Some notes on James Tour's YouTube video, trying to argue that the explanation for the origin of life needs an "intelligent designer" (whereas the origin of the "intelligent designer" does not need to be explained). There follows the first part of a transcript of his video in black, with my comments in red.
I'm a synthetic organic chemist. And not an origin of life (OoL) researcher or a biologist.
The origin of life is purely synthetic organic chemistry.
Actually, it deals with the non-biological origins of life up to what we would all recognise as biology.
There's no way around it. I am perfectly situated to be commenting on this, to be critiquing the origin of life research.
We'll be the judges of that!
It is a-biological. It is before biology takes over.
And the process by which biology take over. Nobody imagines there is a clear-cut instant where we have chemistry, then poof! we have life.
This is purely synthetic organic chemistry and making these compounds it's very simple. Four classes of compounds. You have to make them from what's available on a presumed prebiotic earth and so the chemistry is not hard for synthetic organic chemists to follow and any decent trained synthetic organic chemist can follow me on this and I've never seen a synthetic organic chemist disagree with me on this. In fact the people that might disagree with me (about what?) are biologists because they've never made anything the only thing they may have made is they buy a kit and they make it which is made by chemists but they've never made anything ab initio and so it's the synthetic chemist that can critique origin of life research better than anyone else so go ahead ask your synthetic chemist friends to listen to what I have to say if they have anywhere a master's degree or beyond in synthetic organic chemistry have them critique what I say we do not know how to build even a simple bacterium this simplest bacterium with its 256 protein coding genes we have no idea how to build it.
*Nobody in OoL research thinks that life began with the "simplest bacterium". Even the simplest bacterium would be far too complex to have arisen spontaneously from its constituent molecules. It is considered that the origin must lie in simpler replicators or replicating systems that do not feature DNA, and not even necessarily proteins. A current favourite is the RNA World and its precursors, or something similar.
You seem completely unaware of the basics of the RNA world hypothesis. (Yes, it is still a hypothesis). I can only conclude that your brain has been addled by false creationist propaganda that repeatedly bombards us with the unfounded assertion that OoL researchers think, even insist, that life began with a simple bacterium with no precursors, just basic "ingredients".
Alternatively, for an organic chemist who purports to be interested in the experiments and ideas surrounding the origin of life, I find it hard to believe that you believe in this straw-man. You must be aware that it is a straw-man, IOW, a deception. I therefore conclude that you are just another liar for God.
Each time you appeal to this straw-man, I will indicate it with '*'. Your nose will grow one inch for every '*' that appears.
First of all we don't know how to build the molecules the four classes of molecules that are needed for it...
From your words above, "...making these compounds is very simple." - Which do you want to argue? "It is very simple", or "we don't know how to build them"?
...we don't know how to even if we had those four classes of molecules assemble them even into a simplest of bacterium* we don't know how to do that. One can do that with the technologies we have today. We can make technologies but we can't even make the simplest bacterium* Anybody who would say something contrary does not know what they are talking about.
Show me an OoL researcher who says this. More dishonest straw-man burning.
Show me the demonstration nobody has ever done it and it's not because of lack of effort
Citation required. What "efforts" have been made?"
It's not because of lack of will. First of all they haven't been able to get the molecules to do this (What is "this"? Get the molecules to "poof" into a bacterium*?) and if they could make the molecules even if we were to give them the molecules they wouldn't have the information there would be no inherent information in the DNA*.
But even if we gave them the DNA* in the structure that they wanted they wouldn't know how to put all the components together because of the sophistication within a cell* the interactomes meaning that the interacting connectivity between the molecules that Van der Waals interactions all of these have to be in the right place and in the right order for a cell* to function.
We don't even know how to define life (What? Your Bible doesn't do that for you?) let alone knowing how to spark* it to begin.
Again, nobody thinks it was a single 'spark'.
When one looks at a typical textbook one will see some prehistoric pond and molecules and those molecules coming together and forming a cell* and those cells* coming together and some slithering creature coming out of this pond that is fallacious. There is no truth in that.
