The Tour vs Farina Debate Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome back to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. We are going to pick up right where we left off on the Tour-Farina debate^[1] that everyone’s been talking about. Let’s go to the studio with Dr. Craig.

DR. CRAIG: Farina admittedly looks as though he's simply committing the fallacies of argument ad hominem and the genetic fallacy, but I don't think that he is technically as I think about it. He does not say that Tour’s views are false because he's a pathological liar. Rather, he claims that the evidence refutes Tour's view and therefore he is a liar. And similarly he doesn't say that Tour's views are false because he reached them for religious reasons. Rather he claims that Tour's religious beliefs warp his scientific views. So I don't think that he's committing these logical fallacies despite appearances. The question then becomes, all right then, if that's what he's come to debate, what evidence does Farina present for these very serious allegations?

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's a video reel of Farina's evidence. Let me explain what you'll hear. Farina says that Tour is lying about primordial soup being taught in textbooks, about there only being a few research groups in origin of life, and he mentions an experiment using water and hydrogen peroxide. And then the moderator, Dr. Guida, challenges Farina on what is meant by "functional." So let's go to that clip now.

MR. FARINA: Let's list a few and get some answers. So, first the "Textbook" thing—"Primordial soup model is lightning and then a slithering creature crawls out, and that's what all these college level textbooks say." Again, no they don't. He made that up. Like a liar. Next, "This boutique field of a dozen researchers" thing. Of the millions of papers that comprise this field, I went through a handful of the ones I've read and made this list. There are thousands more. Pretty dumb lie, huh? . . . Take for example this study by Stephen Benner, a researcher James regularly slanders. Here, Benner was showing nucleotide polymerization over basaltic glass to form RNA. James notes that Benner washes the glass thoroughly with hydrogen peroxide, and ultra pure water. And then throws his hands in the air about how this makes the study not prebiotically relevant, because he is washing away trace magnesium that would impede nucleotide polymerization on the early Earth. In his profound ignorance James neglects to realize that basaltic rock is specifically rich in magnesium. Information that anyone who had taken Geology 101 would know. Furthermore, he wonders where oh where could one find hydrogen peroxide and ultra pure water on the early Earth, as though its use makes the study not prebiotically relevant. In reality these are used to destroy biological material like bacteria that would contaminate the results. So, in fact the washes are done specifically to make the experiment prebiotically relevant.

DR. TOUR: 1 out of 3—Jack Szostak would nev– How much does he have there? How much does he have? Tell me. You read the paper.

MR. FARINA: It says "functional RNAs", James. That means that they do things.

DR. TOUR: I haven't seen that paper. You're bringing in other papers, which we agreed you would not do. Now tell me, how much is there? Because I don’t know. I’ve not read that paper.

MR. FARINA: James, you're presenting yourself as an expert in this field.

DR. TOUR: You read it. Tell me. How much 2',5' does he have?

MR. FARINA: I don't remember every single detail of the paper.

DR. TOUR: All right. There we go. You don't remember because you don't want to remember. You read the paper. You brought that in, and we were not supposed to introduce any papers that had not been in our videos. That—you agreed to.

DR. TOUR: You can't have 1 out of every 3 be a wrong linkage. You would never code for a peptide with that. It's over.

MR. FARINA: How do you know? It says "Functional RNAs."

DR. TOUR: Because it's a trace. Because it doesn’t work.

MR. FARINA: You have no idea what RNAs do. Do you understand that RNAs have catalytic function?

DR. WAYNA GUIDA: So just from a chemical point of view, though, we would need to know what "Functional RNA" meant.

MR. FARINA: Having catalytic properties.

DR. WAYNA GUIDA: Because RNA has many functions. . . . To have functional RNA, it has to do at least three things. It has to serve as messenger RNA, ribosomal RNA, and . . .

MR. FARINA: Uh, no. Messenger RNA. You're talking about features of modern cells. We're talking about prebiotic nucleic acids.

DR. WAYNA GUIDA: But ultimately it has to do that. So what function, is my question, did he show that it performed? It has to at least perform one of the three. Ultimately, it's going to have to perform all three.

