James Tour is a giant in the field of organic chemistry.
Image and caption from Proslogion article.
Posted on 08/19/2016 8:52:42 AM PDT by fishtank
A few days ago, a reader asked me to review an article by Dr. James Tour, as well as a video of a talk that he gave. I was initially hesitant to do so, because Dr. Tour is a giant in the field of organic chemistry. For example, he is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry at Rice University. For those who aren’t familiar with the academic structure of universities, only the most elite professors are appointed to a position that is named in honor of someone else. This is called an “endowed professorship,” and anyone who holds such a position is in the upper echelon of academia. He has won several awards for his outstanding research accomplishments, including being named by Thomson Reuters as one of the top ten chemists in the world in 2009. Not only is his research outstanding, but he is also an excellent teacher, having earned the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University in both 2007 and 2012. What could I possibly add to the words of someone so knowledgeable and distinguished?...
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.drwile.com ...
James Tour is a giant in the field of organic chemistry.
Image and caption from Proslogion article.
Clear enough for me.
Anybody with much of a background in chemistry or physics is aware that atoms are basically an erector set that can be used to create anything, including living creatures.
In other words, the blueprint for life is built into the very structure of matter.
How did that happen? That’s the real question.
All we know is that God didn’t do it because God has moral requirements on man. Therefore there is no god, it happened by chance and 99.99% of scientists believe life occurred by random chance.
One of my doctoral students did a sabbatical with him. Interesting guy. Rice is the birthplace of ‘buckyballs’ and he is part of a big presence there in nanotechnology. As built molecules whose structures look like little caricatures. Turned it into a educational web site called the Nanokids
http://cohesion.rice.edu/naturalsciences/nanokids/
” How did that happen? That’s the real question.”
Probably the same way cars and computers and houses came to be?
A designer and builder?
A great book on this subject that I can’t recommend highly enough is “Signature in the Cell” by Stephen Meyer.
A creationist says the erector set is NOT self-organizing.
In fact, he/she will notice that the erector set needed:
(1) knowledge of alloys,
(2) strength of materials info,
(3) dimensional tolerancing of parts,
(4) compatible design for distances to interconnect components,
(5) understanding of simple machines (threaded screws, pulleys, etc).
In short, I see the need for a Designer.
Bumpitybumpforlater
There are two ways to try to convince someone of something.
1) You can beat them over the head with your beliefs and tell them they’re stupid if they don’t agree with you
2) You can present them with a set of facts and trust that they have enough intelligence to connect the dots. If they don’t, you’re wasting your breath with either tactic.
You prefer #1. I prefer #2.
Here’s a good review on information theory, posted here on FR:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=werner+gitt+site:www.freerepublic.com+
In the evangelical world, there is a tendency to pat oneself on the back for a surfeit of cleverness, when frequently it’s patience rather than cleverness that the good Lord is asking for the most of.
The result of doing it our way is to only convert the choir, so to speak. It’s a hard lesson to learn. I might say a million words in my life, and maybe 50 of them will really have made differences in eternity.
Uhh...Carl Sagan said early earth had all the ingredients for starting life. On “Cosmos” he mixed a bunch of organic materials into green goop in a flask, and pronounced it building blocks for pre-life. He looked at it with a gleam in his eye as if he had really done something. Taught me all I needed to know about the hubris of science.
Just to set the record straight, I’m a young earth creationist.
Also for the record, PhD Mech Eng, Texas A&M.
“Dr. James Tour Tells Us How Little We Know About the Origin of Life”
That’s a hallmark of an educated man: being able to say that although he may know a lot about little, there’s also a lot that he knows very little about.
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/10/30/the-3-characteristics-of-an-educated-man/
It already happened. The blueprint for life is built into the mathematics of the tiniest subatomic particle.
Wow, thank you so much for posting this. A Giant. GIANT.
My genius teenage son will benefit immensely from hearing this lecture. It will instill in him both a sense of wonder at the glories of nature and a sense of scepticism with regard to ignorant claims about life arising from the primordial soup.
The very stones will cry out.
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