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James M Tour Group

Rice university.

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Origin of Life, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creation and Faith (Updated August 2019)

I have been labeled as an Intelligent Design (sometimes called “ID”) proponent. I am not. I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to the arguments and I find some of them intriguing, but I prefer to be free of that intelligent design label. As a modern-day scientist, I do not know how to prove intelligent design using my most sophisticated analytical tools— the canonical tools are, by their own admission, inadequate to answer the intelligent design question. I cannot lay the issue at the doorstep of a benevolent creator or even an impersonal intelligent designer. All I can presently say is that my chemical tools do not permit my assessment of intelligent design.

I have written a long article on the origin of life: http://inference-review.com/article/animadversions-of-a-synthetic-chemist . It is clear, chemists and biologists are clueless. I wrote, “Those who think scientists understand the issues of prebiotic chemistry are wholly misinformed. Nobody understands them. Maybe one day we will. But that day is far from today. It would be far more helpful (and hopeful) to expose students to the massive gaps in our understanding. They may find a firmer—and possibly a radically different—scientific theory. The basis upon which we as scientists are relying is so shaky that we must openly state the situation for what it is: it is a mystery.” Note that since the time of my submission of that commentary cited above, articles continue to be published on prebiotic chemistry, so I will link to my short critiques of a few of those newer articles so that the interested reader can get an ongoing synthetic chemist’s assessment of the proposals: http://inference-review.com/article/two-experiments-in-abiogenesis .

The origin of life (often encompassing the terms prebiotic chemistry or abiogenesis) article that I cite above is long and I need not repeat it. But even in that article, I never addressed the issue of information. The information or coding within the DNA (or RNA) that corresponds to the sequence of the nucleic acids is primary to the entire discussion of life. Some would rightly argue that the information is even more fundamental than the matter upon which it is encoded. I merely showed that the requisite molecules (lipids, proteins, nucleic acids and carbohydrates) are so unlikely to have occurred in the states and quantities needed, that we could never have gotten to the point of figuring out the genesis of the requisite code or information. The code is analogous to the difference between the Library of Congress and a big box of alphabetic letters— the library has a huge amount of embedded information while the random box of letters has little. So origin of first life is the ‘nail holding the coffin closed’ on the emergence of biological evolution. Without that first life, or simple cell, which requires the four molecule types plus information, all proposals regarding biological evolution are without the base of life. And it is difficult to discuss biology without life.

But even if one were given all the molecules needed in complete stereochemical purity, and the information code, could a cell be constructed using the chemical and biochemical tools that we have today? I have written about such a hypothetic experiment, and how it would be impossible, using today’s expertise, to even construct the lipid bilayer, namely the exterior packaging that holds the cell’s nanomachinery in place. Just the lipid bilayer (which itself surrounds thousands of nanosystems) is beyond our ability to synthesize. The conclusion of that thought experiment is that “life based upon amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides and lipids is an anomaly. Life should not exist anywhere in our universe. Life should not even exist on the surface of the earth.” “Yet we are led to believe that 3.8 billion years ago the requisite compounds could be found in some cave, or undersea vent, and somehow or other they assembled themselves into the first cell.” If you have knowledge of chemical or biochemical synthesis, or nanosystem assembly, I encourage you to read that short article and judge for yourself. If I am wrong, then enlighten me on my error. If I am correct, then ponder how far afield we have gone in projecting to the public our knowledge of life’s origin. http://inference-review.com/article/an-open-letter-to-my-colleagues

Finally, there is severe discord between the claims of Origin of Life researchers and the actual state of the research. It is time to call a timeout on the research until we can define what would constitute an advancement rather than sophistry:  https://inference-review.com/article/time-out

Concerning evolution, some are disconcerted or even angered that I signed a statement in ~2001 along with many other scientists:

“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

That statement has now received its own common name: A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism . Let me note several things for the record. The statement was sent to me in an email asking whether I could agree with its content. I confirmed that I agree. I still agree. Plus, many other scientists would agree that “careful examination of the evidence” is warranted regardless of the field, and Darwinian Theory is no exception. However, I had no idea that that statement would be used in legal challenges four years later, or that it would become the courtroom touchstone of the arguments on evolution and intelligent design. I terribly dislike lawsuits and courts of law, so I am sorry that things evolved that way. Furthermore, some scientists, though generally fine people, seek to justify themselves for attacks upon others, so they use that statement as a self-justification for their attacks. Some proponents of Darwinism exclude the signers of the Dissent statement from societies of academic achievement, regardless of the fact that by objective standards, some signers of the Dissent statement have achieved scientific successes that have eclipsed their detractors’ achievements many times over. Shame on those proponents of Darwinism who exclude the dissenters for their views in a field where many scientific mysteries remain.

I have spoken at length with biologists, philosophers of science, mathematicians and geneticists in order to better understand evolution. Some were gracious in helping me to appreciate their positions based upon the data. Others were less gracious, though they supplied me with voluminous material to read. Here are some of the things that I learned.

Some biologists say that “random mutation and natural selection” have long-been recognized by many evolutionists themselves to be insufficient to account for the complexity of life. They cite research from the 1960s and 1970s suggesting that neutral drift is quantitatively more important than natural selection in understanding genetic differences between organisms. Neutral drift ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_theory_of_molecular_evolution ) can be considered as small genetic variations that occur from, for example, parent to their offspring, and this occurring for successive generations. Moreover, the mechanisms of evolution and their relative importance are continuously subject to careful scientific examination and revision so “careful examination of the evidence” has not been avoided. Some biologists suggest that the core of evolutionary studies for the last several decades has not centered upon the sufficiency of Darwinian Theory, defined as “random mutation and natural selection.” (So maybe those biologists should join me in signing A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism .) But evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs over time, and the theory of universal common descent ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent ). This is the idea that all life shares a common ancestor. For those less trained in science, this theory does not propose, for example, that humans evolved or descended from chimpanzees, but that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor in the distant past. I can understand why those fluent in the field of genetics would be convinced by that theory; there is an impressive quantity and insightfulness to the work.

But even with that evidence supporting common descent, others find common descent insufficient to explain some parts of the data. For example, humans have ~20,000 protein-coding genes, which is only ~1.5% of DNA in the entire human genome, and it is within that 1.5% that common descent studies are primarily (though not exclusively) focused. A large-scale project instituted in 2003 by the US National Human Genome Research Institute, called the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENCODE ), seeks to determine the role of the remaining 98.5% of the genome that was formerly poorly called “junk DNA,” but better called “intergenic regions.” There is ENCODE evidence that part or even much of the intergenic regions have regulatory elements that can affect gene transcription (building of RNA and then construction of enzymes that regulate or build the biological system). Also, work on orphan genes (also called ORFans, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_gene) casts new light on the uniqueness of some genetic information; orphan genes are considered unique to a narrow taxon, generally a species. So some interpret ENCODE data and orphan genes as markers for uncommonness . Even further, some argue that biological similarities between modern humans and other hominids, for example, can be considered as common design parameters and need not require a common descent model.

Still others are dismissive of the relevancy of ENCODE and orphan genes research in the context of common descent evaluations. For example, they say that for decades biologists have realized that intergenic regions have regulatory functions. And they suggest that within ENCODE, the experimental techniques that were used result in much of the data itself being statistically irrelevant, and those regions that are truly functional are minimal in their functionality. With orphan genes, they claim that less than 100 of them show evidence of translation, and all these genes map back to non-gene DNA sequences in the chimpanzee, so it is actually evidence for common descent. Then again, other geneticists contest that many biologists have simply ignored a rapidly growing list of thousands of putative orphans in the human genome because they cannot find homologous non-gene sequences in the chimpanzee genome. If it is true that some biologists are ignoring data that does not easily fit with their common descent model, it is disconcerting. The list of ENCODE data and orphan genes is rapidly growing each year, so the detractors of that data are having a more difficult time to force the closet door closed on this burgeoning set of information. Thus, overall, the same data is viewed very differently depending upon the evaluator’s perspective. As a synthetic chemist, I cannot proclaim a victor in this contest, but it appears that each side is building defenses and offenses to buttress their fortifications.

As a chemist, and one that builds functional molecular nano-systems, I can give some informed input. For several decades I have been building molecular cars with functional motors, wheels, axles and chassis, and molecular nanosubmarines with light-activated motors and fluorescent pontoons, where many parts have to work in unison, and be planned to work in unison during redesign of major features. Even small changes in desired function can send the synthesis all the way back to step 1. In biology, the mechanisms for such transformations are complete mysteries. I posit that the gross chemical changes needed for macroevolution (defined here as origin of the major organismal groups, i.e., of the body plans, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_plan ) are not understood and presently we cannot even suggest the mechanisms, let alone observe them. Any massive functional change of a body part would require multiple concerted lines of variations. Sure, one can suggest multiple small changes ad infinitum , but the concerted requirement of multiple changes all in the same place and at the same time, is impossible to chemically fathom. One day the requisite chemical basis might become apparent so that the questions can be answered. But present-day biology is far from providing even a chemical proposal for body plan changes, let alone a data-substantiated chemical mechanism.

Humans alone have the capacity for art, music, advanced communication, advanced mathematics and religious practice, which constitute the broader organization of symbolism. Therefore, if one is intent upon a common descent model, there was a massive and presently unexplainable infusion (intrinsic and/or extrinsic) along the proposed very short descent pathway between australopithecines and modern humans. If it were an intrinsic infusion, then the requisite anatomical or chemical differences between the modern human brain and other hominid brains are presently indiscernible and unfathomable. And the chemical basis of the evolutionary mechanisms for such changes is both unknown and presently immeasurable. If the infusion were extrinsic, then the materialistic evolutionist and the design proponent share common ground.

Therefore, I do not understand the mechanisms needed to change body plans or the mechanisms along the descent pathway between the australopithecine brain and modern human brains if we were indeed commonly descended as predicted by the theory of universal common descent . Nobody else understands the mechanisms either. Nobody. But I am saying it publicly, hence the arousal of some toward my open comments of skepticism. Recall, evolution is both about the mechanism by which change occurs over time, and the theory of universal common descent . But the mechanisms are unknown and the theory of universal common descent is confronted by issues of uncommonness through ENCODE and orphan gene research. And each year the evidence for uncommonness is escalating.

So what should be taught in schools regarding evolution, in my opinion? As I wrote, I am not a proponent of intelligent design for the reasons I state above: I cannot prove it using my tools of chemistry to which I am bound in the chemistry classroom; the same tools to which I commensurately bind my evolutionist colleagues. A better approach would include more teaching about common descent using basic genetics arguments. But there should also be coverage of legitimate scientific puzzles such as macroevolution’s weak underpinning for the origin of body plans, the unexplainable functional differences between the modern human brain and that of other hominids, the ENCODE and orphan gene findings and disagreements, the huge difficulties regarding the theories on the origin of first life, and the mystery of information’s origin in the sequence of the nucleic acids. Such deliberations would be exciting and scientifically enlightening to students, and they would be changing with time as more data becomes available. In a secular classroom, one need not include an intelligent designer in order to provide the students with an appreciation for the science or an overview of the theories’ shortcomings. I think that, upon this approach, diverse camps could respectfully agree and lawsuits would be unnecessary.

I used to believe that my outward confession of skepticism regarding evolution was also of little consequence to my career as a scientist. Specifically, in the past, I wrote that my standing as a scientist was “based primarily upon my scholarly peer-reviewed publications.” Thirty years ago, that was the case. I no longer believe that, however. Ever since the time of the legal case referenced above, I have seen a saddening progression at several institutions—which is a further testament to the disheartening collateral damage resulting from lawsuits. I have witnessed unfair treatment upon scientists that do not accept macroevolutionary arguments and for their having signed the Dissent statement regarding the examination of Darwinian Theory. I never thought that science would have evolved like this. I deeply value the academy; teaching, professing and research in the university are my privileges and joys. Rice University, from the administration, has always been gracious and open. The president of Rice University, David Leebron, writes yearly to the faculty that a,

“core value of our university is free and open inquiry. We encourage robust debate on the difficult issues of the day, and we welcome people with many points of view to our campus to better understand those issues and the differences that can divide us. That can and does mean that we sometimes provide a forum for opinions that may be controversial — or even on occasion reprehensible — to many or a few. While we cannot and will not censor the expression of divergent opinions, we do expect those opinions be expressed with civility and with respect for other points of view.”

Hence, by my observation, the unfair treatment upon the skeptics of macroevolution has not come from the administration level, at least at Rice University. But my recent advice to my graduate students has been direct and revealing: If you disagree with theories of evolution, keep it to yourselves if you value your careers, unless you’re one of those champions for proclamation; I know that that fire exists in some, so be ready for lead-ridden limbs. But if the scientific community has taken these shots at senior faculty, it will not be comfortable for the young non-conformist. When the power-holders permit no contrary discussion, can a vibrant academy be maintained? Is there a University (university means ‘unity in diversity’)? For the United States, I hope that the scientific community and the National Academy of Sciences in particular would investigate the disenfranchisement that is manifest upon those holding a skeptical view based upon the scientific data, and thereby address the inequities. Or could it be that the National Academy of Sciences itself has turned a blind eye to the disenfranchisement, or even worse, promoted it? Shudder the thought that such a day would ever come!

Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. As for many of the details and the time-spans, I personally become less clear. Some may ask, What’s “less clear” about the text that reads, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth”? That is a fair question, and I wish I had an answer that would satisfy them. But I do not because I remain less clear. So, in addition to my chemically based scientific resistance to a macroevolutionary proposal, I am also theologically reticent to embrace it. As a lover of the biblical text, I cannot allegorize the Book of Genesis that far, lest, as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof said, “If I try and bend that far, I’ll break!” God seems to have set nature as a clue, not a solution, to keep us yearning for him. And if some day we do understand the mechanisms for these macroevolutionary changes, and also the processes that led to the origin of first life, it will not lessen God. As with all discoveries, like when the genetic code in the double-stranded DNA was discovered, they will serve to underscore the magnanimity of God.

As a scientist and a Christian (Messianic Jew), I am unsure of many things in both science and faith. But my many questions are not fundamental to my salvation. Salvation is based upon the finished work of Jesus Christ (Yeshua the Messiah), my confession in him as Savior and my belief in his physical resurrection from the dead. Indeed, the physical resurrection is an atypical example where God works beyond the normally observed physical laws of science in order to accomplish his purposes. Therefore it’s called a miracle. And thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

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© James M Tour Group

Thoughts from a scientist who is a Christian (not a Christian Scientist)

Dr. James Tour Tells Us How Little We Know About the Origin of Life

After reading the article, however, I do think I have something to offer. Because of the nature of what he is trying to discuss, his article is very, very technical. There were times, quite frankly, when my eyes glazed over a bit. I didn’t listen to a lot of the video (it seems to cover the same ground as the article), but it is also quite technical. For those who do not have the fortitude to make it through such a technical article or talk, I thought I could summarize it.