MR. FARINA: Replication? I'm not sure exactly in the context of the paper.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. There's a lot to respond to there.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. To begin with, there is an enormous difference between telling a lie and simply saying something false. I think that in our culture today we have become far too prone to calling people liars. This is uncivil and it's highly unprofessional. I cannot imagine someone like Alvin Plantinga at a professional meeting calling his philosophical commentators “liars” or accusing them of lying. Similarly, there was recently a review of my book In Quest of the Historical Adam that I thought was seriously misrepresentative of what my views actually were. I wrote to the editor of the journal to correct this review. Now, I didn't accuse the reviewers of lying or being liars. What I said was that the reviewers misunderstood and therefore misrepresented my views in the book. But you don't accuse people of being liars. Not every falsehood is a lie. To be lying, the person needs to be trying to deceive others by saying something that he himself knows to be false. So when you look at Farina's example, I don't think these are lies. For example, the textbook about the prebiotic soup. Here it concerns a cartoon that appeared in one of them of lightning striking a pond and a green creature slithering out of the pond. I didn't have any trouble myself with this cartoon because I took it simply to symbolize the idea that life originated in the seas and then migrated onto the land. But James Tour feared that students and lay people take cartoons like that literally and are therefore misled. Indeed, he has shared statistics indicating that something like 40% of Americans believe that scientists have been able to create life forms like frogs in the laboratory, which is just astonishing ignorance. So I think what Tour did here is simply an over-generalization. Certainly not all of the textbooks display that cartoon, but all of the textbooks do teach the primordial soup model. It's not a lie. If anything he's guilty of over-generalizing as when, for example, you say, “Everybody is coming to the party.” It's not literally true. It's an over-generalization. Similarly, when he talks about there being a few dozen research groups, that is not a lie. That's at most an exaggeration. I think the truth is that origin of life research is a relatively narrow discipline compared to other fields of chemistry. So at most Tour is exaggerating when he says it's pursued by a few dozen different research groups. In the debate he later clarifies this to say he's talking about the groups that are following Jack Szostak’s method. What about the experiment with the washing with water and hydrogen peroxide? This has to do with the problem of investigator interference which is a major problem in origin of life research. To what degree is the investigator allowed to interfere in the prebiotic chemistry without making it unrealistic and therefore incapable of happening on the prebiotic Earth? In the example, if Farina is right it would be a mistake on Tour's part to protest washing the sample with water and hydrogen peroxide because that was merely intended to make the sample sterile and free of any bacteria which would not have existed on a prebiotic Earth. Now, I don't know if Farina is right about that, but in any case even if Tour is just simply mistaken, it's not a lie. He could have chosen abundant examples to illustrate illicit investigator interference in order to make his point. None of these I think qualifies as a lie much less a brazen lie. With respect to the last one about the production of functional RNA in the laboratory, I think what this one really reveals is how little understanding Dave Farina has of the papers he cites. He just reads the titles and probably the abstracts, whereas Tour actually analyzes the paper. He goes through the chemistry and shows why in fact the synthesis doesn't work as claimed. I think Guida really embarrasses Farina by asking that question, “What function of RNA is the title referring to?” and Farina couldn't answer the question. He didn't know. When Guida later said in an email, “I hope I didn't overstep my bounds by asking Dave which RNA function he was referring to. He sidestepped my question and seemed ignorant of the fact that the right answer is ribosomal. This really brought home the message to me that his understanding of chemistry and biochemistry is superficial.” So why didn't Dave know the answer to the question as to which function of RNA the paper was talking about? Well, simply because he read the title or the abstract of the article and it says that the RNA is functional, and that seemed to be the extent of the depth of his knowledge.

KEVIN HARRIS: If I could just re-emphasize what you said. Calling someone a liar is a serious allegation. It is really a personal attack. I know that we're supposed to, as believers in Christ, we're to turn the other cheek when it comes to these personal attacks in one-on-one relationships. Dr. Tour, I think, did for the most part. I don't know where this easily calling someone a liar in our culture – I don't know where that came from either. But when I grew up and I know when you grew up, those were fighting words. That's a serious allegation.

