides (proteins/enzymes).
- Inability to form these polymers or even monomers prebiotically.
- Miller-Urey experiment (1953): produced amino acids but unusable mixtures without handedness.
- Molecular chirality: right- and left-handed forms (mirror images like hands); biology needs one handedness, prebiotic methods yield mixtures.
- Modern techniques achieve chirality but not via early Earth mimicry; chiral surfaces fail to produce pure handedness.
- Inability to assemble cell even with all components, ions, and DNA code provided.
- Simplest cells: similar in modern and fossil records; biophysical calculations show minimal operable cell needs 15 unmade prebiotic components.
- Progress illusion: new discoveries (e.g., chiral induced spin selectivity, interactome) move target farther away.
- No scientific idea how life originated; Bible says God spoke it into existence, science seeks details.
- Projections of nearing life creation due to mob mentality, career inertia.
- Cop-out responses: e.g., Benner leaving assembly to younger researchers.
- Cloning: duplicates existing life, not creates; starts with cells, inserts genetics.
- Ethical concerns: cloning humans could create superhuman races or enhanced individuals (e.g., 10% faster, 20% smarter).
- Genetic engineering: potential to correct disorders (e.g., autism, breast cancer predisposition) vs. abuse like preemptive surgeries.
- Chinese embryo modification abuse: led to imprisonment, career ends, funding bans; community condemned.
- Evolution: from LUCA (last universal common ancestor) to diversity via adaptation to environment.
- Microevolution: observed small changes (e.g., bird bills, bacterial antibiotic resistance via mutations or population selection).
- Bacterial resistance: often surviving resistant individuals propagate; finish antibiotics to eliminate all.
- Bacteria share DNA via tubules; respond to stresses, suggesting cellular “consciousness” or adaptive behavior.
- Macroevolution: body plan changes (e.g., invertebrate to vertebrate) never observed.
- Fossil record: supports microevolution but not body plan transitions; hypotheses link fossils without direct evidence.
- Regulatory genetic networks: early wiring lethal if clipped; requires coordinated downstream changes (not single mutations).
- Lenski experiment (1988-present): bacterial evolution under stress equivalent to 2 million years; no body plan changes, only minor (e.g., citrate use via existing gene activation).
- Cambrian explosion (540M years ago): sudden burst of species over short period, no transitional forms.
- Punctuated equilibrium (Gould): stasis then sudden changes, no gradual ramp from single cell.
- No animal macroevolution to new species; some plant genome doubling.
- Unicellular to multicellular: not observed, requires regulatory network changes.
- Design language implies designer; some admit “looks designed” but deny it.
- Resistance to questioning evolution: funding cuts, grant denials, academy exclusion for Tour’s skeptical statement.
- Unsolved: sleep consolidates memory via protein strengthening, hardwired interconnects.
- Cell anatomy: extraordinary, can’t mimic.
- Mimicking materials (e.g., wood as nylon-carbon composite) but not structures.
- Phenomena: sensing stares (evolutionary prey detection?), maternal intuition.
- Dark matter/energy: 70-90% of universe, inferred by difference from Big Bang matter/energy.
- Electromagnetic spectrum: narrow visible range; tools detect beyond (e.g., radio waves).
- Fine-tuning: physical constants (e.g., water dipole moment) precise for life; slight changes preclude life.
- Unique Earth: atmosphere, breathable, viewable heavens; universal periodic table.
- Cell as factory with systems engineering.
- Synthetic molecular brain: voltage pulses for simple gates (AND/OR), vs. child’s complex brain.
- Mosquitoes: coordinated flight via pheromone sensors from tiny brains.
Nice to see Dr. Tour bringing up additional evidence that is not related to his usual domain: the origin of life. Specifically, he brought up the fine-tuning, habitability, and sudden infusions of information in the fossil record, e.g. – the Cambrian explosion. I want everyone to know about these things.
I’m not keeping track of the controversies with Tucker Carlson, etc. I’m only posting this because I want you to share it, and pray for the people who watched it who are still not yet reconciled with God, through Christ.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I know the ‘Shroud of Turin’ is not with in your usual purview, but I recently showed the documentary linked below to my atheist husband, and though it has not ‘converted him’, the scientific rigor shown in the research did get him thinking…
https://whocanhebe.com
Also, here’s a link to a bit of research that came out to late to make it into the film:
https://www.academia.edu/77390699/X_ray_Dating_of_a_Turin_Shroud_s_Linen_Sample#outer_page_10
Just thought your readers might be interested in the above…And, actually, I’d love to know what you think of the evidence regarding the Shroud’s validity…
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Yes! Some of my friends like this argument. It’s worth a look, because the question is “can the effects be explained as a result of natural causes”.
I have not formed an opinion of it yet because I see that things are still going back and forth, whereas with the scientific arguments, we really have the other side pinned to the mat.
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