Debate Teacher Reacts: James Tour vs. Dave Farina

Unaware of this, he said it in the email! You're not showing the whole email! You're only showing the one!

Where is the moderator? Can somebody go find him? First, I can't resist confronting James about some of these lies he's been telling, so let's list a few and get some answers.

Nope! Let's ask a question and stop making speeches during a segment of debate that really should only require questions, guys!

Even if you have the wrong enantiomer, it doesn't work. Even Donna Blackmon has said that in the papers... You have no clue what

Donna Blackmon... It's hard not to see, Farina. ...as somebody whose mouth is writing checks that his papers can't cash.

And it's just... Show us! Right here! I just showed you! Do it! Do it! Come on, do it!

Do it! Just do it! Which of you in my audience told me to react to this?

How could you do this to me? The audience, as well as myself, are gonna need therapy after this debate.

Well, well, well, it is Tuesday. It's time to party. I'm your excellent host, Nate Sala. And welcome to Wise Disciple, where we're helping you become the effective

Christian that you were meant to be. As a lot of you know by now, before I jumped into ministry, I was a debate teacher.

And so I sometimes look at debates and react to them purely as a judge would.

And I break down who's doing a better job and all of that. Well, today, y 'all have spoken and you told me that you want me to react to James Tuer versus Dave Farina on the topic,

Are We Clueless About the Origin of Life? This debate took place a few weeks ago in Houston, Texas, at Rice University, where Dr.

Tuer is a professor of chemistry. And by the way, Rice is a lovely university.

So I don't know if you knew this, but, you know, I currently live in Las Vegas, but I used to live in Dallas and have made it to Houston.

And it's a very lovely old Greek -style university campus.

If you ever get a chance to see it, it really does look amazing. Humidity notwithstanding. Well, as always,

I think cross -examination is where it's at. So skipping ahead past the opening statements, which, by the way,

I have already seen, and I encourage you to watch the opening statements yourself. If you have not already done that,

I will leave a link in the description there. So let's just jump into the discussion segment. By the way, if you haven't already, check out the

Wise Disciple store, where you can get some very cool things, including this Ethos Pathos Logos mug.

That's out of... there we go. Ethos Pathos Logos mug, where if you've heard me talk about the principles of good rhetoric from Aristotle and how they apply to good debate, then

I think you can appreciate this wonderful coffee mug. And you can rep Wise Disciple there and let other people know about this ministry.

And I really appreciate those of you that have already done that. We now turn to Dr. Tour, who will ask a question.

One of the things that we have to make in order to have life are polypeptides, where we take amino acids, and these amino acids have to couple.

You know what would be great is if there is this elaborate sort of formula written on the board there, and Matt Damon from Good Will Hunting just like kind of walks out from the crowd and goes up and finishes the equation.

That would be... just me? Is that... This dipeptide is one of thousands and thousands and thousands that would have to form.

If you were going to make a polypeptide, you'd need at least 100 of these for a very small polypeptide.

Mr. Farina, show me the prebiotic chemistry that would do this coupling.

Be my guest. Okay. Don't know what I'm looking at on the blackboard, but I understand that polypeptides are an essential component of life.

So what does the chemical step -by -step process look like that gives us polypeptides in the first place?

Great question. Let's see how Farina responds. Yeah, I don't need the board. So this was my second prompt.

So I guess we'll circle back to this. But yeah, you keep going, show me the references in your content.

So you're missing a mountain of research, literally a mountain of research that demonstrates this.

So here's one. Condensation of amino acids to form peptides in aqueous solution. So we've got sulfur 4, oxidative model.

Carbonyl sulfide mediated prebiotic formation of peptides. There's another one. That does not do it.

And the two you showed do not do it. This is called disparaging. D, K. They do not do it with these.

Okay. So what is Lehman's a fraud? Gadiri's a fraud? Are you calling them fraud? They published a paper. Carbonyl sulfide mediated prebiotic formation of peptides.

So if you're saying they didn't do that. Show me the example in there. I studied this. I looked over every paper you put up.

Have never studied anything in this area. Are you kidding me? All you do is go show me the papers. And then I show you papers here.

Let's see if I can find pretty contentious debate so far. Clearly Farina has no respect for tour.

But just so we're keeping track tour asked for Farina to provide. The step -by -step process to explain the formation of polypeptides.

And Farina so far has given the title of two papers. But not yet answered the question. Okay. But let's see if he does that one.

Exactly. Yeah. Show me the one exactly that does this in a prebiotic fashion. Show me. It's not there.

I'm asking you to come up and show me the chemistry. I don't need to write on the board. I brought actual papers.

This is actual research. Show me the show in that paper. This example. This is called. Actually, because tour has been allowed to write this all out on the blackboard.

Which is very dramatic. And again, it just kind of reminds me of goodwill hunting for some reason. Farina probably should go to the board now and write something down.

