James Tour Just Keeps Getting Dumber (For Jesus!)

Now, to get one important thing out of the way up top, in every single dumb lecture he gives to some university Jesus club or church group or whatever, he parades the same five pathetic talking points that he used in our debate, even though I debunked every single one of them right to his face.

The first was polypeptides, where he offered his straw man lysine aspartic acid linkage.

First, even if we could only make polyglycine, that would still be a polypeptide.

We can watch that and similar sequences form spontaneously with prebiotically plausible chemical activators, and also by wet-dry cycling, even in natural settings.

So to pretend we are clueless about this is completely insane.

But more importantly, there is no reason to suggest this linkage was required for abiogenesis.

Here's a paper by Kirschning which explains how there were 10 phase one amino acids that were available from the prebiotic environment, and the other 10 phase two amino acids became available later from amino acid biosynthesis once life existed.

Lysine did not exist at the origin of life.

Additionally, dipeptide formation was shown prebiotically for all 20 canonical amino acids by Matthew Powner anyway, so the side chains are not an issue like he pretends.

The second was polynucleotides.

Again, he ignores all the research that shows these forming trivially on catalytic clay surfaces, and he just whines about details present in extant life that were not required for abiogenesis.

The third was polysaccharides, which were obviously synthesized by enzymes once those came about.

The fourth was specified information, which is creationist propaganda and not a real thing.

Functional RNA sequences arose by chance and were then refined by natural selection.

And the fifth was the protocell, which is nothing but trivially self-assembling lipid micelles, which did not have to be a phospholipid bilayer but could have been as simple as a monolayer of fatty acids, and the evolving autocatalytic sets of molecules encapsulated within.

Obviously, unlike the first four, this last one is not open and shut.

We are still figuring out how those evolving sets of molecules could have produced the first protocell.

But it's not a complete mystery, he's just hiding from all the science he doesn't like.

Despite all of this being debunked right to his face in our debate, in several of my videos afterwards, and by several other science communicators as well, he continues to deliver the same sermon over and over again, whining about how nobody in the field will engage with him because they're so scared, and they know how right he is.

In reality, he's just a creationist troll they ignore, like how astronomers ignore flat Earthers.

I give you all of this up top because I'm going to cover a bunch of his sermons rapid fire, and I'm going to skip over this lengthy bit that he regurgitates every single time because there's no point in explaining it more than I already have.

It will be more fun to focus on the unique tidbits of stupidity from each video, and trust me, there are a lot of those.

Now, to get one important thing out of the way up top, in every single dumb lecture he gives to some university Jesus club or church group or whatever, he parades the same five pathetic talking points that he used in our debate, even though I debunked every single one of them right to his face.

The first was polypeptides, where he offered his straw man lysine aspartic acid linkage.

First, even if we could only make polyglycine, that would still be a polypeptide.

We can watch that and similar sequences form spontaneously with prebiotically plausible chemical activators, and also by wet-dry cycling, even in natural settings.

So to pretend we are clueless about this is completely insane.

But more importantly, there is no reason to suggest this linkage was required for abiogenesis.

Here's a paper by Kirschning which explains how there were 10 phase one amino acids that were available from the prebiotic environment, and the other 10 phase two amino acids became available later from amino acid biosynthesis once life existed.

Lysine did not exist at the origin of life.

Additionally, dipeptide formation was shown prebiotically for all 20 canonical amino acids by Matthew Powner anyway, so the side chains are not an issue like he pretends.

The second was polynucleotides.

Again, he ignores all the research that shows these forming trivially on catalytic clay surfaces, and he just whines about details present in extant life that were not required for abiogenesis.

The third was polysaccharides, which were obviously synthesized by enzymes once those came about.

The fourth was specified information, which is creationist propaganda and not a real thing.

Functional RNA sequences arose by chance and were then refined by natural selection.

And the fifth was the protocell, which is nothing but trivially self-assembling lipid micelles, which did not have to be a phospholipid bilayer but could have been as simple as a monolayer of fatty acids, and the evolving autocatalytic sets of molecules encapsulated within.

Obviously, unlike the first four, this last one is not open and shut.

We are still figuring out how those evolving sets of molecules could have produced the first protocell.

But it's not a complete mystery, he's just hiding from all the science he doesn't like.

Despite all of this being debunked right to his face in our debate, in several of my videos afterwards, and by several other science communicators as well, he continues to deliver the same sermon over and over again, whining about how nobody in the field will engage with him because they're so scared, and they know how right he is.

In reality, he's just a creationist troll they ignore, like how astronomers ignore flat Earthers.

I give you all of this up top because I'm going to cover a bunch of his sermons rapid fire, and I'm going to skip over this lengthy bit that he regurgitates every single time because there's no point in explaining it more than I already have.

It will be more fun to focus on the unique tidbits of stupidity from each video, and trust me, there are a lot of those.