The “take home” message is straightforward: We have no idea how some of the most basic molecules necessary for life could have been produced by unguided processes . Why does Dr. Tour feel compelled to write a detailed article making a statement that, in my mind, is quite obvious? He explains:

Those who think scientists understand the issues of prebiotic chemistry are wholly misinformed. Nobody understands them. Maybe one day we will. But that day is far from today. It would be far more helpful (and hopeful) to expose students to the massive gaps in our understanding. They may find a firmer — and possibly a radically different — scientific theory. [Note that “prebiotic chemistry” refers to the chemistry that occurred on earth before life existed.]

Now please note what he is not saying. He is not saying that we have no clue how unguided processes could produce the molecules necessary for life, therefore they couldn’t have been produced that way. He is saying that we need to be honest with our students and explain the gaping holes in our knowledge so that they can investigate it further. This may lead to us finally getting a clue, or it may lead to a new paradigm in origin-of-life research.

Of course, there is a lot more to the article. He draws on his experience as a synthetic organic chemist (a chemist who designs and makes organic chemicals) to discuss the things that nature would have to do in order to produce the molecules necessary for life. He does this by discussing a series of what I consider to be his most clever inventions: nanovehicles , which are vehicles made from just a few molecules .

These vehicles can roll around on specific surfaces, just like the vehicles we ride in. The difference, of course, is that these vehicles are incredibly tiny. Why discuss the making of nanocars in an article about prebiotic chemistry? He explains:

Designing nanoncars is child’s play in comparison to the complexity involved in the synthesis of proteins, enzymes, DNA, RNA, and polysaccharides, let alone their assembly into complex functional macroscopic systems.

In other words, by giving you a feel for how hard it is was for him and his team to make nanocars, you will get some idea of how incredibly hard it would be for nature to produce life.

Dr. Tour succeeds in this endeavor by simply giving you a realistic view of what it took for him and his team make nanocars. For example, he discusses how most of the chemical reactions in his process had byproducts that would have been harmful in subsequent reactions. Thus, purification was necessary in most of the steps. In addition, many of the chemicals that had to be made were unstable in the presence of air, sunlight, room light, or water. As a result, some steps had to be done in an oxygen-free environment, others in a dark environment, etc. His team, of course, could produce the needed environments and switch between them at will. Nature would have to do the same thing in order to make the molecules necessary for life.

If you want to get an idea of how complicated it all is, he gives the details on how he made one of the many chemicals that he needed (episulfide 37). It involved starting with a pristinely-cleaned flask, a chemical that had been made and purified in a previous step, an organic solvent (not water), and two simple chemicals. Since the reaction produces heat that would destroy the process, the flask was soaked in a very cold bath so that it wouldn’t get too hot. After that, it was cooled even more. The solution was then filtered, and the resulting liquid went through another chemical reaction that produced a solid, which was (once again) filtered. The filtered solid was then washed with alcohol and dried under vacuum.

That was how they made just one of the many chemicals they had to make in order to produce a nanocar. Temperature had to be carefully regulated throughout the process, and to make that single chemical, two separate filtering steps had to be performed. Finally, to get rid of all traces of liquid, the solid had to be dried under a vacuum.

Of course, there’s a lot more to be considered, but that gives you some idea of the complexities involved. After he gives the excruciating details of how he and his team built their nanocars, he then explains why making the nanocars was, indeed, child’s play compared to making the molecules necessary for life. He discusses how his group made their task easier (using organic solvents instead of water, for example) and points out that nature has none of those options. He also points out how producing the molecules necessary for life requires a lot more chemistry than his “simple” nanocars.

In the end, Dr. Tour makes it very clear that we truly don’t have a clue about how unguided chemical reactions between simple chemicals could ever produce the necessary molecules for life. If you are told otherwise, you are being misinformed.

25 thoughts on “Dr. James Tour Tells Us How Little We Know About the Origin of Life”

Mahalo Dr. Wile. The same goes for the climate of the earth. As an operational meteorologist, I really get frustrated with the popular press and their pseudo-scientific enablers telling us about “global warming” or “climate change.” They discuss these matters as if anybody has a real understanding about the climate. The complexity is beyond belief.

I really enjoy your insights. And thanks for the Ark Encounter piece. [My boys and I just visited there when we went back to the mainland to see my mother (their grandma) and other relatives and friends.]

I agree, Richard. The failure of climate models shows us quite clearly that no one understands climate!

What did you think of the Ark Encounter?

Hey Richard, I have an off topic question for you if you have a second… I’ve always had trouble accepting the explanation for 2 high tides. I was wondering if the standard explanation is readily accepted by all working scientists – http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae338.cfm Dr. Wile if you have anything to add, please do.

For some reason, John, your link isn’t working. I assume you are talking about this explanation . It is the standard explanation, so I assume most scientists accept it. That doesn’t mean it is correct, of course. However, it seems to be consistent with observations as well as physics. Thus, I have no reason to doubt it. Do you have something specific that makes it hard for you to accept?

Yes.. the same explanation.

It’s tied in with my whole gravity as magnetism search. Just poking my nose around where I don’t really belong! I find the moon anomalous in many ways. I don’t really accept that it spins on it’s axis. I’ve read all the stuff on tidal locking but it seems an illusory explanation. I was about ready to give up and then found a paper Tesla wrote where he states it’s fact that the moon is not possest of axial momentum. It’s really interesting! If you are bored I highly recommend – http://www.teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/moons-rotation

p.s. just watched your youtube debate with Dr. Robert Martin – great video. Thank You! Unfortunately, after that youtube recommended “Fighting Creeping Creationism” with Bill Moyers. Yikes! Scary stuff.

I am not sure I will get around to reading that article, John, but thanks for posting it. It is hard to understand how the moon doesn’t rotate. After all, when the moon is closest to the earth, we see 8 degrees more of the eastern side of the moon, and when it is farthest from the earth, we see 8 degrees more of the western side of the moon. That fits perfectly with the idea that the moon is rotating at a constant rate, but because its orbit is elliptical, the orbit doesn’t match up perfectly with that rate. Thus, when the moon is traveling faster (due to its proximity to earth), its rotation can’t quite keep up with its motion, so you see more of the eastern part of the moon (and less of the western part), and while it is traveling slower (due to its distance from earth), its rotation is faster than its motion, and you see more of the western side (and less of the eastern side). I don’t see how that can be explained if the moon isn’t rotating.

Of course, even if the moon isn’t rotating, that doesn’t affect the explanation of the tides. A non-rotating moon would still produce the gravitational attraction that causes them.

I am glad you enjoyed the debate.

Good evening Jay,

the 0 at the end of the url needs to be removed. I have read the article in question and it is not very accurate. The article you supply has far better details.

Thanks. I fixed it.

If you add GHGs to the exsting GHGs in the atmosphere temperatures MUST increase. You can argue about rates etc and regional effects but the overall energy budget of the earth will increase.

The natural greenhouse effect has raised the earths temperature some 30C and it is mainly governed by CO2. We have increased the CO2 by ~ 40%.

Why is it difficult for some to understand the simple physics involved?

It’s not nearly that simple, Ed. First, carbon dioxide absorbs only a narrow range of infrared wavelengths , some of which are also absorbed by water vapor . At some point, adding more carbon dioxide won’t increase the amount of heat absorbed, because all IR light of those wavelengths is already being absorbed. At that point, global temperatures will no longer be affected by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide.

More importantly, the earth has many negative feedback mechanisms that help maintain a steady temperature. As more carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, those negative feedback mechanisms become more important. Once again, then, rising carbon dioxide levels don’t necessarily mean increasing temperatures.

The problem we have right now is that some scientists want to treat this as a simple physics problem when it is anything but simple!

Just a note about CO2 absorption of heat. A set of experiments were undertaken at the University of Melbourne many years ago which showed a leveling off of temperature against increasing levels of CO2. The findings and the experiment details were published at the time. I can’t give you any further details as I can no longer find the relevant report.

It’s too bad you can’t find the report. I would love to read it!

Good evening jay,

I do have archives on CD somewhere. It may be on one of those. When I get some spare time, I’ll have to look at them again. If I do find it, I’ll let you know.

Bruce Rennie

The boys (20- and 18-years old) and I really enjoyed it, but we couldn’t stay too long. We had driven down from Northeast Ohio to the site, and needed to get back that day (August 1st). We had seen the Creation Museum in 2012, and I thought it would be a hoot to at least see the Ark on this visit back to the “motherland” of Trumbull County, Ohio.

Being a Christian and a young-earth advocate, I really believe in supporting ministries that are not ashamed of God’s Word. (I also support the Institute for Creation Research.) The Ark Encounter was fascinating, especially for the young men. Seeing the exhibits and reading the commentaries on the wall put us in a fine mood, that there are still people whose foundation for understanding and truth is Messiah Jesus and His Word!

Dr. Wile… Not to nit-pick, but you have a typo: “In other words, by giving you a feel for how hard it is was for him and his team to make nanocars, you will get some idea of hot incredibly hard it would be for nature to produce life.” – the word “hot” needs to be “how.”

Thanks, Tricia! I made the correction.

What Dr. Tour demonstrates in the question of abiogenesis coupled with his experience in constructing nano cars is the insurmountable problem with evolution, writ large. Nothing of any complexity can be constructed without a target — as the saying goes in the manufacturing/tooling industry: “you have to begin well to end well.”

The only thing that lecture needed was a mic drop at the end.

I think the information given by Dr. Tour is part of a triple challenge for anyone who believes in a natural origin of life. Once a solution for the origin of life from prebiotic chemicals is explained naturally, the naturalist would have to explain the origin of the information in the DNA of that life form. After explaining the origin of information in DNA, the naturalist would have to then explain how a random process produced an arrangement of chemical elements that was capable of understanding and explaining both the assembly of prebiotic chemical elements and the origin of the information in the DNA of the first life form. That structure, of course, is the human brain.

All three of these developments would have to occur without a target in mind at inception or any time during the developmental process. I think that makes it absurdly improbable to expect any one of them to occur naturalistically. Expecting all three to occur naturalistically is exponentially more improbable but I cannot think of a term that is stronger than absurdly improbable without declaring it totally impossible.

I understand that wishful explanations have been proposed for all three processes but, as Dr Tour has pointed out regarding prebiotic chemistry, no one really understands how these three things could have happened when detailed scientific explanations are required.

I oftentimes wonder if there were a third option in this debate. ID will claim it is a deity (specifically the Christian one), Neo-Darwinism will claim random chance.

Couldnt it be something besides these two things?

ID doesn’t make any claims about the designer, and at least one major player in the ID movement (David Berlinski) doesn’t believe in any kind of deity. He calls himself a secular Jew.

It could most certainly be something besides these two things. For example, Dr. Thomas Nagel is an atheist philosopher, and he understands that the materialist Neo-Darwinian model cannot explain what we see today. He argues for a deep teleology in nature .

The elephant in the room is that when we try to discuss Evolution (beyond variations within species) we aren’t talking about a **thing**. There’s no specificity — no process or recipe to look to that builds systems. We could literally replace the term “evolution” with “magic.”

Please correct me if it wasn’t you Dr. Wile, but I think you wrote something similar to the following question in the past. By the time you assign all of the characteristics to a natural process that would be necessary to produce life from non life, DNA, and the human mind and consciousness, wouldn’t you end up with something in nature that had most of the characteristics that we Christians would call God?

That doesn’t quite sound like me, Bill. I do know that Simon Conway Morris (an ardent evolutionist) said something close to that:

Francis Crick can write ‘An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle’…More than two decades on from Crick’s ruminations, however, it still remains the case that the notion of an infinitesimally unlikely series of chemical reactions – that from our perspective can be described only as a ‘near miracle’…remains the unbidden and silent observer at much of the discussion of how life originated. Yet, as Iris Fry (note 85) reminds us, such terminology is effectively that of creationism. Put this way, nearly everyone will ask that the now unwelcome guest should vanish through the adjacent wall.

(Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe , University of Cambridge Press, 2005, p. 67)

I have quoted him on that .

Thanks for your correction Dr. Wile. If the quote wasn’t on your blog I’m not sure where I saw it. The person who made the comment went on to list some of the characteristics that a natural creative entity would need. I believe the person was also attributing the creation of the universe to this natural entity. The person listed characteristics such as extremely powerful, possessing some form of superior intelligence, and several other characteristics that I can’t remember.

The point of the quote was that once you start assigning creative characteristics to any natural entity, the natural entity begins to sound a lot like God.

Comments are closed.

T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry Professor of Materials Science & NanoEngineering

Department of Chemistry

O'Connor Building for Engineering and Science 211A | 713-348-6246 | [email protected]

WEBSITE(S) | Tour Group Rice | Google Scholar Citations

Research Summary

Tour’s scientific research areas include nanoelectronics, graphene electronics, silicon oxide electronics, carbon nanovectors for medical applications, green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction, graphene photovoltaics, carbon supercapacitors, lithium ion batteries, lithium metal batteries, CO2 capture, water splitting to H2 and O2, water purification, carbon nanotube and graphene synthetic modifications, graphene oxide, carbon composites, hydrogen storage on nanoengineered carbon scaffolds, and synthesis of single-molecule nanomachines which includes molecular motors and nanocars and nanomachines that can drill through cell membranes. He has also developed strategies for retarding chemical terrorist attacks. For pre-college education, Tour developed the NanoKids concept for K-12 education in nanoscale science, and also Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero science packages for elementary and middle school education: SciRave ( www.scirave.org ) which later expanded to a Stemscopes-based SciRave. The SciRave program has risen to be the #1 most widely adopted program in Texas to complement science instruction, and it is currently used by over 450 school districts and 40,000 teachers with over 1 million student downloads.

James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist, received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Syracuse University, his Ph.D. in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. After spending 11 years on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, he joined the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in 1999 where he is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. Tour has about 650 research publications and over 200 patents, with an H-index = 129 and i10 index = 538 with total citations over 77,000 (Google Scholar). He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. Tour was named among “The 50 Most Influential Scientists in the World Today” by TheBestSchools.org in 2014; listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com in 2014; recipient of the Trotter Prize in “Information, Complexity and Inference” in 2014; and was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2014. Tour was named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine, 2013. He was awarded the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, 2012, Rice University; won the ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society, 2012; was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2011; and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2009. Tour was ranked one of the Top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade, by a Thomson Reuters citations per publication index survey, 2009; won the Distinguished Alumni Award, Purdue University, 2009; and the Houston Technology Center’s Nanotechnology Award in 2009. He won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology in 2008, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007. Tour was the recipient of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2007. He also won the Small Times magazine’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2006, the Nanotech Briefs Nano 50 Innovator Award in 2006, the Alan Berman Research Publication Award, Department of the Navy in 2006, the Southern Chemist of the Year Award from the American Chemical Society in 2005, and The Honda Innovation Award for Nanocars in 2005. Tour’s paper on Nanocars was the most highly accessed journal article of all American Chemical Society articles in 2005, and it was listed by LiveScience as the second most influential paper in all of science in 2005. Tour has won several other national awards including the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry.