DR. CRAIG: And to call him a pathological liar is to say the man is mentally ill. Tour was right when he said later on, “You're trying to psychoanalyze me.” That's exactly what Farina was doing, and he's less competent to do that than he is to address the chemistry.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this next clip, Farina presents another accusation against Dr. Tour. It's one with which we are all familiar. Let's check it out.

MR. FARINA: James doesn't know how life began, so there is a gap in his knowledge. But he believes that God created life because of religious Scripture so that's the god of the gaps. You can cry about it all you want. That's what you believe. . . . James has admitted publicly that he's a creationist. He believes that God created life due to religious Scripture, which to him takes priority over scientific evidence. From his website, faith and belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist. Anyone who thinks this is not relevant to the discussion is delusional, as James is openly admitting that there's no science that could ever be done that will convince him that life was not directly created by God. He is ideologically bound to denying abiogenesis.

KEVIN HARRIS: God of the gaps? We are all familiar with that one.

DR. CRAIG: Farina doesn’t understand what god of the gaps reasoning is. God of the gaps reasoning is inferring God's existence in order to plug up a gap in our scientific knowledge. But believing in God on the basis of religious Scripture is not god of the gaps reasoning. People have believed in God on the basis of Scripture for centuries before they were even aware that a gap existed. So if Tour’s belief in God is based, as he says, on religious Scripture (not on making an inference from a gap in our scientific knowledge), this is not god of the gaps reasoning. Farina just doesn't understand it.

KEVIN HARRIS: The second slide is from Dr. Tour's website. It's another one. There's a lot of detail there, and the slide just went past quickly. But if we could look at that, when you read that you see that Dr. Tour is just saying it's perfectly OK if we figure how some of this works and how it came together and we could even recreate it because it's just discovering how God happened to have done it. It doesn't add or take away from theism in and of itself.

DR. CRAIG: Right.

KEVIN HARRIS: Comment on that.

DR. CRAIG: What we have here is Dave Farina taking Jim Tour out of context. He cites him out of context. Do we have the full quotation on a slide to show? Here is the full quotation. Tour says,

I would say that fundamentally I am a progressive creationist, meaning that God didn't just set the whole thing off and then it ran by itself. That there were specific acts of creation where he set this thing in motion. He called the molecules together - how ever he does that - through self-assembly or… and gets it into this this very very stable high energy state as we learned about this morning and so I don’t know the details - I know what the Scriptures say that everything has been created by Him - everything - and the details of this I don’t know. This is why he gives us the ability to investigate and to look.

That is the exact opposite of god of the gaps reasoning! What he says there is that God may have caused the molecules to self-assemble and become a living thing. So there's no gap to be filled. Farina is quoting him out of context to make him sound like he believes in god of the gaps where, in fact, Tour is willing to admit that there is a purely unbroken naturalistic account of the origin of life that we simply haven't discovered yet. This just shows how misrepresentative Farina is of his opponent's views. By way of summary of the logos of the debate, James Tour has laid out a very good case for a mainstream position with respect to origin of life research. And Dave Farina, who came to debate a different topic, I think has completely failed to show either that Tour is a pathological liar or that his religious views warp his scientific studies.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. Let's shift now to the ethos exhibited in the debate, starting with Dr. Tour. Here's Dr. Tour's reactions and interactions. Let's go to that one.

DR. TOUR: Thank you. Before we get started I want to do something. I've got a gift for Mr. Farina. Now, I was thinking what could I get such an amazing person. And I got you something that I am sure you do not have. This is– This is something called laser-induced graphene. It was a process we developed in 2013, where a laser can hit any surface that's made out of carbon. And in this case, it's paper. And the laser can write a pattern. So, what you're going to look at is paper that has been converted into carbon—the carbohydrates have been converted into graphene—through the laser action, and so here's what we've got for you.

QUESTION: Hi. My question is for both Dr. Tour and Mr. Farina. It's simply put: What is one thing that they admire about each other's scientific career?

