Q&A Session with Dr. James Tour
For more about Dr. Tour see his web page @
Q: Clearly the problems are insurmountable. So what encourages the scientist continue the pursuit, and who funds this work [abiogenesis] which has no hope of conclusion.
Dr. J.T. There is a different answer for each of those questions. So what drives them to do this? You know I have said I have I've projected, I said you know your boss is not gonna solve this. I've told the students you're not gonna solve this and your students are not gonna solve this. So all of you were gonna die of old age before this is solved. But these folks go around and they convince graduate students that they are a few years away from (solving) this. I think that people are wising up, and it's a very it's a fascinating question: how might life have risen scientifically, it’s a fascinating question. It’s I think fascinating questions drive scientist. Some people want for some deeper meaning, some conspiracy theories, I don't know. I have trouble figuring out my own mind, why I do the things that I do, let alone other people do the things that they do.But who funds this? Forty million Euro, which is probably like $45 million has just been given to a group of people in Europe across several different countries, it's like 30 different researchers, and they're gonna use AI to help them solve this and it’s not going to help them solve this. These things come around; they have 10 years to solve this thing and they're not gonna solve this thing. But people keep throwing money at it; there's a lot of foundations to throw money at this thing because it's a fascinating question. So there's a lot of money being thrown at it.
Q. Since you have started talking about this topic have seen shift in the general community of (chemistry) scientists?
Dr. J.T. I think they are being a lot more careful about what they are saying. These guys aren't going around saying anymore that we're gonna have life in the lab in three years. And in fact, to his credit, professor Cronin said “when I said it's two years away you know, that was wrong” (so) he's confessing; and now he's coming around and he has even said that what's amazing So everybody makes a molecule, they make another molecule, so he keep making all these and where’s it going?Nobody can make a cell because the information always pre-dates and had to come from something external to the cell. So now you have a scientific researcher and science has driven him to the point to say the inherent information has come from outside the cell that's Lee Cronin who has been a big promponent of origin of life and a big proponent in you know, in calling Jim Tour a creationist, but he's seeing the same thing that we're seeing. So I think that people are coming around, and they needed to be called out, and I'll continue to call them out because I have nothing else to do.
Q. Can you talk quickly about someone might say you are just using God of the gaps and can you kind of briefly touch on how maybe they're using time of the gaps?
Dr. J.T. So I've haven’t brought God into this and I've never said that we will never solve this. I’ve said specifically I think that we may solve this, I can't say that we won’t, but it's nowhere close. Maybe in 500 years, I don't know but it's nowhere close. But they use time of the gaps; where they will throw an argument: given sufficient time this will happen. That’s a time of the gaps argument. You have no understanding for that because given sufficient time everything decomposes! I showed you how quickly these molecules decompose: RNA has four hours. So they are the ones that use gap arguments and it's been a big (period of the) “time of the gaps argument.” They say: “Given billions and billions of years this happened” No didn't happen “billions of years” How? You can't just throw that out. So that's the contrast to this argument (given sufficient time everything decomposes). [Therefore] don't use a time of the gap argument. and I've never said that we can't solve this. And I've never injected God. There’s things we can solve some things that we can’t. And the things that we can’t, next year we might solve, but how we really got life? That's a big one.
Q. I’ll try to make this simple. It seems we have people of influence who are approaching this to try to disprove the possibility of creation. And we it seems we used to have leaders and thought circles who had faith and wanted to leave room for it [Creation]. How do we get back to having leaders in academia that actually speak from an acceptance of the possibility of [the] God angle.
Dr. J.T. You know it it it's it's an interesting thing that they're coming around to God without using the word God. For example Lee Cronin has said certain molecular structures that could not have formed randomly, they have a causal history, they have a causal history. So you see them moving closer and closer without stepping that, and I’ve publicly said “Lee you're really you're really an intelligent design proponent now.” I mean when you say causal history you're saying that there's something behind this your intelligent design, and I put a little mock up thing for him standing in front of the arc display at one of these Texas sites or something or another. So I think they're coming around to this. When Lee Cronin says there was information that had to come from outside the cell before you could have “Luca” [the Last Universal Common Ancestor] which is the earliest cell that formed that ended up propagating the life that here. So there somehow backing into this very slowly, and then on top of it, I think the younger generation is more willing to accept certain things, to look at certain things, and to say: look we don't have any we don't have any horse in this race. So for example I can understand why a person like Steve Benner would go around, and it was asked of Steve at a meeting not too long ago we were at a meeting and somebody else I didn't even ask him, said OK; we have all these pieces why don't you just put them together and make a cell. He said well a career is 3 1/2 score, 3 or four score and I'm about 3 1/2 score into this so I'll leave this to the younger folks.” What?You have all the pieces and don’t know how to put them together? So I think that is when somebody has worked for 40 years in a certain area and made a lot of claims, it's hard to back away from it. And I understand that, it's hard to back away. And I understand as the scientist you like to make bold claims; I made my own bold claims. But what happens in an area like origin of life, it's a really really bold claim. I think younger people don't have as much in this fight, so they don't have as much to back away from, so that they're gonna be prone to be more honest about this and to say, we're really not very close to this, we're really long way off. And so I think it's coming, because science has way of being self correcting. People can make claims and then you can begin to check this [the claims], and it begins to correct itself, and so that that's the hope.