Research Areas

Organic Synthesis; Chemical Biology; Spectroscopy & Imaging; Nanomaterial Synthesis

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Rice’s James Tour and YouTuber ‘Professor Dave’ debate the origins of life

Jennifer Liu / Thresher

By Nayeli Shad     5/26/23 4:18pm

Dave Farina of the YouTube channel ProfessorDaveExplains came to Rice to debate organic chemistry professor James Tour on the topic of abiogenesis, the scientific theory that life on Earth originated from non-living compounds. The debate occurred May 19 in a full Keck Hall, with up to 2,800 viewers watching the event livestreamed on YouTube.

Farina, a science educator with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, first made a video in 2020 critiquing Tour’s argument that scientists are clueless about the origins of life. Since then, the two have repeatedly posted video responses to each other. Tour was the first to propose that the two debate the subject face-to-face.

The debate, entitled “Are we clueless about the origin of life?” included dialogues on chemistry and religion, opening statements, back-and-forth questions between Farina and Tour and audience questions. 

Tour opened with his statement, saying that his religion does not influence his scientific beliefs.

“I believe that the Bible is God’s words. I never appeal to that book of authority in my academic lectures or scientific discussions,” Tour, also a professor of materials science and nanoengineering, said.

Tour, explaining why he does not believe in abiogenesis, said that scientists cannot experimentally determine how the essential building blocks for all life formed and assembled into cells in the conditions on early Earth. Tour said that many origin of life researchers that Farina cites in his videos said they would create life in the lab but have not yet done so.

“Mr. Farina, I respect your courage to be here tonight. It’s too bad that origin of life researchers are not here themselves to defend their data,” Tour said. “Maybe they know the shallowness of their own research.”

In his opening statement, Farina referenced Tour’s website, which states Tour’s belief that God created all life on Earth and that “faith and belief go beyond scientific evidence for [Tour].”

“[Tour] is openly admitting that there is no science that could ever convince him that life was not directly created by God,” Farina said. “He is ideologically bound to denying abiogenesis … He’s approaching the field not as a scientist but as a preacher.”

Farina continued by saying that Tour is an organic chemist who has never conducted origin of life research, only publishing what Farina called “blog posts” in non peer-reviewed publications. Farina listed several things he alleges Tour has lied about in his videos, including claims that the scope of the research in the abiogenesis field is limited and archaic.

“Today, finally, with no desk to hide behind, every tactic will be elucidated in real time and [Tour] will be made accountable for his lies for everyone to see,” Farina said. “I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I will.”

Tour asked Farina to demonstrate chemically how proteins could assemble in prebiotic conditions. Farina referenced papers about how proteins could form in water, but Tour alleged that the examples given did not work for every kind of amino acid. 

Farina’s questions centered around Tour being a “pathological liar,” asking Tour to explain previous alleged inaccuracies.

“This is important because [Tour] also lies about science that goes over most people’s heads,” Farina said. “So by proving to you what a liar he is, you are now primed to realize how he is lying about all the complex details of origin of life research as well.”

The debate was moderated by Wayne Guida, a chemistry professor at the University of South Florida at Tampa, whose role was to clarify chemical facts for the audience and hold the debaters to the time limits.

“Let’s try to have a dialogue instead of people shouting at each other,” Guida said during a portion of Farina’s questioning of Tour.

Farina then asked Tour about fully self-replicating ribozymes, RNA molecules that act as enzymes to increase chemical reaction rates. Farina said these molecules are key evidence of natural selection, while Tour alleged that Farina’s conclusions were inaccurate.

“You can’t address the research because you don’t want it to be true and we all know why,” Farina said in response to Tour refuting his evidence.

As he cut the men off for the last time, Guida summarized the spirit of the debate.

“If there is nothing else we can say, one thing we can say is that it has been a lively debate,” Guida said.

After the debate ended, Farina and Tour opened the conversation up to audience members who could pose questions to either person. One audience member asked Farina his thoughts on Tour yelling over him throughout the debate.

“The more he yells, the less I can say and the less I can prove him wrong,” Farina said. “It’s a pretty obvious tactic.”

Another audience member asked Tour why he has not tried to publish his critiques of origins of life research in reputable journals, instead opting for YouTube videos. Tour said that social media proved a broader and more accessible platform to convey scientific information.

“I am not trying to reach the origin of life researchers. I am trying to reach the masses,” Tour said. “There is something called social medium that is allowing me to reach the masses that never read the primary literature.”

“The translation of this is, ‘I can’t publish lies, so I show them to the public instead,’” Farina immediately countered.

When an audience member said that the debate had strayed from the original topic and asked each debater to summarize their arguments, Farina said that there are many prebiotically plausible pathways for abiogenesis demonstrated by research and reiterated how he believes Tour is misrepresenting the latest research.

“We certainly would never say we know exactly how life began — that would be ridiculous — but we are far from clueless. We have a mountain of research,” Farina said. “Will we ever figure out exactly how life began? Maybe not — honestly, probably not — but it’s only because we have so many ways it could’ve happened.”

Tour said that the lack of Nobel prizes given to origin of life research demonstrates that scientists have not been able to determine if abiogenesis is valid.

“You can’t answer this, you can’t answer that, that, that, that,” Tour said. “So I say we’re clueless.”

Simon Yellen, a Duncan College sophomore, attended the debate in person and said that, in a sense, both Farina and Tour “lost” the debate. Yellen said that Farina’s weaknesses came from his sarcastic comments and lack of familiarity with the literature. Meanwhile, Yellen said that Tour used “disingenuous debate tactics” like sidestepping Farina’s questions, interrupting frequently and asking for irrelevant details.

“While neither [Farina] nor Tour behaved well,” Yellen said, “Tour’s behavior has made it very clear he cannot engage in a productive conversation with those he disagrees with and has caused me, and I hope the university, to seriously question if that behavior is healthy in an academic environment.”

When asked to comment on the outcome of the debate, Farina said that while the debate was “complete chaos,” he had anticipated the aftermath.

“[Tour] planned to write ‘clueless’ in front of prompts on the chalkboard no matter what was said, and he baselessly denied all research presented that proved him wrong, knowing that the stacked audience in his rows of reserved seats would cheer on the dishonesty,” Farina wrote in an email to the Thresher.

In his response, Tour apologized for shouting over Farina and said that Farina could not answer questions without referring to a script.

“Real chemistry is discussed at a blackboard,” Tour wrote in an email to the Thresher. “Too bad [Farina] could not show any organic reagents of mechanisms for his explanation.”

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Why Hands-On Chemistry Experiments Can’t Simulate A Prebiotic Earth

Smoke & Mirrors: Tour and Meyer Assess Origin of Life Experiments

Extravagant Claims: James Tour & Stephen Meyer Critique Origin of Life Research

James Tour and Stephen Meyer Bring Clarity to Origin of Life Debate

James Tour Talks Origin-of-Life Dealbreakers

On today’s ID the Future, distinguished synthetic organic chemist James Tour of Rice University explains why the goal of synthesizing life from non-life in conditions similar to those of the early Earth appears further away than ever. It’s not an illusion, he explains. The illusion was how close OOL researchers thought they were 50-70 years ago. They were never close, and the more we learn about how mind-bogglingly sophisticated even the simplest cells are, and how the complexity is essential for biological life, the more we realize just how far we are from constructing a plausible scenario for the mindless origin of the first life. Tour points out that even granting a great deal of intelligent design in the form Read More ›

James Tour: The Goalposts are Racing Away from the Origin-of-Life Community

On today’s ID the Future distinguished nanoscientist James Tour explains to host Eric Metaxas why the origin-of-life community is further than ever from solving the mystery of life’s origin, and how the public has gotten the false impression that scientists can synthesize life in the lab. Tour explains that origin-of-life scientists aren’t even close to intelligently synthesizing life from non-life in the lab. The problem, Tour says, is that some leading origin-of-life researchers give the impression they are right on the cusp of solving the problem. Not so, Tour says. He offers the analogy of someone claiming, in the year 1500, that he has the know-how to build a ship to travel to the moon, when no one yet knows Read More ›

James Tour Talks Nanotech at Socrates in the City

Today’s ID the Future features the first part of a conversation between James Tour and Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas on Tour’s astonishing work in nanotechnology and on the topic “How Did Life Come into Being?” Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and Nanoengineering at Rice University. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading nano-scientists. This event took place at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas, and is presented here with permission of Eric Metaxas. Here in Part 1, Tour explains some of the inventions coming out of Tour’s Rice University lab, including molecular cars and astonishing graphene Read More ›

James Tour: Primordial Soup Bluffing Goes Right to the Top

Today’s ID the Future features another installment in James Tour’s hard-hitting and evidence-based YouTube series on abiogenesis. Here Dr. Tour, a world-leading synthetic organic chemist at Rice University, describes the early Earth primordial soup concept for the origin of first life (OOL) and shows why it’s simplistic, bogus, and doesn’t represent the current science on the issue. He also reviews survey data showing just how misinformed the public is about how far scientists have gotten in creating life in the lab. One critic of Tour protested that the simplistic primordial soup story might be found in highly simplified textbooks for sixth graders but isn’t peddled at higher levels. Tour provides video evidence to the contrary.

James Tour–A Flyover of the Challenges Facing Abiogenesis

Today’s ID the Future features the next in a YouTube video series by Dr. James Tour on the origin-of-life problem. Here Tour, a distinguished synthetic organic chemist, lists the characteristics of life and describes some features of the early Earth where life first appeared. Then he provides a fast flyover of the many grave problems of blindly evolving the first living cell from prebiotic materials. 

A James Tour Course on Abiogenesis: Prologue

Today’s ID the Future features audio of the first in a series of YouTube videos by Dr. James Tour on the origin-of-life problem. Here Tour, a renowned synthetic organic chemist and professor at Rice University, explains why he is addressing the origin-of-life issue, also known as abiogenesis, and touches on some common misconceptions about the field. He says the organizing impetus for the series is a YouTube video by Dave Farina, “Elucidating the Agenda of James Tour: A Defense of Abiogenesis.” As Farina’s title suggests, he begins his video with an ad hominem attack, seeking to discredit Tour by showing that Tour is a Christian. Tour briefly responds to this line of attack and then moves into matters scientific. There Read More ›

Christian Publishing House Blog

Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity

Did God Create the Earth In Six 24-hour Days?

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”— Genesis 1:1 .

When Was “the Beginning”?

The Genesis creation account begins with the simple, powerful statement: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) More and more Bible scholars are agreeing that this statement describes an action, which is separate from the creative days described in Genesis 1:3 onward. The implication is seriously profound. According to the Bible’s own beginning words, the billions of universes, our universe, as well as our planet, Earth, all of this was in existence for (many billions of years) an explicitly unknown time before the creative days even began.

Many geologists have estimated that the earth itself is 4 billion years old, and astronomers have calculated that the universe is at least 15 billion years old. Do these discoveries, or their possible future adjustments, contradict Genesis 1:1? No. The Bible in no way specifies the actual age of “the heavens and the earth.” Not all modern science is in opposition to the Biblical text. Moreover, the creation days were creation periods.

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE REALLY SAY?

The Bible gives us a description of six creations  days  (Heb.  yôm ). However, there is nothing in the Bible account that would even suggest that these were six literal creation 24-hour days. (Genesis 1:31) In fact, the Hebrew term for day ( yôm ) is used for many different lengths of time in the Scriptures. For example, the Bible uses the Hebrew term for day ( yôm ) when it is referring to the entire creation period, “in the day that Jehovah [4]  God made earth and heaven.” (Genesis 2:4) Another example would be where the Bible uses the Hebrew term for day ( yôm ) when it is referring to the 12 hours of daylight, “And God began calling the light Day.” (Genesis 1:5) Clearly, these creation “days,” which were referred to with the word “day” lasted many thousands of years.—Psalm 90:4.

DOES IT EVEN REALLY MATTER?

The false ideas of Young Earth creationists such as Ken Ham and Doug Phillips, who believe that the universe(s) was created from specific acts of divine creation in six literal 24-hour days. These Young Earth creationists have led to many untold numbers of persons dismissing the Bible altogether, as well as many Christians coming to the conclusion that the Bible contains errors and mistakes, which have led to doubt. On the other hand, if the Genesis creation account contains a credible, historical report or description of creation, we will not only save those who have begun to doubt, pulling them back from the fire but also we will save many unbelievers who possess logical, rational, reasonable minds, who see to possess “sound wisdom.”—Proverbs 3:21.

A MUST WATCH VIDEO

Did God Use Evolution In His Creation of life on Earth?

“And God said: ‘Let the earth bring forth living souls according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.’”— Genesis 1:24 .

The Bible and the fossil records inform us that God did not create life in some simple form and then over billions of years he allowed it to evolve into more complex forms. Rather, the Bible states what the physical evidence shows, God created basic “kinds” of complex plants and animals, which then reproduced “each according to its kind.” (Genesis 1:11, 21, 24) From the time that Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden of Eden some six thousand years ago up until today, the earth has been filling with the same “kinds” of life that God created during those six creation days.—Psalm 89:11.

The Bible is not a science textbook, but when it merely touches on a scientific subject matter, it is correct. If God had taken the time to get down into the details of every aspect of creation, the first two chapters of Genesis would have been thousands of pages that the early servants of God would not have understood. The intent of God was to simply give us a basic creation account that was also scientifically accurate if interpreted correctly. The Bible did not go into details of microevolution (evolutionary change or variation that might occur within a kind [species] over a short period), as animals inbred or adapted to their environments. Some see these micro-changes or variations that come about through adaptation as full-fledged macroevolution, major evolutionary change. The evolution of going from one kind to another kind over long periods of time. No, there has been no new life or kind formed by these adaptations over the past six thousand years. The physical evidence shows that the basic kinds of creation have changed very little over the thousands of years they have existed.

WHY DOES IT EVEN MATTER?

When we think of the Bible’s authenticity, its credibility, its inspiration, its full inerrancy, its scientific accuracy as it describes the basic “kinds” of life, we find these things are strengthened, and it lends credibility to other areas as well, such as history and prophecy.

From Where Did the Raw Material of the Universe Come?

12  I made the earth and created man upon it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their army.— Isaiah 45:12 .