DR. TOUR: OK. Let me start. Let me start. This man has said multiple times that I've called him stupid. I have never called him stupid because I don't think he's stupid. I have said he's clueless on this topic. I have said he cannot read the scientific literature. That doesn't mean stupid. This man has become a musician and then he went out, and in 2015, he started an educational site, which is huge. Stupid people can't do that. I admire him. This is– this is an educational site. And I have never called him stupid because he's not stupid. He's not stupid. So I admire him for his educational site, and he—from what I understand—I'm not a musician—from what I understand with people who said he's an excellent musician—I admire him for that as well. His wife is here. He's a father. He has two children. I admire that. That a man can have a wife and two children and stay married, and do these things these days, that is wonderful. That is wonderful. I admire that.

DR. WAYNA GUIDA: Both individuals have agreed to stay on if you want to come up and ask further questions if you haven't had enough.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, it looks like Dr. Tour offered several olive branches to Farina.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. That portrait was just a remarkable gift. Tour shows himself to be a gracious gentleman throughout this debate. He never stoops to personal attacks and does not reciprocate in kind to Farina's insults. He expresses admiration for him and even after this acrimonious debate he goes over to shake his hand. So I think that when it comes to the ethos (or personal character) of the speaker, Tour's character really does shine brightly.

KEVIN HARRIS: I just want to say real quick before I forget, too, some guy laughed like a hyena very distractingly throughout the debate, including when Dr. Tour presented Dave with the portrait. You hear him just laugh this cackling laugh. That guy should have been thrown out. Dr. Guida did his best to moderate this debate but, again, we can talk some more about the format.

DR. CRAIG: There are in these university audiences certain types of people who are just cretans, and they have come to see blood on the floor. They think a good debate is insults and mudslinging and the winner is the one who has the best zinger. It's really sad that there are people like that in these audiences, and I think the person you're mentioning is one such.

KEVIN HARRIS: Now let's hear Professor Farina's answer to the same question, “What do you admire about your opponent?” Let's go to that clip.

MR. FARINA: I admire the tenacity with which you stick to a script of lies. It's actually quite impressive. "I never said Dave was stupid! I just said his content is a manure dump! I just said everything he says is wrong! I said he's 'clueless'! I said he doesn't know chemistry!" Although again, who's used my content to pass his class? Anybody here? That's what I thought, James! "He doesn't know chemistry", yet I'm helping your students. Isn't that interesting?

DR. TOUR: Thank you. Thank you.

KEVIN HARRIS: How would you contrast their responses?

DR. CRAIG: Here, when asked to say something he admires about Tour's scientific ability, Farina continues to insult. He admires his tenacity in lying, he says. And even after being insulted by Farina, Tour says, “Thank you. Thank you for helping my students.” Farina's incivility, his rudeness, his unprofessionalism is truly shameful. Even if he has not technically committed logical fallacies of argument ad hominem or the genetic fallacy, he has certainly egregiously violated the rules of etiquette for debate, and therefore I think the ethos of these two speakers stands in very sharp contrast.

KEVIN HARRIS: The third thing that you wanted to discuss was the element of pathos. Explain to us what that means.

DR. CRAIG: The pathos of a speaking event is the personal connection that the speaker has with his audience. Does he connect emotionally with the audience? Does he relate to them well? That is a strategic part of any speaking situation.

KEVIN HARRIS: There were some fiery moments in the debate. Let's look at some of those, beginning with Dr. Tour.

DR. TOUR: I'm not done. I'm not done. I'm not done. The thermodynamic method and the kinetic method . . . You don't have enzymes. Because you couldn't make them here. You couldn't make them there. No enzymes! You're lost. Mr. Farina! Here! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! You don’t do it. . . . that is on a surface; that is not in water. It's not doing any reaction on that mineral. As soon as it gets in water, boom! Eight hours. Eight hours. Eight hours in water. That's it. . . .

QUESTION: I was just wondering. What's your opinion on Tour constantly yelling over you, not letting you speak and just screaming the entire time. You could not say anything.