Q. If we dismiss Element or we just said “yeah like do everything you can using all the elements of the lab,” is anybody close to making a cell?
Dr. J.T. No! That's why I say: we can give, if I give you all the components of a cell, and we can get them because we take a cell apart. So it’s not like we have to make, we the existing [cell] and separate [them] in your laboratory and that was my challenge to them: that could you do this? Crickets! They don't even go about trying. Some silly people having the past said “well if you have a lipid bilayer of vesicle you put the stuff in it.” No that's putting all the parts of your car, of your car engine inside the car, “It’s a car, it’s my car” No. That doesn’t work. They know they can't do the assembly. When you look at DNA and it's wrapped around histone… it's crazy hard. DNA is 2 meters long and a it’s a thin little string… You know what happens with fishing line? It gets in a knot. How does it keep that from getting in a knot? … and getting all tied up? And it untwines certain things when it has to read that. there's all the molecular machinery… you look at this as a person who builds molecules … [This is] like crazy crazy hard. We’re nowhere close to that. So no, they just don't say anything. They don't say anything because in a modern lab you can't do that, even in a modern lab you can't assemble a cell. And it's not that you can get close… it's nowhere close. What a synthetic cell is, is people have taken living cells… Craig [Venture? Venitor?] did this: take a living cell and what you can do is, you can take the genome out of it, so you take the DNA out, and over here you you take DNA from another cell, or you synthesize DNA in a DNA synthesizer, in your lab, and put it back in [the cell] and that will run the cell. The cell was already there it was already running but you put in the new… it’s an analogous to taking the computer control chip in your car and taking it out, and then copying, going to Intel and copying that chip, that design chip and then taking that and putting that back in the car. I mean no reason amazed that car is gonna run. And that's what they called us synthetic cell… but you already had the cell she put in a new genome. But the construction of all the parts is nowhere close.
Q. They have spent like years of studying in this field, and you also mentioned that like they have made like an a nano-meter progress, and they have research and they publish some papers [and are] peer reviewed… have they make anything scientifically valid and also worth mentioning?
Dr. J.T. I think they’ve done things that are certainly worth mentioning and scientifically interesting things. The vast majority of what they've done are not prebiotically relevant. they've started with things that weren't prebiotic and they bring it up to one little point and they mix it all together and they say but whatever is in there may have been found on earlier so it might have a tiny little bit of prebiotic relevance at one particular step. But everything surrounding it wasn't prebiotically relevant. As a scientist I find it interesting. But as a scientist I'm all for blowing all sorts of money on scientifically interesting things Because you learn a lot of other things. So I don't wanna I don't wanna shoot down what they're doing but I think they need to pull back… and even pulling back from the claims what will happen is people will have a much more realistic view and they're going in and they’ll try to solve problems. When you have professors out there telling you that this thing is essentially solved… like Steve Benner… [that] most of or many of the big paradoxes in the origin of life have been solved, why do you wanna go into the area? If it’s solved, if these guys have solved it? It’s better say what the truth is. [That] Like almost everything hasn't been solved. Come on in this field and then you'll get new life and new ideas radically new ideas to try to solve these things because the old ideas just aren't working. And people will say well you shouldn't shoot down with they're doing until you have a solution yourself. That's not the way science is done. You check mechanisms and if a mechanism is wrong you point out that the mechanism is wrong even though you don't have the right mechanistic answer yourself. You just point out which wrong so that somebody else say OK here's a route. So yeah that's what I'm doing I'm just pointing this out. My job is very easy yeah. I mean Jack [Salstead?] on of the the gentleman on the list, that Nobel prize winner said, Jim if you would just join us we'll figure this thing out. I said Jack you think a lot more of me that I think of myself. I don't think we can get this thing figured out. So anyways that's it, thank you for coming tonight, thank you for attention. God bless you.