The Almighty God is great in power or energy. In fact, he is all-powerful (Job 37:23) This is highly important and would not have been fully appreciated in Bible times but science has discovered that energy can be converted into matter. Isaiah the prophet was given a basic explanation as to the source of all of the stars.

26  Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their army by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.— Isaiah 40:26 .

Almighty God has given us his Word through inspired authors that he would use his infinite power to support and maintain his creation, for the Psalmist has the following to say in regards to the sun, moon, and stars,

3  Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you stars of light! 4  Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!

5  Let them praise the name of Jehovah! For he commanded and they were created. 6  And he established them forever and ever; he gave a decree, and it will not pass away.—Psalm 148:3-6 .

The astronomer, the grand old man of cosmology. Dr. Allan Sandage once said, “Science cannot answer the deepest questions. As soon as you ask why is there something instead of nothing, you have gone beyond science. I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.” — Bill McKibben,  The Age of Missing Information  (New York, NY: Random House, 2014).

Science is in harmony with the Bible if one’s interpretation is correct as to what the author meant by the words he used. Moreover, the Bible often answers questions that science has yet to discover or is beyond science, such as what is God’s will and purpose for the heavens and the earth, as well as mankind.

For more information, see the more in-depth articles

• Genesis 1:1 BDC: Is the earth only 6,000 to 10,000 years old? Are the creative days literally, only 24 hours long?
• Is the Genesis Creation of the World a Myth and Legend?

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“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork.” —Psalm 19:1

Our mission.

We are passionate in seeing as many people as possible receive the love of God through his son Jesus Christ.

Our Purpose

We deeply desire to introduce the world to salvation in Jesus Christ through the profession of him as Lord and belief in his resurrection from the dead.  

 We want to teach others how to evangelize through a living example while utilizing love, truth, grace and reason to reach those who need Christ.

Our vision consists of three concentrations:

• Using the gifts and influence of Dr. James Tour, we remove barriers to faith by examining natural evidence and engaging the scientific community
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Dr. james tour.

   Born in New York City and raised in White Plains, NY, James Tour was raised in a secular Jewish home. He knew little of the teachings contained in the Bible. While attending college at Syracuse University, James was presented with the gospel of Jesus Christ by a student who served with the Navigators Campus Ministry. James then encountered the saving power of Jesus Christ in his small dormitory room.

  At Syracuse, James was discipled by Dr. T. E. Koshy, the evangelical chaplain of Syracuse University, and Bakht Singh from India . In graduate school at Purdue  University, James was further taught in the faith by Professor Delmar Broersma.  After post-doctoral appointments at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford  University, James was mentored in the faith by Professor Buck Hatch from  Columbia Bible College and Seminary (now Columbia International University). 

  James served on the Chemistry Department faculty of the University of South  Carolina from 1988 to 1999, and then he moved to Rice University in Houston,  Texas where he has served since 1999. He has made several breakthrough  discoveries in the laboratory in the areas of organic chemistry, medicinal  chemistry, materials science and nanotechnology. He has also started several  successful companies, some of which are publicly traded, while also raising 4  children with his wife, Shireen, to whom he has been married for 40 years.   (Click here to see his full credentials.) 

  Yet, what Dr. Tour values most is his  relationship with Jesus Christ. Whether it is students gathering at his home,  interviewing other scientists, or engaging his thousands of followers on social  media, Dr. Tour is not ashamed to declare of the life-giving power of the gospel  while boldly proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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  Dr. Tour will initiate a private Zoom call with anyone who is not a believer in Jesus but would like to hear his story about how he became a man with faith in Jesus, the Son of God. If you do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and you desire to hear Dr. Tour’s story of faith fill out the form to set up a meeting.

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   Subscribe to Dr. Tour’s weekly podcast! Using biblical truth, conviction, and often a little bit of Science, Dr. Tour presents God’s word weekly with passion and wit.

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World-Renowned Scientist Dr. James Tour

• Current Edition

scientific research concept hexagonal backdrop

Dr. James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist,  joined the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in 1999, where he is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering.

Tour’s scientific research areas are broad, including medical, mechanical and bioengineering solutions. He has published myriad research articles, developed many patents, and formed several businesses. Tour has received numerous awards for his research, and for his work as a professor. He has served on many boards, consultancy groups, committees and panels, bringing his expertise to each arena. Dr. Tour is married to Shireen; they have four children. A weekly gathering that the Tours host has become a place of discipleship for college students and fellow church members.

Rice University’s Dr. James Tour sweeps over complex terminology adroitly, explaining the microscopic processes that he has come to know so well. The scientist is especially known for his development of nanocars, a molecule which has garnered attention worldwide.

“A nanocar is a single molecule,” he explained. “It has a chassis, axles, wheels and motor. You can park about 50,000 of them across the diameter of a human hair. We make a billion, billion of them at a time.” Tour’s team recently won a nanocar race in Toulouse, France, beating competition by a longshot. They finished in 90 minutes, while the next team finished five hours later. The rest of the teams did not finish within the 30-hour time limit.

But Dr. Tour’s goal is far beyond accomplishing things of mere scientific interest. His research areas include carbon nanovectors for medical applications, green carbon study for environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction, water purification, hydrogen storage and more. He has even developed science curriculum for K-12 students.

One of his most promising studies involves fusion of a separated spinal cord. “We’ve developed a material where we can take a split spinal cord of a rodent, put one drop of the material on it, and then put it back together,” he said. “In that one drop, there is one percent of graphene nanoribbons. The nanoribbons will align longitudinally with the spinal cord. And then what happens is that the neurons grow from top to bottom, and then from bottom to top. Without the graphene nanoribbons, they just miss each other. So, two weeks after the surgery, the rodent can walk just fine. It scored an 18 out of 21 in mobility, with 21 being perfect mobility. In three weeks, it scored a 19, able to run and do most everything that it was doing. This particular rodent had still a little bit of a curl in one of its paws. But hopefully we’ll get better at that.”

In John 14:12, Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things that these, because I am going to the Father.” Tour aims to do just that. “We’re working on restoring optic nerves where we could do whole eye transplants – something that’s never been done. We already have in our group where we’ve developed a system that can restore hearing. We want to restore walking. We want to restore seeing. We want to make the lame walk, the blind see and the deaf hear. We want to do the works of Jesus Christ.”

With the nanocars specifically, Tour envisions them being utilized in biotechnology. “We have motorized versions, too, where you shine a light on them and they will propel across the surfaces. The motor spins at three million rotations per second. We’ve now translated these and taken the wheels off them and are using them in solution to drill into cells,” he said. “We’re using it as a new way to do therapy. We put a peptide on them, which is a small protein. And that will target a specific cell type, and then it goes and it binds to that cell. Then we turn them on, and the motor goes on and drills a hole into the cell. It kills it in about one minute. And so now we’re targeting things like pre-melanoma and seeing if we can use it to target specific cancer cells and very rapidly kill them. So, we’re moving it more into a medical scenario.”

The possibilities of the natural world are only beginning to be tapped into, he said. For Tour, his passion for science is not surpassed by his love of the Maker of it all. Before he became a researcher and professor, Tour was a young man who knew very little about the God of the Bible.

COMING TO FAITH

“I grew up in a very secular Jewish family in the suburbs of New York City. I didn’t know the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. I had picked up a Bible a few times and tried to read it. It never made any sense as a child. We never talked about God in my home. We went to the synagogue a few times a year. And I think the difference between my home and many other Jewish homes is that we were never taught against Jesus Christ. Most Jewish homes speak poorly of Jesus. And because of that, it’s harder to speak to people about Jesus,” he said. “So, when somebody told me that he would like to share with me an illustration of the Gospel, and Jesus was then presented, I didn’t immediately discount him, because I had never been told anything negative about Jesus. And then when I was deeply convicted by the Scriptures that I was reading, it just really hit me. And I was exposed to my sin for the first time. Modern secular Judaism does not look at sin; it does not consider sin. When I was confronted with my sin, my first realization I had, when I was 18 years old, is that I was a sinner. It really hit me. Then, a few months after realizing that I was a sinner, I prayed and invited Jesus into my life. He lifted that burden of sin from me. It really affected me. Jesus stood in my presence, though I couldn’t see Him. I was on my knees. And His presence is so delightful. I wasn’t scared. I just couldn’t stop weeping. It was so overwhelming. To this day, I remember it very clearly. And He’s given His life for me. And He continues to lead me.”

While faith must be accepted with an element of trust, it is not so different from many scientific tenets that are taken by faith, Tour said. “A lot of science is inference based upon facts,” he said. Tour is truly a student of the Bible. The Scripture God has revealed is precious to him; he has studied it as diligently as he has studied science and molecules.

His typical mornings begin at 3 a.m. “Actually, the first thing I do is I just fall on my knees and I spend 45 minutes in prayer. There are a few things on my prayer list that I pray specifically for every day. I just look through the list and offer those up to the Lord. Jesus says in John chapter 17, ’I glorified You on Earth by accomplishing the work that You have given me to do.’ I say, ’Lord, let me glorify you by accomplishing this day the work that you’ve given me to do.’ And I’ll repeat that each morning. And then I pray. I pray for conversions – that I would see people come to the Lord. I say, ’Lord, don’t let this week go by without a conversion. Let me see somebody brought to Christ.’ And then I pray that He gives me the wisdom like Bezalel had, who constructed the tabernacle across many disciplines. He was skilled in all sorts of matter of bronze, gold, silver, wood and fabrics – very unusual. And he had the ability to teach it. Bezalel creativity: creativity comes from God. Something that is really different – something that someone else in the world doesn’t see that you see. And I’ll wash up and then read the Bible, spending time and meditation on the Word of God. I pick up where I left off the day before and then also prepare for the Bible study that I teach each week, and read the Scriptures and just say, ’Lord, speak to me through this passage. What do you want me to say?’ There’s so much that could be said. Our biggest problem in the Scriptures is that we have an embarrassment of riches. ’What shall I say Lord? What shall I bring out? Lord speak to me.’”

LIFE’S WORK

Tour’s meditation time on the Word of God is precious, and has borne fruit in his life, as the Holy Spirit brings to the forefront the Scriptures that apply to his situation. When he and his wife, Shireen, had been married for only a few years and Tour was in graduate school, they started a Bible study in their home. Some of their student guests were very casual, putting their shoes on furniture and letting food drop off their plates. A few days after one of the studies, their toddler daughter found a lingering chicken bone behind a couch cushion and put it in her mouth, leading to a scare for her parents.

“The students would come in and they were messy. The chicken bone – that’s what really set me off. But the Lord spoke to me. I was praying about this. And God spoke to me through the Scriptures, through Proverbs 14:4. It says, ’Where no oxen are, the manger is clean, but much increase comes by the strength of the ox.’ I knew, ’If you want to see the power of God in these people’s lives, these student’s lives, the manger is going to get dirty.’ And so that changed. And I said, ’Forever our home would be open.’ So now we have a lot of students in it. But we just paint a lot and replace furniture and shampoo the furniture and things like that.”

Also as a young man, Tour made it a priority to invest in his family. Each morning he would wake his children at 5:30 so they could have family devotions together. “I would read through the story of the Bible. We would have portions that we would be memorizing together. Then we would get on our knees and each of us would pray. I’m not a trained Bible teacher, but I taught them. I read to them the Word of God. I did the best I knew how. I wasn’t always perfect. A lot of times, I was tired myself.”

Tour explains the deep relevance of Scripture in his daily life. “Moses said in Deuteronomy 32, ’This word that I’ve spoken to you, you are to command your sons carefully to observe. It is not an idle word for you. Indeed, it is your life.’ I believe the Scriptures. Every word of God in that book, every word is true. It is never contested. There’s never been a contest between the Bible and any scientific fact. There has been controversy between what the Bible says and scientific speculation. But the speculations constantly are changing. There has never been a problem between what the Bible says and a scientific fact. This is my life – the Scriptures. The Scriptures are my life. They speak to me. God speaks to me primarily through the Scriptures. I read them from Genesis chapter 1 to Revelation chapter 22. And then when I’m done, I start again. And I leave off just where I left off the day before every day for the past 40 years. It is my life.”

SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY

Being a devout believer and a leading scientist isn’t unheard of, but it’s rare. Tour stands strong in the origin of life debate. “When I look at biological systems, and the amazing functionality of a biological system, even if we just take a cell – just a single cell – and you look at the mechanisms within that cell, it is utterly amazing. How can you look at that and just say, ’Oh well, 3.8 billion years ago, under a rock, it just got started up’ – that’s idiocy. It is amazing to look at that. You don’t even have to look at a human being with all of this. You just look at a single cell – a simple cell and the mechanisms within that cell are huge in complexity,” he said.

Part of being a good scientist is realizing what is still unknown. And the more Tour has learned and studied, the more he is in wonder of creation. “Take any chemist, any biochemist, any evolutionary biologist, and say, ’I will give you all the components of a cell. I’ll give you all the nucleic acids, all the proteins, all the lipids and all the carbohydrates. Could you hook them up in the orders that they need to be hooked up?’ The answer is ’no.’ ’But even if I gave them to you in whatever order hooked up that you wanted, could you then put them together in the cell and have the cell operate?’ And the answer is ’no.’ Anybody who would claim otherwise is a rookie. They really don’t know what they’re talking about. We have no idea how to get this thing working. And when you put it all together, what is the spark of life that gets the thing running? How do you start this thing? Nobody knows. When something dies, it’s very hard to even explain what it is you’ve lost when the cell has stopped functioning. Try to restart that thing – very hard. You don’t even know.”

The discrimination against people of faith within the scientific community is an ongoing issue, Tour said. “They make it so hard for people to speak up. You take a young assistant professor who is going to speak up boldly about his or her faith – and then you threaten that person, that if you don’t follow the party line, you’re not going to get into the societies. I mean, it’s a frightening thing. You wanted conformity? Okay, you’ve got it. This is part of why I’m here. We have to fill universities with people who love the Lord and are not afraid to talk about Him. I even understand and I see myself what’s happened in the last 20 years with my being here at Rice. Students used to come to me to say, ’Biology professor so-and-so is mocking Christians all the time.’ Mocking Christians? Why would they want to do that? Have they not enough biology to teach? Why don’t they come and mock me? We’ll go toe-to-toe. Would you like to put your credentials against mine and tell me how stupid I am? And they can mock me and tell me how silly I am. And we’ll put my credentials against theirs. Students don’t come and tell me this anymore. I think it’s shut the mouths of people.”