Or else he won't be able to match the rhetorical power of tour using the blackboard in that way.

This is the one you wanted. Aspartic acid. James. This is called lysine. James, look. This is the good dairy paper.

Here's the scheme. You want to go through that? But aqueous, aqueous room temperature.

You get oligopeptides. Okay. And it jumps to 80 % yield with prebiotic oxidizing agents. But not with this.

Because what happens is this would participate. This. Oh, you want to do the side chain thing.

Okay. Well, we've got research for that too. Of course. I'm speaking to the side chain. This is not. That's not prebiotically relevant.

But that has nothing to do with prebiotic. Okay. How about this one? That sulfur compound was made separately in dichloromethane using

HOBT, which is a coupling agent designed by human beings for solid phase synthesis.

That's how they. Are you saying sulfur is not available prebiotically? It doesn't matter what solid they use. No HOBT was the compound that.

I remember one time I wandered, uh, this was in high school in the cafeteria. I wandered over to the wrong table and sat down with a bunch of Dungeons and Dragons players and tried to keep up with the language and terminology of, you know, these, these kinds of people.

I feel the same way now, like not to downplay at all the expertise on the stage there, because it's way, way more significant than Dungeons and Dragons.

But I mean, it's like, man, from my perspective, I'm sure there's a few people out there in the

YouTube land or world that can actually keep up with every single thing that is said.

The rest of us are, we're, we're trying to learn Dungeons and Dragons terminology here. SH compound that you just showed was made in a separate reaction.

That was in a separate reaction and he describes that. Okay. I can show you in the paper.

Well, so, but you know, it sounds like Tuerr's issue with Farina is that Farina is not answering the question because the paper that he's trying to cite does not engage with the specific chemical formula necessary for life that Tuerr has written on the board.

Farina's paper, which I suppose contains its own formula, smuggles in a manufactured environment that does not match the prebiotic conditions.

And it seems like Farina agrees, which is why he appears to be shifting to another paper. By the way, did

I mention this is not a cross -examination? This isn't even really a discussion.

This so far appears to be an argument that you would find at a pub on game night, you know, or like at your in -laws on Thanksgiving.

You know, remember the types of questions that you should ask in cross -examination, they follow a very specific formula.

You ask leading questions that are designed to poke holes in your interlocutor's main contentions. Even though this isn't a formal time of cross, that's probably what should be happening here.

And then when, you know, your interlocutor answers your question, move on to another question, right? That would be much more productive than saying, you're wrong because, right?

That's all for the rebuttals. That's all for the closing, you know? Thank you. If you don't like that one, how about this

Powner one? Powner, Jax, regioselective peptide formation, acylated amino nitrile, uh, wait, hold on.

I got the scheme here. It's not in there. You're going to look and look. It's not in there. I studied every one of your papers.

Powner doesn't even use amino acids. He uses an amino, amino nitrile, that's a totally different paper.

James, that's not the same paper. You're talking about a different, there is no, he got coupling with lysine, regioselective lysine ligation, the most selective peptide ligation that tolerates all proteinogenic side chains.

But he did this. It's not with all side amino acid coupling. He's got you talking about prebiotic catalytic peptide.

So tour started off very interestingly. Uh, show me the money, right? Show me the chemical formula.

But when Farina starts to try and answer the question, tour jumps in and says, that's wrong. The paper doesn't say that.

When in actuality, tour should just simply communicate the same sentiment through further questioning.

You know, that, that would be a more effective strategy. Farina, can you show us the formula to get these specific compounds using prebiotic conditions or whatever it's called, right?

You say it contains the step -by -step process, this paper. Show us on the board so we can evaluate it, right?

Farina should go to the board and do something or else he, he's just missing an opportunity to return this powerful serve by tour.

And that's what this was. I mean, this was rhetorically the equivalent of a jump serve in volleyball.

There's no amino acids there. Yes, it's amino acids. So go to the equation of that equation of that one.

But you're just lying. You're also shifting the goalposts though. Because by the way, you, you pretend that there are no papers, that there are no papers that show any peptide formation in water.

I just showed you a ton. You're shifting goalposts by complaining about the side chains. These are the ones you've got to do.

If you can't, you can't do it with these active side chains. You cannot. But he didn't do it with the active side chains.

He used an amino nitrile. There are no amino acids. James, you're talking about a completely different paper. Peptide ligation by chemoselective amino nitrile coupling in water.

That is a different paper. I know that's a different paper.

He takes amino. This is just a different, this is different. He's not going through peptide bond formation.

It's a different, right? So he, you have peptides. If you're keeping track,

Farina is not answering the question. Tour is asking for the process and Farina is giving papers. I struggle to say at this point who has the advantage here because they're just arguing with each other.

This could be, you know, mom and dad having a fight behind closed doors right now. It's probably going to have to come down to who better engages with the topic as it has been agreed upon and who is answering challenges and who is furthering their contentions more successfully.