QUESTION: Does this mean that you treat all of your graduate student mentees in the same manner as Mr. Farina?

DR. TOUR: Zero have been given for origin of life! Zero! All this wonderful chemistry! Zero! 420. Zero. None have been given. You don't want me to say “clueless?” I won’t say “clueless.” How about I just agree with Cronin? "Scam!"

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, Dr. Tour is certainly passionate.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. I think in this debate Tour really loses his composure and as a result I think it spoils his connection with the audience. I could sense as the debate progressed that the good will that he initially cultivated at the beginning with his gift to Dave Farina and then his very fine constructive speech was just eroded in the course of the debate through his yelling at Dave Farina, shouting at him and talking over him and interrupting him constantly. I thought those two student questions were especially painful when the one student asked Farina, “How do you feel when Dr. Tour is constantly talking over you?” and then the other student asked, “Do you really treat your graduate students in the same way that you treat Farina here tonight?” That was painful to hear. So I think this is the element of the debate that Tour was weakest on – establishing and maintaining his connection with his audience.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's take a look at Farina's demeanor. Check out this clip.

MR. FARINA: Hey, everyone. Thanks to Rice University for having us here tonight. We are here because of James Tour. James is a chemist, and also an apologist, who lies about Origin of Life research on the Internet. It's quite the double life. . . . I don't care what any of you guys are saying. None of you– None of you have any capacity to read this literature! And you're just blindly believing James. You have no idea what he's talking about. . . . As though you people have any f*****g clue what any of us are talking about! "Ohh! I know about RNA!" No, you don't! You have no clue what either of us are saying! Deal with it! . . . That's why I brought a bunch of research James pretends isn't real, and you're all pretending to understand right now.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. What do you think about his pathos?

DR. CRAIG: Well, Farina's demeanor is so much more pleasant and amiable than James Tour, even though he's so rude and uncivil. He's smiling. He's relaxed. He remains calm throughout. He never loses his cool, but then he blows it by turning on the audience and beginning to attack them – which is not very smart if you want to develop your relationship with those that you want to persuade. And it's especially awkward, I think, when you reflect that many of the students in that audience were probably chemistry students themselves who did have a good deal of understanding of the terms of the debate. So while Farina, I think, does have a pleasant and amiable demeanor, he also exhibits a terrible deficiency in his pathos in turning upon his audience and attacking and even swearing at them. So the bottom line for me of this whole debate as I analyze it is that Tour has it all over Farina concerning both the logos and the ethos aspects of the debate, but I think that Tour loses the pathos. And this is unfortunate because the pathos is usually the most significant factor in an audience debate. You just can't lose your connection with your audience.

KEVIN HARRIS: I'm curious. How have you avoided these kinds of contentious wild exchanges in your debating career?

DR. CRAIG: Well, you've got to keep your emotions in check no matter how the other person is attacking you or how badly things seem to be going. You just can't let your emotions get the best of you. You need to smile frequently. You need to show the audience that you're having a good time, that you're enjoying the debate no matter how badly you're being treated or attacked. It's just really important to project that calm confidence through a smile and a winsome manner.

KEVIN HARRIS: I told several people, and I told you as well, that it made me really appreciate that you've always insisted on a proper format for a debate and that there are just certain people and situations despite all these challenges and things like that that you just won't schedule, that you won't do. It really made me appreciate that you have been a stickler for the format of the debate.

DR. CRAIG: Thanks, Kevin.

KEVIN HARRIS: I know that it might be difficult to wrap up today, but please give us what you think are some of the main takeaways from this event and the topic.

DR. CRAIG: I think it shows that you need to come well-prepared to the debate. You need to anticipate your opponent's objections so that you have answers prepared in advance. But then, above all, you've got to maintain your connection with the audience. Those would be the main takeaways, I think, from this debate.

KEVIN HARRIS: Thank you so much for being here for Reasonable Faith today. Just a quick reminder. We really do appreciate your support – your prayer support, your financial support – as we continue the work of Reasonable Faith all over the world. Go to ReasonableFaith.org. We’ll see you next time.^[2]