Although he hasn’t been welcomed into all circles, Tour’s love of God, people and science has remained intact. “So many mornings, I wake up and feel defeated. I spend time in Scriptures and in prayer, and I come out a roaring lion. Jesus Christ changes lives. He’s the Creator of the universe. He was in the beginning before anything was and anything that’s been created – He did it. Then He lived this perfect life – this perfect life before us – teaching us what it is to walk with God, to have a relationship with the Father. I shudder to think of what my life would be like without Him. If I had to come to work every day and I were just a regular scientist, it would be terribly boring. I know Jesus Christ is with me. I know the God of the universe who created the heavens and the earth guides me. And the only thing that holds me back is my insufficiency of faith. He does great things and He has great things planned for me. By His grace, we swerve into things. I just trust Him. And I want to glorify Him on earth by accomplishing the work that He’s given me to do.”

Visit JMTour.com  to learn more.

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Vol. 6, NO. 4 / January 2022

Much Ado About Nothing

Letters to the editors.

In response to “ Much Ado About Nothing ”

Eddy Jiménez, Clémentine Gibard, and Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, “ Prebiotic Phosphorylation and Concomitant Oligomerization of Deoxynucleosides to Form DNA ,” Angewandte Chemie International Edition 60, no. 19 (2021): 10,775–83, doi:10.1002/ange.202015910.

R amanarayanan Krishnamurthy and his team at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego recently published a paper entitled “Prebiotic Phosphorylation and Concomitant Oligomerization of Deoxynucleosides to Form DNA.” As is often the case in origins of life (OOL) research, bold claims were made for the significance of the work. “This finding,” Krishnamurthy remarked at the time, “is an important step toward the development of a detailed chemical model of how the first life forms originated on Earth.” 1 Rather than leading to any sort of chemical model, the research serves only to underscore how this particular approach is unlikely to yield any clues about how life emerged. It is further evidence, if any were needed, that eminent synthetic chemists—and scientists in general—remain clueless about life’s origins. 2

A s part of their study , Krishnamurthy et al. found that when they purchased a variety of homochiral 2′-deoxyribonucleosides, which are isolated from biological sources by the depolymerization of DNA, they were able to repolymerize them into 4- to 6-unit-long oligo-2′-deoxyribonucleotides. The researchers used a paste-like condition with just a drop of water to make this happen. Rather than attempting to explain how ultra-dilute solutions of well-defined biological-looking building blocks might find each other in the earth’s prebiotic oceans, the researchers instead came up with the idea of having so much of those molecules present that they form an ultrahigh concentrated paste.

There is, of course, no polymerization taking place on the bare 2′-deoxyribonucleosides. This is because the 5′-hydroxyl group needs to be activated before it can become a leaving group. Here, one would typically consider the prebiotically relevant phosphate moiety, but alas, no polymerization takes place with the canonical nucleotide. Instead, the researchers use a different leaving group, known as an amidophosphate, on the 5′-hydroxyl using diamidophosphate (DAP), which they describe as a “potential prebiotic phosphorylating agent.” 3 Under these conditions, the 5′-hydroxyl group is activated and the 3′-hydroxyl on a neighboring molecule can serve as the nucleophile needed to facilitate coupling.

The authors also cite preliminary data showing that the same type of oligomerization can be done using ribonucleosides—RNA’s building blocks—rather than DNA’s 2′-deoxyribonucleoside building blocks. This suggests that RNA-DNA (RDNA) chimeras could form, yielding interspersed units of 2′-deoxyribonucleotides with ribonucleotides. “Such mixtures,” the authors remark, “can move forward for ‘primordial biochemical exploitation’ and for the ‘simplification of the transition from chemistry to biology.’” 4

T he same shortcomings and omissions that plague current OOL research can also be found in the paper under review. Indeed, these issues are so routinely ignored by researchers that the field appears to have become numbed to their absence from the literature. OOL researchers are prepared to assume that an ever-increasing list of obstacles were overcome on the prebiotic earth, but do not consider these hurdles as problems to be solved in their own work. The following five shortcomings in the research presented by Krishnamurthy et al., are emblematic of broader issues that need to be addressed.

First is the problem of plausibly explaining how homochiral 2′-deoxyribonucleoside was obtained in the prebiotic environment. This is not a problem for present-day researchers or laboratories—they simply buy it for use in their studies. Krishnamurthy et al. cite a number of papers where deoxyribose has been synthesized in a prebiotically relevant manner. But in all the cited papers, there is no mention of any homochiral synthesis. Even with the poorly diastereomerically controlled syntheses in those studies, the authors often identified just a blip of the desired nucleoside that was beset with many isomers and other related structures—not to mention the oligomers and untold unidentifiable products. As is often the case in OOL research, the desired products were almost never separated so that they could be carried on to the next step. The researchers either purchased those compounds in pure form or prepared them using modern synthetic chemistry. Such nonsensical approaches are commonplace in these studies. Consider the claim that a racemic 2′-deoxyribose was identified through high performance liquid chromatography and that no further explanation is needed. This assertion becomes the justification for both the purchase of homochiral 2′-deoxyribonucleoside and the subsequent claim that starting from this particular point in the process is prebiotically relevant. This approach is unconscionable. The starting material was obtained from biological sources or produced in a manner with no relevance for prebiotic chemistry. These issues alone should be sufficient to discredit any claims associated with subsequent steps in the process. But this is not the case. Instead, the researchers are emboldened at each stage in the process.

Second, OOL research is often beset with concentration problems. How might starting materials become available in sufficiently high yields and undiluted by the oceans, for example, so that the chemistry can occur at any usable rate? How can synthesis outpace decomposition at ultralow concentrations? Krishnamurthy et al. claim to have solved this problem by using an ultrahigh concentration paste of the 2′-deoxynucleosides. This is a convenient way to resolve the issue—in effect, solving the high dilution problem by assuming that there were so many homochiral 2′-deoxyribonucleosides present that they could form agglomerates too concentrated to dissolve. And where do the researchers suggest finding such a high concentration of nucleosides in the prebiotic environment? This question is left unanswered; it is a problem for the early earth, but not for the modern researcher. Assuming that, by some stroke of good fortune, high concentrations of homochiral 2′-deoxyribonucleosides were found in a paste, this would still not be enough. To obtain oligomers 4 to 6 units long the researchers then had to add DAP and 2-aminoimidazole as a base. At those levels of coupling, only 1 to 2 possible codons in length might be defined, where each codon defines a single amino acid after transcription and translation. Such a short template undermines any claim that this research represents tangible progress toward a detailed chemical model of life’s origins. There is, of course, no discussion of nucleotide order in the paper, which is the basis for the requisite information code needed to eventually construct cellular components.

A third shortcoming lies in justifying the use of DAP to make the 5′-hydroxyl into a suitable leaving group. In this study, DAP is described as a “potential prebiotic phosphorylating agent.” 5 The authors have used the same reagent in several of their previous papers, where they described it in the same manner. Any attempt to discern the prebiotically relevant synthesis that was used to prepare DAP quickly turns into a wild-goose chase. Readers of the article under review are referred to an earlier Krishnamurthy paper from 2017, that, in turn, cites an article by Albert Eschenmoser published in 2000. 6 Eschenmoser, for his part, cites a 1986 article by Makoto Watanabe and Shoji Sato, even though they did not use a prebiotically relevant route. 7 Eschenmoser also cites a 1957 article by R. Klement, G. Biberacher, and V. Hille entitled “ Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Monoamido-und der Diamidophosphorsäure (Contribution to the Knowledge of Monoamido and Diamidophosphoric Acids).” 8 This paper has nothing to do with prebiotic chemistry. It seems that DAP has become so ubiquitous in OOL research that it is now simply accepted as being prebiotically relevant. Any effort to retrace the research that underlies this assumption leads nowhere.

The fourth shortcoming is in the lack of an explanation for why the polymerization reactions had only the nucleosides and no other competing nucleophiles or electrophiles present in the paste. When OOL researchers turn to amino acids, all 20 are available for use in reaction mixtures, as needed. When they need nucleobases, these are all available too. But here, the step-growth oligomerizations are devoid of any competing elements, such as exogenous alcohols, amines, and thiols. The presence of 100%-pure starting materials for the phosphorylation process and subsequent oligomerizations is certainly convenient for the researchers, but it is by no means realistic. If such impurities were present in even just a few percent of these materials, the competing reactive sites would terminate the already dismal oligomerizations. 9 The notion that such materials were present with 100% purity in the prebiotic world seems highly improbable, to say the least.

Finally, in the RDNA chimeras, there is no mention made of the 2′-hydroxyl group attacking a neighboring 5′-amidophosphate in the paste. This results in the unwanted 2′,5′-linkage, a problem that undermines the polymerization of ribonucleotides on clay. 10 The 2′,5′-linked systems are far from innocuous. They disrupt templated reactions, serving to disorder the helical structure. These systems can act also as small interfering RNAs. 11 The room-temperature instability of the oligoribonucleotides is another point left unaddressed by Krishnamurthy et al.—even though oligoribonucleotides are prone to rapid decomposition with the 2′-hydroxyl displacing the 3′-phosphate. 12

T he authors conclude their discussion by reiterating that “our work here is based on the scenario that both deoxynucleosides and ribonucleosides are available by plausible prebiotic pathways.” They add:

The view that deoxynucleosides would have been available alongside ribonucleosides, though old, is not widely popular as the RNA-world hypothesis. However, it must be pointed the RNA-centric view and the RNA-only approach is limited in its validity and has been—rightfully—questioned critically. 13

OOL research, as currently practiced, is—rightfully—questioned critically. In recent decades, OOL conjectures have shifted from protein-based theories, to the RNA world hypothesis, and now to RDNA-based proposals. This despite the facts that amino acids do not polymerize readily due to their zwitterionic form and, without sidechain blocking, all hope of polymerization into polypeptides has been dashed 14 —even if one could generate the necessary 19 homochiral amino acids, a feat that has never been achieved in a prebiotically relevant synthesis. For this reason, the protein-based proposal in which so much hope had been invested must now be added to the list of failed OOL approaches. The RNA world hypothesis, now half-a-century old, posits that the first replicators were RNA-based, and that DNA arose later as a product of RNA life forms. These notions and the RNA world hypothesis itself have proven remarkably durable, even though they fail to account for

• the prebiotic chemical difficulties involving in creating a homochiral ribonucleoside;
• the thermal instability of RNA, which decomposes rapidly, even at 0°C; 15
• the fact that even specifically designed and primed RNAs have never been shown to duplicate more than 7% of themselves, and that those segments were found to be too short to serve as new templates; 16
• the difficulties involved in separating RNA-RNA duplexes, which impede further reactions;
• the role played by non-canonical 2′,5′-linkages that are routinely obtained in 20–80% yields, retard subsequent templated utility, 17 and play no part in translation and transcription. 18

The new RDNA world hypothesis only resolves one of these issues: the RNA-RNA sticky-duplex problem. For all these reasons, it is very difficult to accept the claims being made about the significance of this new research. As it stands, the prospects for the RDNA world hypothesis appear bleak.

• “ Discovery Boosts Theory that Life on Earth Arose from RNA-DNA Mix ,” Science Daily , December 28, 2020.  ↩
• I have written previously for Inference on the shortcomings of current origins of life research. See James Tour, “ Animadversions of a Synthetic Chemist ,” Inference: International Review of Science 2, no. 2 (2016), doi:10.37282/991819.16.13; James Tour, “ Two Experiments in Abiogenesis ,” Inference: International Review of Science 2, no. 3 (2016), doi:10.37282/991819.16.33; James Tour, “ An Open Letter to My Colleagues ,” Inference: International Review of Science 3, no. 2 (2017), doi:10.37282/991819.17.44; and James Tour, “ Time Out ,” International Review of Science 4, no. 4 (2019), doi:10.37282/991819.19.30.  ↩
• Eddy Jiménez, Clémentine Gibard, and Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, “ Prebiotic Phosphorylation and Concomitant Oligomerization of Deoxynucleosides to Form DNA ,” Angewandte Chemie International Edition 60, no. 19 (2021): 2, doi:10.1002/ange.202015910.  ↩
• Jiménez, Gibard, and Krishnamurthy, “ Prebiotic Phosphorylation ,” 2.  ↩
• Megha Karki et al., “ Nitrogenous Derivatives of Phosphorus and the Origins of Life: Plausible Prebiotic Phosphorylating Agents in Water ,” Life 7, no. 3 (2017), doi:10.3390/life7030032; and Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, Sreenivasulu Guntha, and Albert Eschenmoser, “ Regioselective α -Phosphorylation of Aldoses in Aqueous Solution ,” Angewandte Chemie International Edition 39, no. 13 (2000): 2,281–85, doi:10.1002/1521-3773(20000703)39:13<2281::AID-ANIE2281>3.0.CO;2-2.  ↩
• Makoto Watanabe and Shoji Sato, “ The Synthesis and Thermal Behaviour of Sodium Phosphorodiamidate ,” Journal of Materials Science 21 (1986): 2,623–27, doi:10.1007/BF00551463.  ↩
• R. Klement, G. Biberacher, and V. Hille, “ Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Monoamido-und der Diamidophosphorsäure (Contribution to the Knowledge of Monoamido and Diamidophosphoric Acids),” Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie 289, no. 1–4 (1957): 80–89, doi:10.1002/zaac.19572890108.  ↩
• Wikipedia , “ Carothers Equation .”  ↩
• Gözen Ertem et al., “ Bridging the Prebiotic and RNA Worlds: Prebiotic RNA Synthesis on Clay ,” Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics 17 (2012): 207–10, doi:10.1080/07391102.2000.10506623.  ↩
• Thazha Prakash et al., “ RNA Interference by 2′,5′-linked Nucleic Acid Duplexes in Mammalian Cells ,” Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters 16, no. 12 (2006): 3,238–40, doi:10.1016/j.bmcl.2006.03.053.  ↩
• “ Oligonucleotide Handling & Stability ,” Merck.  ↩
• Jiménez, Gibard, and Krishnamurthy, “ Prebiotic Phosphorylation ,” 7.  ↩
• Matthew Powner, “ Peptide Synthesis at the Origins of Life: Energy-Rich Aminonitriles By-pass Deactivated Amino Acids Completely ,” Nature Portfolio Chemistry Community , July 10, 2019.  ↩
• Wendy Johnston et al., “ RNA-Catalyzed RNA Polymerization: Accurate and General RNA-Templated Primer Extension ,” Science 292, no. 5,520 (2001): 1,319–25, doi:10.1126/science.1060786; Hani Zaher and Peter Unrau, “ Selection of an Improved RNA Polymerase Ribozyme with Superior Extension and Fidelity ,” RNA Society 13 (2007): 1,017–26, doi:10.1261/rna.548807.  ↩
• Gözen Ertem, “ Montmorillonite, Oligonucleotides, RNA and Origin of Life ,” Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 34 (2004): 549–70, doi:10.1023/B:ORIG.0000043130.49790.a7.  ↩
• Prakash et al., “ RNA Interference .”  ↩

James Tour is a synthetic organic chemist at Rice University.