No acids condensing. That's peptide formation. He's figuring out a different synthetic pathway that doesn't do coupling, but it doesn't matter.

There's a million of these, right? Condensation by wet, dry cycling. I'm asking you for a specific reaction because half of the amino acids, half of the amino acids have active side chains.

And these guys play this game of not including these ones that have carboxylic acids, not including the ones that have amines.

This is an AC. You can't do this. Coupling acylated amino nitrile plus unprotected amino acid, uh, hydrolyzed the pH seven.

Which amino acid hydroxylated ones? Never carboxylated. Never the emanated all proteinogenic side chains.

All from amino nitrile. James, I'm telling you, he did this with lysine. Okay. So the side chain thing is not a problem.

So forget the fact that you can't handle that, right? That peptide formation in water happens and has been demonstrated by about a dozen of these papers that I've shown you.

Only with an activator, as you said in your second series, your first series. It could be the case that Farina is correct.

The problem is there's an audience here. You know, there was a, there was a audience physically in the room and then there's an audience online, uh, presumably for years to come watching this video.

And it seems like these two guys have no idea that these, that this audience exists right now.

And much of the audience, including myself, have not read these papers and their content. Even if we had a background in chemistry, we still might not have read those specific papers.

So what Farina needs to do is simply answer the question and go up to the board and write out the formula or the scheme, or he could just even verbalize it out loud, but that should advance the conversation instead of keeping, uh, all of us stuck in, well, the papers say so.

And then Tours says, well, no, it doesn't. The best way to refute Tours' assertion is to go up to the board and just write it out.

But for some reason, Farina just will not do that. Prebiotically plausible chemical activators. Your first series, you never said this as, with an activator, you're not coupling free amino acids.

Okay, we've reached the end. You're not coupling. Carbonyl sulfide. We've reached the end of the five minutes. Um, now, yeah.

Whoa, that is a meme. Look at, let me go back a moment.

What is that look? Somebody can psychologize what's happening right there. Dang, look at that.

If you're wondering, Tours started out with a good move, which was to ask for a specific explanation or step -by -step chemical process for certain compounds necessary for life.

Using only prebiotic conditions. Having heard this debate only in a few minutes, I'm already sounding like a biology professor myself, okay?

The problem is, everything that happens next serves to undermine

Tours' good first move. The interruptions, the proclaiming that that's not true, that's false, that doesn't work, it undermines the question.

And if we're not careful, the audience will get lost and stray away from the original move, which was to ask

Farina to go to the board and give us something. So, as debaters, there's a lesson here about remaining controlled, about not showing emotion, about being professional and all that stuff, and I think you can see why debaters are taught to remain calm and confident on the debate stage.

But, you know, let's keep going and let's see what happens next. So, I just have one quick comment going back to the

NMR, and that is, when chemists, organic chemists run NMRs, they typically don't run them with boric acid present.

For a, if you're going to run a C13 NMR of ribose, you want -

Who is this person now? Is this one of the debater's teammates? Is this, like, second speaker to Tour or something?

Like, what? The ribose to be as pure as it can possibly be, but -

But he was doing chemistry on borate minerals. That's why it was ribose borate. So now it's your turn to ask -

Sounds good. Yeah, we'll get back to the peptides in a second, because that was my second prompt. But, so, we'll continue looking at research in a moment, but first,

I can't resist confronting James about some of these lies he's been telling, so let's list a few and get some answers. So first, the text -

Nope. Let's ask a question and stop making speeches during a segment of debate that really should only require questions, guys.

It's not that difficult. If this were currency, we're only looking for paper money that has question marks on it.

That's it. Quick thing. Primordial suit 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? And let's add one more. When I had some scientists on my content to help expose

James as a fraud, one of them was a friend of mine, organic chemist Bruce Lipschitz, who explained how James was objectively wrong about peptides being unable to form in water, as I just showed you, which

I'll prove with about a dozen papers, or I did, and will continue to do so. This hurt James so badly that he spun a ridiculous lie about how

I took an unrelated clip of Bruce and stuck it in my content behind his back. This was so idiotic that I had to get

Bruce to make another statement specifying that I requested the clip from him and that I had permission to use it, though James did not have permission to share their email exchange.

In his emails with James, Bruce explicitly states that he was responding to the claims

James had made. There it is in red. But his viewers can't read, so they just ate up the fabricated story.

Now, again, remember, I'm demonstrating conclusively that James is a pathological liar. This is not a mistake that some people legitimately make where they try to come across as erudite but accidentally come across as arrogant, right?

Instead, no, this is on purpose. So then you have to ask the question, like, why do this?

Is this effective? And the answer is no. You are taught in debate to do a couple of things.

