My wife and I saw on YouTube the debate with Dr. James Tour and Dave Farina that was held at Rice University on May 19th. The subject of the debate: Are We Clueless about the Origin of Life? Dr. Tour says we are clueless and Dave Farina claims science is making great progress in this area.

Dr.Tour was gracious toward Mr. Farina and gave him a gift of a picture of his face made with laser-induced graphene, something absolutely unique! Farina was an invited guest at Dr. Tour’s university, and in spite of Dr. Tour’s kindness, Farina insulted and mocked him throughout the entire debate, used childish name calling, and even accused him of lying! Dave Farina made my wife so upset she didn’t want to hear him anymore. You can watch the entire debate on YouTube posted at the end of this article if you like. Dr. Tour of course got emotional and raised his voice at him. I probably would have too. I think Dr. Tour should have stood more on his credentials and accomplishments.

James Mitchell Tour (born 1959) is an American chemist and nanotechnologist. He is a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, and Professor of Computer Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Tour is a top researcher in his field, having an h-index of 165 with total citations index over 125,000 and was listed as an ISI highly cited researcher. (Source: Wikipedia)

Dave Farina is not even listed in Wikipedia. His claim to fame is only his following on YouTube.

Sunday morning, May 21st, I found Dave Farina on Instagram and wrote him. To my surprise and his credit, he responded immediately! You can see from this conversation the difference in our worldviews and his reactive response to me telling him the facts.

My Conversation with Dave Farina

He accused me of not trying to answer his question but he made no attempt to answer my question about his accomplishments in science.

Let’s count how many times Dave Farina resorted to name calling in this short conversation. He called me a

1. moron
2. pathetic waste of human life
3. loser
4. dumb

and said I am

5. brainwashed
6. stupid

The study of psychology teaches us that when someone resorts to name calling, it usually speaks to feelings of inferiority and a feeling of inadequacy of the person doing the name calling. People stoop to the process of name calling when they feel lesser and need to make themselves feel more powerful. (Quoted from Name Calling and What It Implies)

We can tell a whole lot about a person just from their words, attitudes and reactions. Jesus said in Matthew 12:34  “…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Dave Farina is a poor lost sinner who doesn’t know it. May the Lord Jesus have mercy on him and open his eyes to the truth.

Dr. James Tour vs Dave Farina | Are we clueless about the origin of life?

I found several excellent commentaries about the James Tour – Dave Farina debate on evolutionnews.org which is apparently a Christian website exposing Darwin’s evolution as pseudoscience. Here are some quotes from the author, Casey Luskin.

As I noted in a previous post, over the course of the origin of life (OOL) debate between James Tour and Dave Farina, things got technical and things got ugly. If you want to judge who had the better argument, the best place to start is to examine the opening statements. These statements reflect what the two participants carefully planned to say to the world when they were in the comfort of their offices, thinking about the best arguments they could make. These statements reflect what the participants wanted to say before the heat of emotion started to enter into the evening. Their opening statements thus speak volumes about their core arguments, and what evidence they had to back their positions. 

It’s simple: James Tour focused on science, Dave Farina focused on character assassination. It’s the first of three noteworthy rhetorical indicators I’m covering which help reveal who won the debate:

1. Tour focused on science, Farina focused on character assassination.
2. Tour posed reasonable scientific challenges which Farina refused to answer
3. Farina relied heavily upon playground tactics, appeals to authority, and citation bluffing.

We’re talking about the first indicator here — so let’s dig into the specifics.

Tour’s Opening Statement

Tour commenced the debate by giving Farina a gift — a laser-induced graphene-based printout of Professor Dave that looked flattering and was seemingly given as a genuine gesture of kindness. That’s a nice present! Tour’s opening statement then proceeded to focus 100 percent on science and laid out five areas where origin-of-life models fail to work under realistic prebiotic conditions:

1. The origin of polypeptides (i.e., proteins and enzymes)
2. The origin of polynucleotides (i.e., RNA)
3. The origin of polysaccharides (i.e., carbohydrates)
4. The origin of specified information in the above polymers
5. The assembly of the above components into an integrated functional living system — a cell. 

After laying out these five challenges, Tour provided citations from leading researchers acknowledging severe deficiencies in origin-of-life models. For example, he quoted James Shapiro at the University of Chicago saying that “certain questions like the origins of the first living cells currently have no credible scientific answers.” He quoted Richard Dawkins who admitted, “We know little more than Darwin did about how it [life and its evolution] got started in the first place.” Finally Tour quoted Lee Cronin who said, “Origin of life research is a scam” because “no one is really trying to actually answer the question or think it can be done.”

(Cronin later attempted damage control, saying these comments were made “tongue in cheek” but his words supported the original interpretation: Cronin admitted that origin-of-life researchers should not believe that making various types of molecules, e.g., RNA, in the lab will “unlock the origin of life.” He charged that researchers should be trying to “make a cell from scratch” and show that they can make “contingent information embodied outside the genome in the cell” — which Cronin admitted they have not yet done.)

Tour closed his opening comments by saying to Farina: “I’m looking forward to seeing the data with chemical specificity. That’s what I’m asking of you, so I’m telling you up front.”

Thus, before even getting into the heart of the debate, Tour said what he wanted to say in his opening statement and it was 100 percent focused on the data and substance. 

Farina’s Opening Statement

Next, Dave Farina gave his opening statement. It was highly focused on attacking Jim Tour’s character – and dealt very little with science. Here are Farina’s opening words, which framed his argument for the whole debate: 

We’re here because of James Tour. James, a chemist and also an apologist who lies about origin-of-life research on the Internet.

Farina went on to attack Tour for his “fragile, archaic faith,” because he has (supposedly) “admitted that he is a creationist” and “believes in biblical creationism” and believes that “blind faith will always beat scientific research.” (None of this is true of Tour as far as I know.) From there he just piled venomous attack upon venom attack and insult upon insult — so many that I could barely keep up trying to write them down. To recount a few:

• Tour is “totally dogmatic.”
• Tour “regularly lies”
• Tour is “approaching the field not as a scientist but as a preacher.”
• Tour “pretends he’s a scientist”
• Farina attacked religious people who find Tour’s arguments persuasive, saying Tour provides “embarrassing commentary” for “science-illiterate Christians who share his bias and delusions.”

(Please read the rest of the article on:https://evolutionnews.org/2023/05/james-tour-focused-on-science-dave-farina-on-character-assassination-so-who-wins/ )

Dave Farina is a total narcissist! He doesn’t have anywhere near the academic credentials of the people he criticizes. James Tour does real science and Farina only talks about it.

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