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Origin of Life: Professor James Tour points the way forward for Intelligent Design

Professor James Tour’s recent video, The Origin of Life – An Inside Story , managed to accomplish three things at once: it shattered the credibility of abiogenesis as a theory; it provided American high school science teachers with an excellent classroom resource for countering evolutionary propaganda; and (perhaps unintentionally), it set a new research agenda for the Intelligent Design movement, which will transform it into a bona fide scientific discipline: the task of reverse-engineering life itself.

Readers who wish to view the talk may do so here:

Why Tour’s talk is the perfect resource for American high school science teachers who want to counteract evolutionary propaganda

At the beginning of his talk, Tour explicitly declared that he would make no reference to “scientifically unknown entities that have been proposed to have seeded life on Earth, such as a design agent (personal or impersonal)”, or the outlandish theory that the Earth was seeded by aliens (panspermia), which merely pushes back the question of life’s origin: where did the aliens come from? This is an important point, because as most readers will be aware, the Dover vs. Kitzmiller decision of 2005 ruled that the teaching of Intelligent Design in public school biology classes violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, on the grounds that Intelligent Design is not science and “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.” No such objection could possibly be made against Professor Tour’s talk , which will (I believe) prove to be an invaluable teaching resource in American high school science classrooms. For the question of how life evolved cannot be divorced from the question of how life originated: the straitjacket of methodological naturalism, which currently reigns supreme in the scientific world, demands a naturalistic answer to both questions. If the origin of life cannot be explained in this way, then that should weaken scientists’ confidence that macroevolution can be explained without appealing to any intelligently guided processes.

It is important to note that Professor Tour never attempted to refute abiogenesis as a scientific theory , in his talk. Rather, his aim was more modest: to show that the Emperor has no clothes, and that current theories about how life might have evolved are mere speculation, unsupported by a shred of evidence. The take-home message of his talk was that currently, scientists know nothing about how the ingredients of life originated, let alone life itself. Nevertheless, I believe that precisely because Professor Tour’s talk was framed as an expose of the inadequacy of current theories of abiogenesis rather than as a scientific refutation, it did a much better job of undermining the credibility of the idea. For what it showed is that for sixty years, scientists have been “telling lies for Darwin” (to adapt a phrase coined by Ian Plimer) and presenting the problem of life’s origin as a work in progress, when in reality, the progress made to date by scientists in the field is precisely zero.

What is abiogenesis, anyway?

In his talk [2:10], Professor Tour defined abiogenesis as “the prebiotic process whereby life, such as a cell, arises from non-living simple organic compounds: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins (polymers of amino acids).” Tour added: “On our planet, this is what it is; in our universe, this is what it is. As far as we can tell, we’re the only ones here so far. But certainly on our planet, it’s carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins. ”

This is an important point to grasp. Defenders of abiogenesis are prone to speculate on the existence of exotic life-forms elsewhere in the cosmos, or in other universes. Even if such exotic life-forms existed, the question which concerns us is: how did cellular life, which relies on the four kinds of chemicals listed by Tour, arise? This is a non-trivial scientific question, and it demands an answer. Moreover, since any process that gave rise to life must have had a computable probability of success, it qualifies as a target , in the special sense of the word, as used by information scientists. In a nutshell: life can be defined as an improbable outcome. Some targets are highly specific (e.g. build this molecule), but the target we call “life,” even if it is narrowed down to “cellular life which is based on carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins,” is a very broad one, which can only be given a general description, since it makes no reference to any particular species (such as Homo sapiens or E. coli ). Describing life as a “target” (in this sense) in no way assumes that the process which generated life must have been a guided one: that would be begging the question. All it means is that it must have been an improbable process (to some degree).

So the scientific question we have to address is: how improbable is the emergence of life on an Earth-like planet, over a period of (say) four billion years? Is it moderately probable, astronomically improbable, or somewhere in between?

Professor Tour debunks abiogenesis

(a) The current state of scientific ignorance

In his talk, Professor Tour was refreshingly candid about how little scientists know, not only about the origin of life, but also about the origin of the basic building blocks of life:

We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled in proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea on how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those who say that they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks, let alone assembly into a complex system. That’s how clueless we are. I’ve asked all of my colleagues: National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners. I sit with them in offices. Nobody understands this. So if your professor says, “It’s all worked out,” [or] your teachers say, “It’s all worked out,” they don’t know what they’re talking about. It is not worked out.

(b) The difficulties involved in making structures, such as nanocars, which are far simpler than living organisms

Professor Tour then provided his audience with a highly entertaining presentation of his work in designing nano-sized cars (one of which is pictured above), constructed from individual atoms. The key points in his discussion were that a great deal of foresight was needed to complete the task , and even then, it wasn’t smooth sailing: there were a lot of setbacks. Making even minor changes in function to the nanocars often necessitated going back to square one and redesigning them from scratch: something which an unguided process is incapable of doing. Additionally, synthesizing the various products at the desired level of purity was excruciatingly difficult process. Finally, the reagents had to be mixed in a very specific sequence, in order to get the desired product. But the task of building life is far more complex than that of building nanocars, as Tour openly acknowledged:

Some may contend that [in making nanocars], I did not use Nature’s building blocks, such as carbohydrates, amino acids, nucleic acids and lipids. I concede, I took the easy route and used simple synthetic molecules, not Nature’s far more complex compounds where chirality and diastereoselectivity can be enormously problematic in synthesis. Thus here we will consider Nature’s building blocks, showing that many of the common parameters hold, yet they become far more difficult for prebiotic systems than for the synthetic chemist today.

(c) Eleven enormous obstacles confronting unguided processes, in generating even the basic building blocks of life

In his talk, Professor Tour decided to focus on the origin of just one of the four basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates. He then proceeded to list eleven enormous hurdles faced by any blind, unguided process, in generating these compounds:

Let us begin at ground zero with the construction of one basic building block of life: carbohydrates. … So we will just consider the basic building blocks, carbohydrates, prior to their polymerization which requires enzymes… DNA and RNA are like beads hanging on a string. You’ve got to have the string. You’ve got to have carbohydrates… The 11-point details with Nature’s constructs 1. A choice of target was needed for the nanocars. How do we know what to target? Towards which structure do we optimize to have an adequately functional system for a task? Take for example the pentose sugars, one of the more common carbohydrate sizes, and that used for DNA and RNA. Pentose sugars have three stereogenic centers, so eight possible isomers (substructures, some being the enantiomers which are mirror-image related and the others being diastereomers which involve subtle orientational differences), and all are chiral, meaning [that] they have a nonsuperimposable mirror image. But what if we do not know the target, then the complexity of the problem would certainly be compounded. … Specifically, we needed a five-carbon sugar, D-(-)-ribose in particular , selected from the set of eight possible pentoses. Further, for DNA, it has to be one hydroxyl group deficient, or deoxyribose. If it is not, then it will be suitable for RNA, but far less stable. But prebiotic systems never knew any of this; there was a blinded pathway to a host of products , somehow selecting the one desired long before any selection agent could have been biologically available. And what are the selection criteria? It is hard to know if we do not know the target. And even if the target were known, the selector would be another molecule at least as complex as the desired analyte [a chemical substance that is the subject of chemical analysis – VJT]. And what selected the selector? 2. Solubility problems were confronted in the nanocar. Same problem for abiogenesis. 3. Molecular flexibility (a less rigid chassis) was needed… This was part of the redesign needed. Prebiotic chemistry would have to do the same, redesigning structures when desired function (and what is desired function since no target was foreseen?) was not realized. Thus much of [the] work that was done to that point would likely have to be discarded , increasing the difficulty for a prebiotic system. 4. When we added a motor to the motorcars, the former chassis were not sufficient to accommodate the motors. Likewise, in prebiotic chemistry, this again sends the system back to the beginning. 5. When we desired to go from a slow motor to a fast motor, though the stator was reusable, the rotor was not. The rotor had to be redesigned , from step one, so as to become a faster unidirectional rotor. In prebiotic systems, for small changes, we cannot use a blackboard to delete atoms or to insert atoms. Often redesigns are needed which send the system back to the origin of the synthesis. This is further exacerbated by the fact that there is no specified target in abiogenesis. [As I explained above, the target in abiogenesis is a general one, rather than a predefined one – VJT.] 6. Just as our motor no longer functioned when the original wheels were present, and we did not realize it until the synthesis was complete, any prebiotic system is destined, at least some of the time, to experience such a disappointment, thereby sending the system back to the beginning. But it does not know how to stop it current course of progression, or why to stop. The prebiotic system will continue to make derivatives of nonfunctioning entities. 7. To get chemical reactions occurring in high yield is difficult. In our synthetic case, we design the reactions to minimize diastereomic mixtures that can be nearly impossible to separate. Hence, even with all of our developed separation protocols and equipment, we try our best to avoid the undesired diastereomers because the separations are too time-consuming and expensive. Plus they waste a huge amount of the starting materials generating unwanted products. And enantiomeric separations are all the more difficult. Nature has chosen a far harder route, using only one enantiomer (homochiral) in a system with multiple stereogenic centers. 8. In the synthesis of the nanocars, we had the convenience of the JIT [just-in-time] delivery of chemicals , and storage of intermediates in safe and stable conditions until needed for the next step… In the laboratory, as anywhere else, it is essential to stop a reaction before the desired product degrades… Time is your enemy, when you’re making kinetic products…. Thus after a few years, which is a brief moment in time by prebiotic terms, there would be little if any of the pentoses left , let alone the more rapid loss of the desired ribose 2,4-diphosphate… Prebiotic chemistry is extremely difficult to perform even for the world’s best synthetic chemists like Eschenmoser, so he chose a more convenient model study system. 9. Reagent addition order is critical as seen in the detailed experimental protocols. In other words, A needs to be added before B and then C, and each at its own specific temperature to effect a proper reaction and coupling yield. 10. The parameters of temperature, pressure, solvent, light or no light, pH, oxygen or no oxygen, moisture or no moisture, have to be carefully controlled to build complex molecular structures. Unless one can devise sophisticated promoters or catalysts that are stable in air and moisture and can work at common atmospheric conditions, precise control must be maintained. 11. The characterization at each step is essential, and even more so if we ever have to bring up more material for the synthesis. Summary of the 11 criteria Therefore, small changes in ultimate functioning require major rerouting in the synthetic approaches. All changes, when doing chemistry, are hard and cannot be done by the usual hand-waving arguments or simple erasures on a board. Laborious and intentional elements of forethought are required.

(d) Why chemists need to resort to reverse engineering, in order to resolve problems regarding life’s origin

Next, Professor Tour explained why chemists need to engage in reverse engineering , when trying to synthesize desired products:

Why do synthetic chemists use retrosynthetic approaches to build complex molecules? Because without the retrosynthetic approach, discerning one’s way to desired products is far too complex, leading to dead-ends that are overwhelmingly abundant, generating massive amounts of undesired products, and exhausting precious supplies that might have taken huge efforts to prepare. But Nature cannot perform retrosynthetic analyses , if we presuppose that the starting points progressed to a non-predefined endpoint. Again, this is utterly perplexing for the synthetic chemist. How could this have happened in prebiotic chemistry? How do you go from a starting material to a product that’s a complex product? What we do is we work our way back slowly. But Nature doesn’t know what its product is going to be at the end! It doesn’t know! It’s just blindly going along.

(e) The ultimate problem: even if you had all the ingredients of life, they can’t assemble without enzymes

Professor Tour provided the final coup de grace in his expose of current scientific theories regarding abiogenesis. It turns out that even if you could get all the ingredients of life together, at a high level of purity, and store them over long periods, they can’t assemble without enzymes:

Let us assume that all the building blocks of life, not just their precursors, could be made in high degrees of purity, including homochirality where applicable, for all the carbohydrates, all the amino acids, all the nucleic acids and all the lipids. And let us further assume that they are comfortably stored in cool caves , away from sunlight, and away from oxygen, so as to be stable against environmental degradation. And let us further assume that they all existed in one corner of the earth , and not separated by thousands of kilometers or on different planets. And that they all existed not just in the same square kilometer, but in neighboring pools where they can conveniently and selectively mix with each other as needed. Now what? How do they assemble? Without enzymes, the mechanisms do not exist for their assembly. It will not happen and there is no synthetic chemist that would claim differently because to do so would take enormous stretches of conjecturing beyond any that is realized in the field of chemical sciences… I just saw a presentation by a Nobel prize winner modeling the action of enzymes, and I walked up to him afterward, and I said to him, “I’m writing an article entitled: ‘Abiogenesis: Nightmare.’ Where do these enzymes come from? Since these things are synthesized, … starting from the beginning, where did these things come from?” He says, “What did you write in your article?” I said, “I said, ‘It’s a mystery.'” He said, “That’s exactly what it is: it’s a mystery.”

(f) Even a Dream Team of chemists wouldn’t know how to assemble life, if they had all the ingredients, including enzymes

As Professor Tour pointed out, what makes the puzzle of life’s origin all the more baffling is that even if you had a “Dream Team” of brilliant chemists and gave them all the ingredients they wanted, they would still have no idea how to assemble a simple cell:

All right, now let’s assemble the Dream Team. We’ve got good professors here, so let’s assemble the Dream Team. Let’s further assume that the world’s top 100 synthetic chemists, top 100 biochemists and top 100 evolutionary biologists combined forces into a limitlessly funded Dream Team. The Dream Team has all the carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids and nucleic acids stored in freezers in their laboratories… All of them are in 100% enantiomer purity. [Let’s] even give the team all the reagents they wish, the most advanced laboratories, and the analytical facilities, and complete scientific literature, and synthetic and natural non-living coupling agents. Mobilize the Dream Team to assemble the building blocks into a living system – nothing complex, just a single cell. The members scratch their heads and walk away, frustrated… So let’s help the Dream Team out by providing the polymerized forms: polypeptides , all the enzymes they desire, the polysaccharides, DNA and RNA in any sequence they desire, cleanly assembled. The level of sophistication in even the simplest of possible living cells is so chemically complex that we are even more clueless now than with anything discussed regarding prebiotic chemistry or macroevolution. The Dream Team will not know where to start. Moving all this off Earth does not solve the problem, because our physical laws are universal. You see the problem for the chemists? Welcome to my world. This is what I’m confronted with, every day.

(g) A call for scientific modesty

Professor Tour concluded his talk on a somber note:

Those that think scientists understand the details of life’s origin are wholly uninformed. Nobody understands. Maybe one day we will. But that day is far from today. So to make ad hominem attacks upon those who are skeptical of the science to-date can be inhibitory to the process if science. Would it not be helpful to express to students the massive gaps in our understanding so that they, as the next generation of academic soldiers, could seek to propel the field upon a firmer, and possibly radically different scientific basis, rather than relying on increasingly ambitious extrapolations that are entirely unacceptable in the practice of chemistry? The basis upon which we as scientists are relying is so shaky that it would be best to openly state the situation for what it is: a mystery.