First, to rely on the components of rhetoric in your delivery. In other words, in order to be effective, you need to ensure that you track along what

Aristotle referred to as pathos, ethos, and logos. These component pieces should shape your delivery such that you should win over the judges in the audience if you develop those components properly, if you track along those components well.

You know what one of the components of rhetoric is not? Being a jerk. As a matter of fact, rudeness can cause you to lose the whole debate, even if you're actually the better interlocutor on stage.

Why is that? Because these kinds of emotion -based verbal attacks cloud the very thing that should stand out, which is your principled argument, whatever that is.

And because judges and the audience consist of human beings, and human beings are emotional creatures, the worst thing that you can do to get an audience to carefully consider what you have to say, even if it is correct and true 100%, is to attack your opponent and to even attack the audience.

This is a horrible tactic to get people to listen to you, and it persuades no one. It certainly rouses your own base, but guess what?

Virtue signaling is not debating. Soooooo - This is important, because James also lies about science that goes over most people's heads.

So by proving to you what a liar he is, you are now primed to realize how he is lying about all the complex details of origin of life research as well.

This way you won't just nod your head - I wish they would've done formal cross. This style of communicate -

I don't know what this is. This is not tracking along a formal debate, and I know there's play in the joints, and you know, a lot of these things that we see on YouTube are not formal debates in the way that you would see something at the high school or college level, but this, like,

I think this has strayed too far. This right here, this segment, is a rebuttal that has wandered into the wrong segment, which sounds like the beginning of a joke.

A rebuttal and a closing statement walk into a cross -exam. I didn't assume James must be right.

So, let's begin. Let's begin with the textbook thing. Why would you tell this dumb lie,

James? Why would you tell this lie? This lie. You think you've been taught things that aren't.

We'll think about molecules in a puddle. Okay, so there is a primordial soup model, and there is no understanding of what's happening in this primordial soup, and you talk to people, and this is exactly what they see.

They talk about the primordial soup model in all of these textbooks. That's your question. This is the primordial soup model.

Just means some molecules in water. That's what it means. Look, you were absolutely clueless on polypeptides.

You never gave me the coupling for that reaction. I want you to notice, I'm going to narrate, this is my time now.

I want you to notice, he didn't answer the question. Okay, Tuer is now not answering the question.

I mean, so, if it's fair to critique Farina for not answering Tuer's question, Tuer is doing the same thing here.

He needs to stay focused and answer the question. I invited him to come up to show me the chemistry, how this is done.

No, I didn't. He did not. He did not. And now you want me to say, so now this is the question.

No, I showed counter -research that does it. The question is, I just told you the primordial soup model is nonsense, and this is in these textbooks.

You think that molecules turning into slithering creatures is in textbooks? Show me the textbook.

Show me the textbook that says molecules form into slithering creatures. Because this is exactly the model that the mo -

Okay, so I just decided to pause this exchange and move away and take a few minutes and just sift through the email exchange leading up to the debate.

The link for the email exchange between Tuer and Farina is in the notes of the original video.

It's pretty wild, guys. And it seems to me, having read through it, because I'm watching this exchange and I'm like, man, what happened to turn this debate into what it actually became, right?

And so I just figured I'd go back and look. But it seems to me, as I read through it, that there is just a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to debate, to debate formats, and the purpose of debate.

And I mean, I'm not critiquing anybody specifically here. This whole exercise is a bit of a mess.

When you title your debates, which by the way, Farina was the one who suggested the title for the debate, you know, are we clueless about the origin of life?

When you title a debate this way, it makes it unclear who shoulders the burden of proof. And it also makes it unclear what the various debaters' roles are.

For example, in a debate that's titled, James Tuer is lying about origin of science, well then it definitely makes sense for Farina to do what he's doing right now, which is completely attack

Tuer. But when the title of the debate that you came up with is, are we clueless about the origin of life?

Then it's now on you to answer the question as well. And so you have to do more than merely attack

James Tuer and his comments, even if Tuer is incorrect on his views, and you demonstrate this as a debater on that stage, you still have not answered the topic question, which is a problem, because if you're not answering the question, then you're not doing what is necessary for you to win this debate.

Tuer in his opener, at least made a case that origin of life researchers cannot provide an adequate explanation for the five compounds that he has listed on that blackboard.

Hence why he wanted Farina to come up to the board and fill in some kind of process or explanation as to how you get those compounds.

I mean, that's that's actually a pretty solid opening strategy. But Farina, with all of his references to papers, is simply attacking

Tuer, which again does not help him win this debate. He still needs to take the extra step and answer the topic question.

Molecules come together. These form higher organisms that come out of the water. Molecules form higher organisms that come out.

Yes. Yes. Show me the textbook that I don't have the textbook. I showed you. There they are. There they are. The smelly soup model.

You have a list right there, James. I should. That's from my video. You have the list. This is what the textbooks show.

Ribozymes, autocatalysis. All of that. No, no, no. Go back. Go back to my slide. Go back to my slide.

