James Tour

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Biology.
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James Tour and Stephen Meyer on the Origin of Life, Pt. 1

On this episode of ID the Future,  James M. Tour and Stephen C. Meyer begin a discussion about the hard problems facing researchers trying to discover how the first life could have come about naturalistically. Meyer is the director of the Center for Science and Culture; Tour is a world-renowned synthetic organic chemist with over 700 research publications and multiple major recognitions, including TheBestSchools.org naming him one of the 50 most influential scientists in the world today. Though he doesn’t sign on to ID theory, he says he’s sympathetic with the idea, and certainly not impressed with any naturalistic explanations for the origin of life. In this first of a three-part series, they explore problems ranging from the extreme improbabilities associated with protein assembly, Read More ›

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Closeup of 3D printer printing
Photo by Ben on Adobe Stock

New ID Book Zeroes in on Evolution’s Zero-Probability Problem

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid concludes his conversation with Eric Anderson, one of the co-authors of the new Discovery Institute Press book Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell. Today they talk about Anderson’s second of two chapters in the book, where he explores the challenges of building a self-replicating 3D printer, and the light this sheds on the origin-of-life community’s search for their Holy Grail, a self-reproducing molecule that could have kickstarted the evolutionary process on the early earth. In their conversation, Anderson suggests that there are engineering principles involved in the origin of life that may mean that a naturalistic origin of life is less like winning a long-odds lottery, and more like the Read More ›

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Transparente Molekülstruktur - Nanotechnologie
Transparente Molekülstruktur - Nanotechnologie

New ID Book Puts “Self-Replicating Molecules” Under the Microscope

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid interviews Eric Anderson, one of the co-authors of the new book Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell. The two discuss Eric’s chapters on the origin-of-life problem. There’s the problem of generating the information required of the first life form. And there’s another problem, one Anderson uses his engineering background to explore — the insuperable challenges to generating a self-replicating molecule, a hypothetical entity at the heart of some recent attempts to render plausible the evolution of non-life into cellular life.

Walter Bradley on the New Mystery of Life’s Origin, Pt. 2

On this episode of ID the Future, Robert Marks continues his conversation with Walter Bradley, co-author (with Charles Thaxton and Roger Olsen) of the groundbreaking 1984 work The Mystery of Life’s Origin. A revised and expanded edition of the book has just been released with new contributions from James Tour, Guillermo Gonzalez, Stephen Meyer, and others, but today Bradley and Marks discuss the book’s first release, including the cultural context that made finding a non-religious publisher an uphill battle, and discussion of some of the endorsements and early reviews, including one drive-by and four positive responses from distinguished scientists Robert Jastrow, Dean Kenyon, Robert Shapiro, and Fritz Schaefer. Bradley and Marks also discuss some scholars who more recently have testified Read More ›

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Walter Bradley on the Newly Expanded Mystery of Life’s Origin

On this episode of ID the Future, Robert J. Marks interviews Walter Bradley, co-author of the seminal 1984 ID book The Mystery of Life’s Origin, now being released in a revised and expanded edition with updates from multiple contributors discussing the progress (or lack of it) in origins science in the 35 years since the book’s original publication. Read More ›

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Work up of a reaction sketched on fume hood sash glass
Photo by Chromatograph on Unsplash

Chemist Marcos Eberlin on a Crisis for Chemical Evolution

On this episode of ID the Future, distinguished Brazilian organic chemist Marcos Eberlin talks about chemical evolution and the origin of life, pivoting off of comments by Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour in Science Uprising Episode 5, and off of Eberlin’s own Nobel laureate-endorsed book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. The idea of an unguided origin of the first life has been “sold to us,” he says, but its assumptions are “insane … many, many times impossible.”

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Meyer and Metaxas: Stephen Meyer’s Journey into Intelligent Design

On this episode of ID the Future, author and radio host Eric Metaxas interviews Stephen Meyer at the 2019 Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. Meyer, author of the New York Times bestseller Darwin’s Doubt and director of the Center for Science and Culture, tells how he started out asking the “why” questions — some of the same ones Isaac Newton had wondered about — questions that remain with us today. Read More ›
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Rob Crowther Debriefs Jay Richards on the Dallas Conference on Science & Faith

On this episode of ID the Future, host Robert Crowther speaks with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jay Richards, a speaker at last weekend’s Dallas Conference on Science & Faith. Coming available soon on video, this conference featured Richards, Eric Metaxas, Stephen Meyer, and world-renowned synthetic organic chemist James Tour — plus a surprise guest. Read More ›
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Stephen Meyer Teases the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith

On this episode of ID the Future, Kirby Anderson, host of the nationally syndicated Point of View radio show, interviews New York Times bestselling author Stephen Meyer about the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. Read More ›
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An Overview of Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Critique

On this episode of ID The Future, biologist Ann Gauger, CSC Director of Science Communications, discusses a big new anthology she contributed to and helped edit, Theistic Evolution. Read More ›