Unmasking a recent example of scientific triumphalism on the origin of life

In the last few days, there has been much talk about a new paper in Nature Communications (vol. 7, article number 11328) by Brian Cafferty, David M. Fialho, Jaheda Khanam, Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy and Nicholas V. Hud, titled, Spontaneous formation and base pairing of plausible prebiotic nucleotides in water . The abstract sounds very promising:

The RNA World hypothesis presupposes that abiotic reactions originally produced nucleotides, the monomers of RNA and universal constituents of metabolism. However, compatible prebiotic reactions for the synthesis of complementary (that is, base pairing) nucleotides and mechanisms for their mutual selection within a complex chemical environment have not been reported. Here we show that two plausible prebiotic heterocycles, melamine and barbituric acid, form glycosidic linkages with ribose and ribose-5-phosphate in water to produce nucleosides and nucleotides in good yields. Even without purification, these nucleotides base pair in aqueous solution to create linear supramolecular assemblies containing thousands of ordered nucleotides. Nucleotide anomerization and supramolecular assemblies favour the biologically relevant beta-anomer form of these ribonucleotides, revealing abiotic mechanisms by which nucleotide structure and configuration could have been originally favoured. These findings indicate that nucleotide formation and selection may have been robust processes on the prebiotic Earth , if other nucleobases preceded those of extant life.

However, when one looks more carefully at the paper itself, it becomes apparent that the authors are glossing over the challenges that their proposed synthesis would have faced in the real world:

The ability of C-BMP and MMP to form supramolecular assemblies might have also facilitated the emergence of early RNA-like polymers by selecting nucleotides with sugars (or earlier trifunctional linkers) that were structurally compatible with the assemblies and their subsequent coupling into covalent polymers. In the present study, we have, for practical reasons, used D-ribose and D-R5P for our nucleoside and nucleotide reactions with melamine and BA, but L-ribose or L-R5P would exhibit equivalent reactivity with these two heterocycles. Nevertheless, it has been often postulated that a racemic mixture of nucleotides would have inhibited the prebiotic synthesis of RNA polymers (41), and so the question of how the present system might address this challenge deserves some discussion. Although we have not shown chiral nucleotide selection , in the current study we have demonstrated that the beta-anomer of MMP is enriched in supramolecular assemblies over the alpha-anomer of MMP, and this selection leads to a detectable increase in the ratio of the beta-anomer over the alpha-anomer of MMP in the entire solution (presumably due to anomerization and selective stabilization by the assembly). As a recent example of the ability of supramolecular polymers to promote local chiral resolution, Aida and co-workers demonstrated that racemic solutions of chiral macrocycles self-sort into homochiral supramolecular polymers (42). It is therefore possible that supramolecular assemblies, formed by nucleotides with different sugars, including different anomers and enantiomers, could have been selectively enriched in individual supramolecular assemblies before polymerization. Current investigations of this possibility are actively being pursued in our laboratory.

The paper by Aida et al. which the authors cite is titled, “Homochiral supramolecular polymerization of bowl‐shaped chiral macrocycles in solution” (Chem. Sci. 2014, 5, 136‐140). However, it turns out that the abstract is very modest, and does not support the sweeping conclusions drawn by Cafferty et al. in their article for Nature Communications :

Chiral monomers 1 and 2, carrying C4‐ and C3‐symmetric bowl‐shaped peptide macrocycle  cores, respectively, undergo supramolecular polymerization in solution via van der Waals  and hydrogen bonding interactions. Size‐exclusion chromatographic studies, using UV and CD detectors, on the supramolecular copolymerization of their enantiomers demonstrated that these monomers are the first chiral macrocycles that polymerize enantioselectively with a strong preference for chiral self‐sorting.

In other words, Aida et al. were talking about just two monomers , which are the first – and to date, the only – chiral macrocycles that are known to polymerize with a strong preference for chiral self‐sorting. (Note: a macrocycle is defined by IUPAC as “a cyclic macromolecule or a macromolecular cyclic portion of a molecule.”) To generalize from this solitary instance to the grandiose claim that “supramolecular assemblies, formed by nucleotides with different sugars, including different anomers and enantiomers, could have been selectively enriched in individual supramolecular assemblies before polymerization,” is going far beyond the available evidence.

How Professor Tour’s talk has created a new scientific research agenda for the Intelligent Design movement

One of the criticisms most frequently hurled at the Intelligent Design movement is that it solves the problem of origins by positing a science-stopper: “God did it,” or “A Designer did it.” After listening to Professor Tour’s talk, I had a kind of epiphany. I suddenly realized that Tour had created a perfect research agenda for the Intelligent Design movement: that of reverse-engineering life itself. If life was intelligently designed, then there is no reason in principle why scientists cannot retrace the steps whereby the first living cell was assembled. Indeed, Professor Tour himself, in response to a question from a member of the audience, expressed optimism that scientists would one day solve the question of life’s origin.

But what if scientists’ attempt to reverse-engineer life turns up empty-handed?

What if the attempt to reverse-engineer life fails?

In his talk, Professor Tour highlighted the immense difficulty of intelligently designing a living cell, even if we assembled a “Dream Team” of chemists, and gave them all the ingredients they could possibly ask for. Let’s imagine that after 50 years of searching for a plausible pathway that a Designer might have used to get from the chemical ingredients of life to a functional living cell, Intelligent Design scientists come up empty-handed. “We’ve followed up every promising avenue we could think of,” they say. “We’ve even used super-computers, with their advanced ‘look-ahead’ capabilities, to help us in our search. Nothing has worked, and there appears to be nothing that’s even remotely promising on the horizon, either.” What should we then conclude?

Here, I believe, is where it gets really interesting. Failures in science can tell us just as much as successes. If the attempt to find a guided pathway leading to the first living cell turns up empty-handed after a diligent search of all promising options, then the only remaining conclusion for us to draw is that life wasn’t assembled. That, however, does not mean that life wasn’t designed. Rather, what it means is that the first living cell was created holus-bolus , in its entirety.

A Transcendent Designer?

What kind of agent could create a living cell, in its entirety, without any intermediate steps? Certainly not a natural agent, that’s for sure. That only leaves an Agent Who stands outside the cosmos and Who created the entities we find within it: in other words, a supernatural Being.

What I’m suggesting here is that the scientific attempt to reverse-engineer life is a winner as an Intelligent Design project, no matter which way it pans out. If it succeeds, then Intelligent Design scientists will gain some well-earned kudos, as well as “street cred,” in the scientific community at large: they will have accomplished a feat that puts Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA in the shade.

But if it fails, then the Intelligent Design movement will have a ready response to a theological charge which is often leveled against the Intelligent Design movement: that the Designer it points to is not the God of classical theism, but a mere architect. The discovery that life was (in all likelihood) not assembled, step by step, but created in its entirety, would strongly indicate that the Designer of life is a Transcendent Being.

In other words, what we have is a win-win situation for the Intelligent Design movement. All that remains is to get moving with the scientific project of trying to reverse-engineer a simple living cell, as soon as possible.

What do readers think?

Matt. I’ll be brief. Why is it so difficult for ID theorists to realize that prokaryotes, eukaryotes, animals, plants, fungi and bacteria DID NOT EXIST back when Life first appeared?

“Darwinian evolution – the evolution of living organisms — requires translation.” Nonsense!

“Matt, the structure of tRNA does not establish and does not specify the genetic code.” I’ve seen you write that two or three times now and I’m not sure what you mean.

Zach at 245, When you reply to my posts, but title your comments to someone else, you make it very easy for me to not see your reply. I don't know if that's the effect you're going after, but this is the second or third time you've done it. "self-replicating molecules are capable of darwinian evolution, and they don't use translation.

Steve : Plausibility means jack all in scientific research especially when all the known plausible routes have been known for decades. That's not the case, as is clear from Powner 2009. Consequently, pointing to current limitations in human technical ability and ingenuity are not very good arguments. Zachriel May 14, 2016 May 05 May 14 14 2016 08:53 AM 8 08 53 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

Plausibility means jack all in scientific research especially when all the known plausible routes have been known for decades. What Zachriel are saying is: 'we haven't the faintest ideas whats going on but we are loath to change direction', especially if it means looking in the direction of information as an independent entity that is imprinted on matter. Waaaayyyy too much teleology to stomach. Waaay too much! So it woulbe be a bad move for any lab to consider Zachriel as members of a research team. Maybe run a horserace. But be effective members of a research lab? Forgedaboutit. The claim is that “We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, were made”. We actually have some tentative knowledge of plausible mechanisms of abiogenetic synthesis. Pointing out that we don’t everything doesn’t support the claim that “we have no idea” at all.

Origenes : But, since their relevancy to prebiotic routes have been explained, I do not see the point of you mentioning it. The hurdles primarily concern his artifice. 1. A choice of target was needed for the nanocars.

Zachriel: Those are problems Tour faced when constructing an artificial machine.

Zachriel: The question we addressed is the claim “We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, were made”.

Zachriel: In fact, we do have some idea of how this may have happened.

Origenes : show how Kim et al. overcome the eleven hurdles listed by Tour. Those are problems Tour faced when constructing an artificial machine. The question we addressed is the claim “We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, were made”. In fact, we do have some idea of how this may have happened. Origenes : I think he means chemistry. Which is why the references are to prebiotic chemistry. Zachriel May 13, 2016 May 05 May 13 13 2016 03:29 AM 3 03 29 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

Allen Mac_Neill: I'm sorry to hear about Hannah, and appreciate you posting about the situation. I am grateful for your general willingness to discuss the issues in the debate and look forward to your new books. Regarding this: As for abiogenesis, I agree that it is not “all worked out” – indeed, I think it will never be so in either direction (i.e. design vs evolution).

If by “plausible mechanisms” you mean “plausible prebiotic routes”, then you should make your point. I think he means chemistry. Mung May 12, 2016 May 05 May 12 12 2016 09:28 AM 9 09 28 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

Zachriel, show how Kim et al. overcome the eleven hurdles listed by Tour. Origenes May 12, 2016 May 05 May 12 12 2016 07:45 AM 7 07 45 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

Origenes : To be clear, the claim is: ... Quote: “We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, were made”. Origenes : If by “plausible mechanisms” you mean “plausible prebiotic routes”, then you should make your point. We have cited plausible routes to prebiotic compounds, including nucleic acids. Zachriel May 12, 2016 May 05 May 12 12 2016 06:38 AM 6 06 38 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

Zachriel: The claim is that “We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, were made”.

Zachriel: We actually have some tentative knowledge of plausible mechanisms of abiogenetic synthesis.

Zachriel: Pointing out that we don’t everything doesn’t support the claim that “we have no idea” at all.

Origenes : You don’t show how Kim et al. overcome the eleven hurdles listed by Tour. The claim is that "We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, were made". We actually have some tentative knowledge of plausible mechanisms of abiogenetic synthesis. Pointing out that we don't everything doesn't support the claim that "we have no idea" at all. Zachriel May 12, 2016 May 05 May 12 12 2016 04:40 AM 4 04 40 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

Zachriel #265, VJTorley writes that “In his talk, Professor Tour decided to focus on the origin of just one of the four basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates. He then proceeded to list eleven enormous hurdles faced by any blind, unguided process, in generating these compounds.” You don’t show how Kim et al. overcome the eleven hurdles listed by Tour. Moreover, it’s long-standing tradition for scientists who are sympathetic to evolution, to choose misleading titles, and even abstracts. A typical case is described in the OP: In the last few days, there has been much talk about a new paper in Nature Communications (vol. 7, article number 11328) by Brian Cafferty, David M. Fialho, Jaheda Khanam, Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy and Nicholas V. Hud, titled, Spontaneous formation and base pairing of plausible prebiotic nucleotides in water. The abstract sounds very promising: (…) However, when one looks more carefully at the paper itself, it becomes apparent that the authors are glossing over the challenges that their proposed synthesis would have faced in the real world: (…)

MatSpirit: "And biological objects don’t look anything like the products of humanity." They do. But they are much smarter. "We’re asking the Big Question: Is life designed by an Intelligent Designer or was it produced naturally?" I agree. That's the Big Question, indeed. "Except, I’ve read every message you’ve posted in this thread and many others in other threads and as far as I can see, you don’t even consider evolution. You seem to have dismissed it so thoroughly you don’t even bring it up as a possibility in your arguments." I am afraid your have read very badly. My main activity here is to analyze in detail, at the molecular level, why "evolution" (or, to be more precise, unguided evolution based on RV + NS) cannot explain what we observe in biological objects. Just as an example, look at this OPs of mine: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/homologies-differences-and-information-jumps/ https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/information-jumps-again-some-more-facts-and-thoughts-about-prickle-1-and-taxonomically-restricted-genes/ and at the long discussions in the corresponding threads. Again, that's just an example. I have been debating the neo darwinian model in great detail for years, both here and in some blogs "from the other side". You may certainly disagree with what I say, but to state that I "don’t even consider evolution" is one of the strangest statements about my activity here that I have ever seen. "That’s mighty convenient, but since the question is “ID or evolution” and one of your unspoken premises is that evolution can’t do it, it makes your argument completely circular." The question is, indeed, “ID or evolution”. I agree. That's why in my posts I do present positive arguments for ID and, most of the time, I do analyze the reasons why the neo darwinian evolutionary paradigm is obviously wrong from a scientific point of view. I am absolutely available to take any points you like about that aspect and discuss them with you. And please, don't take the "argument" of circularity. I have dedicated maybe hundreds of posts to show that ID theory and the argument from dFSCI is not circular. We can do that again, if you like, but first you should offer some detailed discussion about the circularity you seem to catch. gpuccio May 11, 2016 May 05 May 11 11 2016 08:26 AM 8 08 26 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

Origenes : Which plausible prebiotic pathways for the synthesis of which of the requisite building blocks (carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins) are there? Kim et al., Synthesis of Carbohydrates in Mineral-Guided Prebiotic Cycles, Journal of the American Chemical Society 2011; Hargreaves et al., Synthesis of phospholipids and membranes in prebiotic conditions, Nature 1977; Jiang et al., Altmetric: Abiotic synthesis of amino acids and self-crystallization under prebiotic conditions, Nature 2014; Pascal et al., From the Prebiotic Synthesis of alpha-Amino Acids Towards a Primitive Translation Apparatus for the Synthesis of Peptides, Topics in Current Chemistry: Prebiotic Chemistry 2005; Powner et al., Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions, Nature 2009. Zachriel May 11, 2016 May 05 May 11 11 2016 05:49 AM 5 05 49 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

James Tour: We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks, let alone assembly into a complex system.

That is not correct. There are plausible prebiotic pathways for the synthesis of many of those substances.