All right. Now, don't change it. Now, which textbook were you referring? Because I said right there it says miniature

C prebiotic soup. Those are quotes from each one of them. Do they show molecules forming a slithering creature?

No, they don't. Because that's a lie. And you're not going to run out the clock. How about the. Well, so again, were this an ideal debate,

Tuer would have one or two quotes to back himself up here with regard to Farina's challenge.

But then again, so would Farina, right? Farina could read a book cited by Tuer and show that his terminology is not present in it.

To the audience, that is. And then ask again, which textbook talks about a slithering creature or whatever

Farina's issue specifically is. But no, instead we've got shouting. I quoted from those books.

No, you didn't. That's a lie. The audience, as well as myself, are going to need therapy after this debate.

A dozen people thing. Is that what a dozen people to you? What I meant by that, the number of people that are doing the complex organic

Sutherland pounder type synthesis. This is exactly what Benner told you. Benner told you. People all over the world.

It's a very small. Benner told me. I have hundreds of papers. No, Benner told you on the video that there's a small number of people that are still doing the

Sutherland type of complex synthesis. This is most of the area. Origin of life community is a boutique community.

It's a small number of people. It's a dozen people. It was in reference to the. Of people that are doing the complex

Sutherland type of life community, the origin of life community. You're talking about the field in general. How about the

Bruce thing? This was pretty dumb, right? He just took one of the guy's videos and stuck it in. Because when I contacted

Bruce, Bruce said to me, I don't even know what you're talking about. I was asked me to send it in the email, showing the whole email specifically about what we are doing.

And does this show why don't you show the page? Why don't you show the page where he said? I had no idea that this is there.

Look, I published the whole email. Yeah, you're only showing the ones that I. Where is the moderator?

Is did he can somebody go find him? Is he on a bathroom break? Who is running the show at this point?

Because this is quickly starting to sound like a jackhammer breaking up asphalt. Ask for the video and he's talking about you.

And then here you go. You don't want to show the one where he said, where he said, I had no idea. I think he should apologize.

You're not going to address anything on life. This was pretty. This was a pretty dumb. Instead of people shouting at each other.

So there you are. There you are, Mr. Moderator. Get it back on track, guy. Maybe take turns.

I think an apologies in order for this slide, James. Pretty dumb lie.

Pretty dumb lie to tell. I think we can all agree that we are establishing the pathological nature of his line.

Which is not the thrust of the topic idea that you came up with, though. Right, Farida?

Okay, fine. Establish that he's a liar. But don't forget to answer the topic question, though. My gosh, what a mess.

I'm I'm I'm going to need like aspirin after this one. Which of you in my audience told me to react to this?

How could you do this to me? By the way, if you have not yet subscribed to the channel, please do so.

Please like and subscribe to the channel simply because of the torture that you put me through. I'm kidding.

I appreciate y 'all. He says that I call

Jack Sostek a liar. I did. And I and Jack Sostek sent me an email.

He said, you were pretty hard on me in that talk. And I said, Jack, I'd like to call you to apologize because I was wrong to do that.

I said, give me your number. He gave me his number. I called him. We spoke about this. He said to me, Jim, if you would join us in this origin of life research, we would get this thing solved.

We had a very. Why did you say this was a nature? Totally made that up. Because if you had spoken to Jack Sostek, nobody made me apologize to him.

I offered him my apology. Let me show you the primary literature, the journal nature. And I apologize to him.

And you but you continue to call his work utterly bait. No. What did you call it? Ridiculous.

Utterly ridiculous. It is utterly ridiculous when he says he's going to have life in his lab in three to five years in 2014.

And now he says, I can't even make the RNA. Who cares? You lied about this. Look, the structures are.

Oh, no, no. Who cares, really? I mean, you know, forget about the shouting and talking over each other.

Isn't that a worthwhile piece of evidence to consider that an origin of life researcher made a claim that he would create life in his lab?

And then he backed away from that claim, saying that he couldn't do it. Don't you think that that actually intersects with the topic question?

Oh, but that doesn't matter, guys, because tour said something wrong and then he apologized about it later. Which, by the way, is not a good look for tour.

But how does one somehow downplay the significance of the other thing? I this is a slide.

You can speak to Jack Sostek. He said to me, Jim, that slide was not well done. That was a copy from another article in Scientific American.

No, Jack agrees with me. That was poorly done. There's no stereochemistry on that sugar. When there's an article.

OK, I'm going to call it close to this part of the session. Let's move on.

It's Dr. Tours. Two minutes to ask a question.

OK, my second question is, let's also try to see if we can stick more to the science instead of diagram.

Oh, I would love to stick. Well, that was my only prompt for the. All right. It's important to a polynucleotide is a liar. Polynucleotides.

