I don't know what the particular straw man is supposed to be either, I can't view videos from work and I don't have time to at home. I did look up James Touring though, and found out what he had to say about being labeled a proponent of intelligent design:
"I have been labeled an Intelligent Design (ID) proponent. I am not. I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to arguments on the matter and I find some of them intriguing, but the scientific proof is not there in my opinion. So I prefer to be free of that ID label."
He has also said that he finds it hard to believe that nature can produce the machinery of cells through random processes. Not only is it inaccurate to describe the evolution of the 'machinery of cells' as a random process, his objection amounts to an argument from incredulity. His inability to understand how something could have happened does not make it less likely that it happened in the way he can't understand. And again, he is weighing in on a field that he does not work in, his contributions to science in the fields of carbon materials chemistry, materials science, and nanotechnology are very respectable, but they are not abiogenesis. He doesn't have to be an expert on abiogenesis to have something cogent to say about it, but scientists in the field he is critiquing are best qualified to assess his analysis and they don't find it convincing (and go right on synthesizing RNA by replicating conditions believed to have held in the era when life is considered most likely to have first formed).
"I have been labeled an Intelligent Design (ID) proponent. I am not. I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to arguments on the matter and I find some of them intriguing, but the scientific proof is not there in my opinion. So I prefer to be free of that ID label."
He has also said that he finds it hard to believe that nature can produce the machinery of cells through random processes. Not only is it inaccurate to describe the evolution of the 'machinery of cells' as a random process, his objection amounts to an argument from incredulity. His inability to understand how something could have happened does not make it less likely that it happened in the way he can't understand. And again, he is weighing in on a field that he does not work in, his contributions to science in the fields of carbon materials chemistry, materials science, and nanotechnology are very respectable, but they are not abiogenesis. He doesn't have to be an expert on abiogenesis to have something cogent to say about it, but scientists in the field he is critiquing are best qualified to assess his analysis and they don't find it convincing (and go right on synthesizing RNA by replicating conditions believed to have held in the era when life is considered most likely to have first formed).
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