Mung : I’ve never split a DNA molecule into two complementary pairs and used each pair as a template to synthesize the other half of the molecule. The technique is called polymerase chain reaction. Mung : Do you think protein synthesis is a matter of template replication? Your claim was that DNA replication is not template replication. That claim was false. See Meselson & Stahl, The replication of DNA in Escherichia coli, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1958 Mung : Why is it so difficult for you to realize that Dr. Tour specifically denied that enzymes existed to help the process of abiogenesis along? RNA can act as both genetic memory and as a catalyst. Origenes : So when Tour says: “We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins. That is not correct. There are plausible prebiotic pathways for the synthesis of many of those substances. For instance, see Powner et al., Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions, Nature 2009. Zachriel May 11, 2016 May 05 May 11 11 2016 05:01 AM 5 05 01 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

MatSpirit: Nice job of moving the goal post! I point out that Tour says the modern cell he shows us and talks about couldn’t have been the first living thing (because it didn’t exist, among other reasons) and you “counter” by saying: "We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered." [Origenes quoting Tour] Well yeah, we can’t figure out the prebiotic routes to first life because there are a gazillion potential ways to do it and we have no samples to figure out which path was actually used.

MatSpirit, How do you explain for yourself that we cannot see abiogenesis happening today? How is it that today's environment cannot naturally produce life, for all we know, and yet it is perfectly life-friendly? Do you agree that all life is instruction based? If you don't, there is nothing more to discuss. If you do, how do you then explain for yourself the appearance of the first set of instructions for the first instruction processor in the first generation of organisms? EugeneS May 11, 2016 May 05 May 11 11 2016 02:30 AM 2 02 30 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

MatSpirit, You definitely got your understanding of evolution from pantheists. Evolution is only a system's dynamics. Dynamics cannot be responsible for the emergence of sign in semiotic systems. Sign is quiescent and independent of a system's dynamics. Sign is choice contingent. In order to explain evolution in biology you absolutely must explain the sign-matter relation. Apparently, you don't even understand what the problem is and how difficult it is. "Evolution uses a very simple algorithm" I work with algorithms for bread and butter. Again, MatSpirit, an algorithm is choice contingent. There is no choice contingency in nature alone. It cannot choose. An algorithm is goal oriented. Nature is not goal oriented (the only 'goal' is minimal total potential energy but that is trivial). Nor is evolution, in the Darwinian model at least. There is no IF-THEN-ELSE in inanimate nature. What I don't like about the evolutionists' approach is their slack use of terminology. "A simple algorithm, just integration of equations". Just a couple of stokes by the magic wand. In your explanations, guys, you tacitly assume what cannot be assumed because it must be explained. Natur alism is fine until such time as it is used in attempts to shed light on the origin of nature . It assumes the existence of matter, space, time, life. But it is no good at explaining how they came about. You need to dig deeper. EugeneS May 11, 2016 May 05 May 11 11 2016 01:59 AM 1 01 59 AM PDT Copy Comment Link

MatSpirit: Hey, watch those goalposts! (…) What are you trying to claim, that we’ll never understand all of the details of how a cell functions, (…)? That’s a God of the Gaps argument (…)

MatSpirit: OrigeneS: “For one thing, there is no conceivable bottom-up explanation for the coordination of the numerous processes into a dynamic coherent homeostatic whole.”

MatSpirit: (…) But we can’t seem to find such an intelligence (…)

MatSpirit: (…) and evolution can build a cell from the bottom up without using it.

MatSpirit: For example, suppose you’ve got a simple cell that works, (…)

MatSpirit: I’ll bet you don’t know much about evo-devo.

Upright Biped @ 188: Zack: "But you claimed the evidence was universal. As such, it probably should have been noticed by the vast majority of biologists who accept evolutionary science. It’s a reasonable question. UB: "The evidence is universal because no single person has ever independently assessed that the origin of biological information is evolution. If a single person had ever done so, then the evidence would not be universal. There would be an exception to universal experience. But there isn’t. Thus, you are assuming your conclusion against universal evidence to the contrary." What in the world are you talking about? What does it matter if zero, one, ten or fifty million people look at the evidence and give their opinion on something? Their OPINIONS don't affect the EVIDENCE one whit! If the evidence is available to everybody, it's universal. If its not, it isn't. Opinions based on that evidence don't even matter here! MatSpirit May 10, 2016 May 05 May 10 10 2016 07:26 PM 7 07 26 PM PDT Copy Comment Link

Upright Biped @200: MatSpirit: "We know where every atom in every variety of tRNA goes and how they implement the genetic code. We know exactly how they translate three codon groups in the mRNA into the amino acid it specifies." UB: "Matt, the structure of tRNA does not establish and does not specify the genetic code." I've seen you write that two or three times now and I'm not sure what you mean. If you're saying, "No tRNA molecule or group of tRNA molecules ever sat down and thought up the genetic code," I agree with you. But if you're trying to tell us that the structure of the tRNA molecule doesn't define and instantiate the Genetic code, I wonder if you even know what transfer RNA is. What exactly are you claiming here? MatSpirit May 10, 2016 May 05 May 10 10 2016 07:11 PM 7 07 11 PM PDT Copy Comment Link

Origenes @ 201: "MatSpirit: We know the general outline (DNA copied to mRNA, mRNA fed into ribosomes, ribosomes exposing three mRNA base pairs at a time to tRNA, tRNA handing the correct amino acid to the ribosome, ribosome joining the amino acid to the growing protein) and we also know a lot of the important details." OrigeneS: "The linear “central dogma” of the 1960s (DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us) is long gone; it has become clear that multiple players — DNA, RNA, proteins, splicers, epigenetic factors, post-transcriptional modifiers — interact in complex networks we can barely fathom." Hey, watch those goalposts! You almost hit me when you moved that one! What are you trying to claim, that we'll never understand all of the details of how a cell functions, like they used to say we'd never understand the Krebs cycle? That's a God of the Gaps argument and historically it's been a disaster for creationism because we keep filling the gaps in our knowledge in and you have to hide God somewhere else. OrigeneS: "For one thing, there is no conceivable bottom-up explanation for the coordination of the numerous processes into a dynamic coherent homeostatic whole." I think you've got that backwards. There is no conceivable top-down explanation for the co-ordination of the numerous processes into a dynamic coherent homeostatic whole except an intelligence that can plan everything in advance. But we can't seem to find such an intelligence and evolution can build a cell from the bottom up without using it. For example, suppose you've got a simple cell that works, but sodium levels are too high for maximum efficiency. The cell reproduces and you have a lot of identical cells that work, but they all have sodium levels that are too high and it slows reproduction. One cell gets a mutation that enlarges a pore just enough so an occasional sodium atom can escape. Sodium levels go down a bit in that cell, it works a little better and reproduces a little faster and it soon replaces the original cells. Now all of the cells have better regulated sodium levels. Now one of those cells developes a slightly mutated pore that allows lots of sodium atoms to escape when there are lots of them slamming into it, but which shrinks and won't let any out when sodium levels are too low. Now this new atom has found a way to REGULATE sodium levels, it's more efficient and reproduces faster and it eventually replaces the other cells and becomes the new "normal" cell. Note that through all of the steps, the cell remains a dynamic whole and that its homeostasis actually increases! Back in 1975 a man named John Gall said this: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system." He was talking specifically about computer systems, but it applies to nearly everything. OrigeneS: "From whence cometh the coordination when we e.g. recover from surgery?" I'll bet you don't know much about evo-devo. It's the story of how a single egg can develop into a complete organism, ready to enter the world, using only commands like "All you brain cells in the temporal lobe, grow your axons up this chemical gradient for 73 hours and then connect to the nearest nuron." I imagine repairs are done similarly. MatSpirit May 10, 2016 May 05 May 10 10 2016 07:03 PM 7 07 03 PM PDT Copy Comment Link

MatSpirit: Professor Tour doesn’t just claim the first living thing was A cell, he holds up a slide of a modern eukaryotic cell complete with a nucleus, nucleoli, mitochondria, ribosomes, golgi apparatus and a few dozen other major components and then demonstrates at length why this is much too hard for nature to have produced out of zip. This is false. Please stop lying. Mung May 10, 2016 May 05 May 10 10 2016 05:57 PM 5 05 57 PM PDT Copy Comment Link

MatSpirit: Why is it so difficult for ID theorists to realize that prokaryotes, eukaryotes, animals, plants, fungi and bacteria DID NOT EXIST back when Life first appeared? Why is it so difficult for you to realize that Dr. Tour specifically denied that enzymes existed to help the process of abiogenesis along? Mung May 10, 2016 May 05 May 10 10 2016 05:55 PM 5 05 55 PM PDT Copy Comment Link

MatSpirit: Ok, then what is it called when you split a DNA molecule into two complementary pairs and use each pair as a template to synthesize the other half of the molecule? I've never split a DNA molecule into two complementary pairs and used each pair as a template to synthesize the other half of the molecule. Have you? Has Zachriel? Do you think protein synthesis is a matter of template replication? If not, what do you call protein synthesis? Mung May 10, 2016 May 05 May 10 10 2016 05:51 PM 5 05 51 PM PDT Copy Comment Link

Gpuccio @ 204: "MatSpirit at #190: That is an old objection, may times answered. Origenes has already answered at #193. However, I will repeat the concept. Obviously, our examples of designed objects are human artifacts. Why? Because they are the only observable objects that exhibit dFSCI in huge amounts. Except for biological objects." And biological objects don't look anything like the products of humanity. We're asking the Big Question: Is life designed by an Intelligent Designer or was it produced naturally? Except, I've read every message you've posted in this thread and many others in other threads and as far as I can see, you don't even consider evolution. You seem to have dismissed it so thoroughly you don't even bring it up as a possibility in your arguments. That's mighty convenient, but since the question is "ID or evolution" and one of your unspoken premises is that evolution can't do it, it makes your argument completely circular. MatSpirit May 10, 2016 May 05 May 10 10 2016 05:49 PM 5 05 49 PM PDT Copy Comment Link

Mung @221: "Zachriel: That’s nice, but DNA replication is template replication. Is not." Ok, then what is it called when you split a DNA molecule into two complementary pairs and use each pair as a template to synthesize the other half of the molecule? MatSpirit May 10, 2016 May 05 May 10 10 2016 05:34 PM 5 05 34 PM PDT Copy Comment Link

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Wave to Earth's 2024 world tour North America: Presale, dates, venues, & all you need to know

S outh Korean indie band Wave to Earth is hitting the road this fall for a headlining tour in North America and Canada called the "0.03" world tour. The band took to social media this Monday, June 10, to reveal the dates of the outing that begins on September 16 in Vancouver.

The '0.03' tour spans over three weeks and covers 25 major cities across Canada and North America. The Live Nation-produced tour allows fans to watch the band in its full glory with Kim Daniel as the lead vocalist and guitarist, bassist Cha Soonjong, and Shin Donggyu on the drums.

Wave to Earth's tour tickets are available through the artist presale beginning this Wednesday, June 12, at 10 a.m. PDT. Fans can sign up on Seated.com (events.seated.com/wave-to-earth) to receive the access link for the presale. The Live Nation and Ticketmaster presales for the tour begin at 12 p.m. PDT on June 12.

HOB Foundation Room members and those with Citi cards can enjoy a special member-exclusive presale starting at 12 p.m. PDT on June 12. The general sale for the '0.03' world tour tickets will be open to the public later this Friday, June 14, at 10 a.m. PDT.

Wave to Earth's '0.03' world tour dates and venues

The Wave to Earth trio will commence the '0.03' tour on September 16 with the Vancouver Vogue Theatre concert. The band heads to North America the next day and will perform at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle.

The rest of September will include consecutive concerts in Portland, Oakland, San Francisco, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix. The indie band will take the stage at The Depo in Salt Lake City on October 1. Following it up will be concerts at the Summit in Denver, the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and the Pageant in St. Louis.

As the tour continues, 'Wave to Earth' will make stops in Chicago , Minneapolis, Nashville, Atlanta, Silver Spring, and Philadelphia. After hosting a concert at the House of Blues in Boston on October 24, the band will leave for Canada. The tour back in Canada will include two consecutive performances at the Beanfield Theatre in Montreal and the HISTORY in Toronto.

The 'Wave to Earth' trio will take a quick break at the end of November and pick up the '0.03' tour in New York on November 1. The New York show at The Hammerstein Ballroom will mark the end of the North American leg of the '0.03' world tour.

As of this writing, the confirmed setlists and names of the supports for the '0.03' tour are yet to be revealed. If the indie band follows a similar setlist as their previous 2024 concerts this year, fans can expect performances on Bad, Peach Eyes, Daisy, Calla, and Seasons.

The full list of North American and Canadian dates and venues for Wave to Earth's '0.03' tour includes:

• September 16 - Vogue Theatre, Vancouver, British Columbia
• September 17 - Showbox SoDo, Seattle, Washington
• September 18 - Roseland Theater, Portland, Oregon
• September 20 - Fox Theater, Oakland, California
• September 21 - The Masonic, San Francisco, California
• September 23 - House of Blues, Anaheim, California
• September 25 - The Witern, Los Angeles, California
• September 28 - SOMA, San Diego, California
• September 29 - The Van Buren, Phoenix, Arizona
• October 1 - The Depo, Salt Lake City, Utah
• October 2 - Summit, Denver, Colorado
• October 5 - Austin City Limits Music Festival, Texas
• October 10 - House of Blues, Lake Beuna Vista, Florida
• October 12 - Austin City Limits Music Festival, Texas
• October 14 - The Pageant, St. Louis, Missouri
• October 15 - Riviera Theatre, Chicago, Illinois
• October 16 - Uptown Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• October 18 - Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, Nashville, Tennessee
• October 19 - The Tabernacle, Atlanta, Georgia
• October 21 - The Filmore Silver Spring, Maryland
• October 22 - Theatre of Living Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• October 24 - House of Blues, Boston, Massachusetts
• October 25 - Beanfield Theatre, Montreal, Quebec
• October 27 - HISTORY, Toronto, Ontario
• November 1 - The Hammerstein Ballroom, New York

While there is no confirmation from Wave to Earth, the '0.03' tour might hint at an upcoming project . Readers must note that the trio's first EP (extended play) was Wave 0.01 , while the second was Summer Flows 0.02. Hence, the third project is highly likely to be '0.03.'

James Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and Nano-Engineering at Rice University. A synthetic organic chemist, he received his BS in Chemistry from Syracuse University, his PhD in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. He has served on the faculty of the University of South Carolina and as a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Tour has over 700 research publications and over 130 patent families.

He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015 and was listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters in 2014. He has been named “Scientist of the Year” by  R&D Magazine  and was ranked one of the Top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade by a Thomson Reuters citations per publication index survey in 2009. The same year he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology in 2008, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007.

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