You have to be able to make RNA. You have to be able to take this molecule and hook it together many, many times to have a dimer of RNA abbreviating the base this time as B.

Abbreviating the triphosphate as P3. God bless these guys that can sit through this.

And this not only can they understand this, but it actually makes them passionate and excited. What you have to be able to do is show me chemistry.

I'm asking you specifically for chemistry, not a bunch of nonsense here. Show me the chemistry to get this reaction to go such that you get coupling between the three prime hydroxyl to this five prime site.

So you need three prime five prime coupling to the exclusion of two prime five prime coupling to the exclusion of branching every article that you cited in your videos, every article that you could ever cite that shows this coupling shows this scrambling.

You get significant amounts of two, five significant amount of branching. And that's why this chemistry doesn't work.

And that's why your own expert, Jack Sostek, even says that Benner's work,

Benner's work where he talked about this thing was, was just hyped up. There was nothing there because he says he went with the hype.

He did not go with, with, with, with show me the chemistry chemistry.

So first of all, this is completely idiotic. Nuclear nucleotide polymerization has been demonstrated on montmorillonite clay for decades.

Yes. Yes. With 30 to 70 % to five, I asked you for three, five, which is what you need to have.

Is anyone keeping track of this? Somebody out in YouTube land is I'm sure it, it does not help that both interlocutors keep shouting over each other.

These various displays of emotion are undermining both opponents right now. And the moderator,

I don't know what he's doing. He's probably watching the Ted Lasso finale. I never know how to react when a white guy does the running man in front of everyone.

He's not helping at all. I'm going to be real with you guys. I don't know how much longer I can hang in here. Honestly, I want you to read the title of that paper there.

It's by your buddy, Jack Sostek. He's done some research on this. Yeah, I know. And Jack Sostek even says he cannot get it.

Functional art, except for tolerance for non -inheritable two, five. How much tolerance?

How much? Montmorillonite play is 30 to 70%. What's the first word in that paper?

Functional. So we're talking about RNAs that still have catalytic behavior, despite having a mixture of two, five and three prime.

Well, functional with regard to what though? I don't know the ins and outs on this issue, but I do know that functional should be defined or else we could be conflating terms in order to answer the question, which would be misleading in certain circumstances.

But how are we to know that unless function is clarified a bit? The amount of two, five to three, five is not 30 to 70%.

If you have, if you have a 0 .1%, you're okay because you'll have runs, but not 30 to 70%.

Show me the amount. Your guy, Deemer never tells us how much is there. James, this look, the research never told us how much functional

RNAs. So it doesn't matter how much two prime doesn't matter. Oh, it certainly does. And what about branching?

My God. It's not there. It's not there. Nobody has ever done this prebiotic. You're going to be looking through your papers a long time.

It's never been done without an enzyme. It is never. You are completely clueless. It's over.

It's over. This is probably an elementary layman's question, but if one of the five compounds that tour has proposed needs explaining actually has been explained, wouldn't

Farina have a paper that shows that specific compound being manufactured in a lab somewhere mimicking prebiotic conditions as tour keeps specifying?

And if it had been created, wouldn't the process of that compound creation be written out for the scientific community to see and evaluate such that Farina could simply walk up to the blackboard and write out that process, chemically speaking?

So why doesn't Farina do that? Don't you think this debate could be over if he just would provide one formula instead of falling back on claims about papers and their success?

You know the bar for Farina. If the bar is set at clueless, right, then all he has to do is show that origin of life researchers have definitely answered one of the five challenges that tour gave tonight, right?

Can't make RNA. There's no life. You can't make RNA. There is no life. You haven't made peptides.

You haven't made RNA. It's over. James. You guys know not to do that, right?

Those of you wanting to get into debate. Don't scream. It's over when you're supposed to be asking questions.

I mean, you know, ization has been demonstrated for decades on clay. You are literally pulling this out of your ass.

This has been done for decades. You guys. None of you people know this research.

None of you people know this research. You're just blindly trusting him. All right.

Let's try to let's try to have some civility, please. The adsorption and polymerization of nucleotides on clay minerals has been demonstrated for decades.

James is lying. And people who are cheering for him have no clue what he's talking about. You're just blindly believing him.

I'm sorry. OK, let's look at let's look at it. Track this moment, because this is probably the moment where vegetables are about to get thrown at people.

Here is the reference on clay. Here is the reference on clay here on Montmorillonite.

What did he get? He got 67 percent. No, I've not read that paper. You read it. Tell me, how much does he have?

I don't remember. All right. There we go. You don't remember because you don't want to remember. You read the paper.

You brought that into it, because it doesn't work. You understand that it's not right. Do you understand that even if you have the wrong enantiomer, it doesn't work.

Even Donna Blackmon has said that in the papers. You have no clue what Donna Blackmon says. You coldline her. You have no idea what her research is about.

You just pretend to. OK, so there we go. I asked you to come up. Didn't track a single a single thing about this.