Now you are getting really silly.
We don't even know how to make the molecules we are lost on how to do this we can't even make the basic building blocks but even if we could even if we could from biological from prebiotic type environment to make these with all the intellect that we put into this even if we could make them we have no idea how to assemble them.
Make up your mind on this point. You are repeating yourself and contradicting yourself. To help you, google "origin of life research". You will find that you are mistaken (or if other readers do that, they will discover that you are lying).
You say well we can make the liposome the cell membrane we cannot there's over 40,000 over 40,000 lipids have been identified in cell membranes you want to take some simple ones it's not just individual lipid membranes you have to have the inside and the outside of the membrane have to be different you have to have this huge array of proteins that transmembrane proteins and you have to have carbohydrates on the surface as identifiers even in the simplest bacterium we have no idea how to put the structure together it's not there so not only do we not know how to make the basic components we do not know how to build the structure even if we were given the basic components.
That's because nobody thinks that life came into existence by the spontaneous formation of a "silmple cell"! We do not have a full plausible pathway to the emergence of life, but it is bound to be a matter of evolution from the first replicators. Naturally, at least as yet, we don't know the details of how that evolved into your "simple cell".
So that the Gedanken experiment is this: even if I gave you all the components even if I gave you all the amino acids all the protein all the protein structures from those amino acids that you wanted all the lipids in the purity that you wanted the DNA the RNA in even in the sequence that you wanted so I'm even giving you the code and so now I say and all the nucleic acids can you now assemble a cell here in your individual bodies not in your individual laboratories not in a in a prebiotic cesspool (You think it contained shit?) but in your nice laboratory and the answer is a resounding no and if anybody claims otherwise they do not know this area (Irony alert).
This is how far the misunderstanding has gone even science professors even biology professors think that the there is a near building of life there that we understand all the ways to build life we do not.
Who are these professors? What do they actually say? I think your nose has just grown a few more inches.
Not only have none of the molecules been made ab initio under prebiotic like conditions to make the homo chiral molecules that are made. Remember we need four classes of molecules we need the nucleic acids and then the the homochiral systems* that that for the the amino acids* which then need to be built up into protein structures* we need the carbohydrates* which have to be built up into the poly carbohydrate structures* and then we need the lipids* which also are chiral. All of these we need in homochiral form. We don't know how to do this* in any prebiotic type scenario at all. These have not been made and then to assemble these into a cell* It's never been done so there's a gross misunderstanding and this misunderstanding has come because of the projections of those who work in the area of origin of life. They do one little thing and then they extrapolate it and then they work with the press to ramp it up even more and they project as if they really know it. And so the layperson reads this and says ah you see scientists understand and then it's not just a layperson scientists think that other scientists understand all of this but they do not there's a great negative outcome of this beyond just reading the audience the lead leading the general public astray.
You could gain a little credibility if you could provide examples of what you are talking about here, but of course, you cannot. Popular article writers and publishers may make up exaggerated headlines. They do this on all subjects. But provide us with examples of serious scientists saying such things. Your nose has just grown several inches more.
Here's an example of reporting on OoL. It's headline is, "Single reaction mixture can produce all four RNA bases". How does it conclude?
- "...this doesn't completely solve the question of how life could arise from simple precursors. But that doesn't take away from the authors' accomplishment: "We show that the key building blocks of life can be created without the need for sophisticated isolation and purification procedures of reaction intermediates that are common in traditional organic chemistry."
Now you owe me a replacement for my industrial-grade irony meter. You support the "Discovery Institute", a gang dedicated to trying to destroy modern biological and biology-related science out of a pseudo-religio-political motivation. It is ID/creationists who have done all they can to destroy respect for science.
And BTW, he appears to be unaware that his idol, Genesis, describes abiogenesis! https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/genesis-commentary.html
See also, Sandwalk: A chemist who doesn't understand evolution.
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