Didn't. Did you? Did anybody in the audience track the.

Um. Just like I would do with a graduate student. I said, show me the chemistry.

He did not. I mean, you can say that.

You can't do this. You can't make yourself yourself. It's over, buddy.

It's over. Game over, man. It's game over. Wow. Lies and cheers.

Amazing lies and cheers. So just from a chemical point of view, though, we would need to know what functional

RNA meant. Having catalytic function. I mean, because RNA has many functions.

It still has. That's exactly what I was saying a moment ago. Ignition and catalytic function.

It lowers the melting point of the duplexes by destabilization. So separation can occur under reasonable conditions. And what was the percentage?

You got everything else written down, which was. I don't know. I don't have an encyclopedic. And it's very careful.

He would tell us it's in that paper because that's what better. I'm basically calling shot up with better because he didn't do it.

But Sostek would put that in. No, that's another great one. The better thing. Yeah, we're going to get to the better one. OK, it's time to end that part.

But I want to just pause to have functional RNA. It has to do at least three things. It has to serve as messenger

RNA, ribosomal RNA. And no messenger

RNA, messenger RNA. You're talking about features of modern cells. We're talking about prebiotic nucleic acid.

Has to do that. So what function is my question? Did he show that it did it for at least one of the three?

Ultimately, it's going to have to perform all three. Yeah, I mean, it's a replication. I'm not sure exactly in the context of the paper, but he's saying that.

I don't know why the moderator is jumping into the debate. This is reminiscent of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney debate where the moderator corrected

Mitt Romney. He did, in fact, sir. So let me let me call it an act. He did call it an act of terror.

I don't know what's going on. But we are because we are so way like I'm just rolling with this at this point, as I'm sure everybody in the audience is.

So, I mean, having established that there's another problem. If you don't know what functional means in the context of the paper, then why were you pointing to the word as if it refuted your interlocutor?

It's hard not to see Farina, especially with his condescending attitude, as somebody whose mouth is writing checks that his papers can't cash.

You know, I mean, two prime linkages don't matter. As though you people have any clue what any of us are talking about.

Oh, I know about RNA. No, you don't. You have no clue what either of us are saying.

Deal with it. Answer the question. Anyone who thinks nucleotide polymerization to form

RNA has not been demonstrated is clueless. It's been demonstrated by hundreds of researchers.

And it's just right here. I just showed you. Do it. You've got hundreds of examples.

Show us. You won't come up. What do you want me to draw on the board, James? What do you want? You won't do it.

Do it. Come on, do it. Do it. Just do it. This is not a debate, guys.

You know that, right? I mean, we are right. Much respect goes out to Tuer. And even in the face of Farina's very condescending, snooty attitude and rude behavior, clearly

Farina is knowledgeable about chemistry and biology. But this isn't a debate at all.

I mean, this is a circus. And if we had just kept to a more formal structure of debate, so much more effective conversation could have flowed through, so much more productivity.

Which is an argument for doing it in the right way. And I think you know that.

I think those of you with me know that. I think anybody who's never seen a Wise Disciple video and has sort of broken down and analyzed debates in the past still knows it deep down in their bones.

They just maybe can't articulate it as best as we can, right? Yeah, that's why

I brought a bunch of research James pretends isn't real. And you're all pretending to understand right now.

Google? Okay. All right, let's let's let's go to the next round. Dave, you're next in terms of asking a question.

All right. So we've been talking about peptides and quake acid, so I'll give a prompt on this too.

So let's talk about biomolecules. Amino acids are ubiquitous and even form in space. And Strecker -like synthetic pathways have been known for decades.

Amino acids polymerize to yield peptides. Again, James has humiliated himself even tonight, claiming peptides can't form in water.

No matter how many references I show him, here are some of the papers that we've been talking about.

He keeps trying to talk about side chains because he hasn't admitted yet that this does happen.

Peptide formation with prebiotic chemical activators. There are countless studies generating this.

So the objections like the reactions from side chains, I'm very sorry, but they have been addressed showing regioselective coupling, even for lysine.

When he objects to this, he's just lying about what the paper is about. Then don't forget condensation by wet, dry cycling, as well as totally alternate synthetic pathways that don't involve condensation.

Question? Anywhere? Question? Do you - does anybody see a ques - is there a question?

Question, can you hear me? Barbra Streisand. Is there a question on the horizon?

Next, plenty of studies show prebiotic syntheses of nucleotides and their adsorption and polymerization on clay has been studied for decades.

These catalytic surfaces also protect RNA from degradation. This type of -

Three rebuttals walk into a cross -examination. What do they order? Not a question! Not even one!

Chemistry has been taken out of the lab and shown to work in prebiotic analog conditions, primarily hot springs where biopolymers form efficiently and become encapsulated in vesicles.

James ignores all of this research and just complains about aspects of experimental setup, like running reactions under argon, which is done specifically to avoid contact with the oxygen that wasn't present on the early

Earth. Or he pretends prebiotically plausible reagents like DAP are not prebiotically plausible by only showing research from the 1950s instead of current research.

He will wonder how nature knew to phosphorylate the 5' hydroxyl to get nucleotides, oblivious to research demonstrating that protection by borate minerals yields precisely that.

In general, he ignores decades of research and just spews his script about how we don't know how to get these molecules.

But we do. So let's continue talking about this. Okay, so there were so many there.

You know, this is called rapid fire, so that you can't answer anymore. I'm just showing my research.

So you cited this paper where they used sulfur IV. Okay. This is not just water, it has activation.

Once you activate, it is not amino acids polymerizing in water. As soon as you activate. So I'm not someone who is informed enough to comment on the very esoteric discussion that's happening on this debate stage with regard to chemistry or biology of origin of life.

The only thing that I can continue to tell you is this is not a formal debate. This is not close.

This has devolved into the kind of heated argument that you would see at a soccer match. Only the content of it is more academic.

Except at times when it's not, though. Because even though most of us are not experts in this field, those of us at Wise Disciple recognize the parameters of a debate.

And the bottom line is, when you have a topic like this, it is not enough to go after the character of your interlocutor.

Unless somehow your interlocutor is the subject of the debate. But James Tour is not the subject of this debate.

And so all of this is sound and fury. But when you run this exchange through the x -ray machine, so to speak, and you get a look at the actual skeleton of the arguments themselves from both sides, you will see that Tour has laid out a case with some clear contentions.

Okay, this goes back to his opening statement. This discussion period has done nothing to undermine those specific contentions laid out by Tour.

Tour laid out five compounds that are necessary for life and said that there are no explanations as to how these compounds are formed in prebiotic conditions.

And Farina clearly had an opportunity to challenge these contentions. But when Tour invited him to do it in this discussion period, all

Farina did was claim that papers have answered Tour's challenges. But he never explained how. He just continued to assert that they had.

And that is a huge problem for Farina. It goes from being zwitterionic, it goes from being zwitterionic to being not zwitterionic.

It functionalizes on the carboxylic acid. That proton gets freed up. That proton gets freed up on the amine and then it can do the attack.

No, no, no, wait, wait. I'm not done. No, it was. Oh, no. You said. You never said that.

Oh, it's. It happens. You said it in your second series. You said with suitable activation. Yeah, chemical activation.

Because they're no longer zwitterionic anymore. You said it was. No, you said peptide formation in water was exergonic.

I have heartburn. I think I'm going to call it, guys. We get the gist of this exchange, right?

Look. I personally don't think this was as bad as it could have been.

I do think that Tuor started off well. You should definitely go back and look at his opening statement. I thought that was pretty solid.

And I think that was Tuor at his very best. But this discussion period was not very helpful to either interlocutor.

In my opinion, it should not have even taken place at all. You can make the argument that the debate should not have happened at all.

The only thing that the discussion period showed was that Farina could not provide a scientific explanation for any of the five compounds that Tuor laid out.

All Farina did was he kept pointing to papers and claiming that the papers explain it. But that's not good enough in a real exchange.

Particularly when you are asked directly by your opponent. Farina should have been able to not even write down his own formulations, but just bring up one of the paper's formulations with him and write down somebody else's formulations to answer

Tuor. This is the equivalent of Tuor asking Farina to do some kind of complex math problem and Farina saying, well,

I don't have to because other people have easily answered that. Well, OK, if other people have, then why not just rehash their answer on the board?

Well, I'm not going to do that because, you know, here's somebody else that has also answered that. So many people have answered that.

You see how this works? It's not an answer. I would say, boy, I don't know.

I struggle to judge this exchange because this strayed too far from the parameters of a formal debate, in my opinion.

I don't even think these two guys understand what is required for a formal debate. And again, I'm not trying to be disrespectful.

I just don't think at the end of the day, I should hold people to something they probably didn't even realize they were or were not doing.

Having said that, I do think it's fair to point out that Farina did not do the work necessary to substantively engage with the topic.

That that he himself actually came up with. He should have answered the question. Are we clueless about the origin of life?

He spent way too much time attacking Tuer and his character and way too little time making any kind of case to argue the negative on the topic.

And when it came time for discussion, when challenged, he simply failed to overcome the rhetorical power of Tuer challenging him in the specific way he did with that blackboard.

So I guess as I'm talking out loud, I am declaring a winner. OK, I think Tuer bested

Farina. But what are your thoughts? Did you watch the whole debate? Who do you think won Tuer or Farina?

Let me know in the comments below. What other debates do you want me to react to? Let me know that as well. I need to go for a jog or take a shower or something.

I'm not sure what. But I will return soon with more videos for your consideration. And in the meantime,