Show me the protocell they’ve created.
You have rebuilt a process you’ve observed can happen naturally. That’s fundamentally different than NOT being able to rebuild a process no one has observed. The fact you compared them is kinda crazy. 
If you have a mind controlling an experiment to create ice, have you proved that a mind is required to create ice?
For the same reason that we don’t see armies using stone age technology defeating armies armed with modern weaponry. Modern life is highly adapted and would kill off any new life that formed through abiogenesis. Ask anyone who has to use RNA in the lab and has to carefully avoid contamination with RNases.
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Show me the protocell they’ve created.
So the inability of OoL researchers to make a protocell is your yardstick for knowing they are not “even close”. Try again. There are many things scientists cannot do now due to theoretical or technological limitations. As history has shown, many of these problems get circumvented with new ways of thinking and/or technology. Will this be the case for OoL research? Time will tell.
You have rebuilt a process you’ve observed can happen naturally. That’s fundamentally different than NOT being able to rebuild a process no one has observed. The fact you compared them is kinda crazy
OoL experiments are basically attempts to reconstruct PLAUSIBLE scenarios that have been hypothesized to have produced life. Since life originated once, we cannot know exactly how it happened, but we can come up with different ideas as to how we think it arose. We can then test aspects of these ideas experimentally. Its as simple as that.
How would you recognize a protocell if you’ve never seen one before? What are the defining attributes of a protocell in your view, and what sets it apart from a “normal” cell?
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Slow down! All the “mind” is doing is systematically trying different tests in a controlled setting. If the experiment succeeds then the mind will have discovered the right experimental conditions. The experimenter only observes, they don’t make anything happen.
But they haven’t gotten close to that. [creating life]
Of course not. That isn’t how science works. In the OP article, they were able to identify new chemical pathways to compounds necessary to life. This isn’t creating life; it establishes how this necessary step in getting to life is possible.
Science works in small steps. The next experiment might build on this result, or it could prove it wrong, sending the researchers back to the drawing board.THAT’S how science works.
I doubt we will ever see an experiment that creates life from scratch. What we should expect is a series of experiment demonstrating the necessary step to create life.
why aren’t we seeing single cells arise in natural processes still today?
That’s a fair question but hard to answer. For starters, we still don’t know what those very simple cells would look like. So maybe they do arise and we do not recognize them. It’s very likely that modern life would quickly eat them, making them still harder to find. Conditions were a lot different for the first life - maybe a reducing (oxygen) atmosphere makes it too hard for new life to form.
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Because oxidising Earth now is nothing like the reducing atmosphere of the early Earth in which life arose. The scientists are recreating the conditions relevant to these natural processes, which are not expected to happen in modern Earth chemistry.
Presupposes a narrative.
Ok, if they’re not actually building a cell but putting a bunch of chemicals in a dish and zapping it with electricity, sure.
That’s why I said that our knowledge of the complexity of life will increase faster than our ability to build anything close. Read through the history of it in the last 100 years and that’s what it’s been.
Fine. But let’s not compare it to an observed natural process that you then replicate. You have an advantage in observation. We can observe a cell now and even have an advantage there, but can’t get close, and even coming up with the simplest of ideas sounds like a pipe dream when I read through what they’re doing. It might lead to another interesting discovery, but I think generally Frankenstein is evidence that they’re not going to get there. We already know we need a creator.
You’re presupposing your worldview. I meant even any basic cell-like thing. In my worldview, we have always been highly adapted. If God didn’t make us that way, because of sin, we’d all die quite quickly.
You’re asking questions about and trying to raise objections to his worldview. How else could he possibly answer?
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Untrue.
If you have a mind controlling an experiment to create fire, does that prove that fire can’t be created without a mind?
If you have a mind controlling an experiment to create diamonds, does that prove that diamonds can’t be created without a mind?
If you have a mind controlling an experiment to create ozone (O3), does that prove that ozone can’t be created without a mind?
If you have a mind controlling an experiment to create pumice, does that prove that pumice can’t be created without a mind?
Repeat with additional examples until you work out where your argument fails.
Because (i) the process is expected to take too long for us to observe it in that way, and (ii) there is so much life already on this planet that the proto-life would be eaten long before it got remotely close to reaching cellularity.
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That doesn’t make sense. Large changes in oxygen concentration really does make a difference to what kind of chemistry can occur. There are reactions that can’t take place without it, and other that can’t take place with oxygen present.
That’s why I said that our knowledge of the complexity of life will increase faster than our ability to build anything close.
Life is indeed complex and we know several mechanisms that can generate this complexity, but I don’t see how this complicates OoL research. All the complexity we see today is the result of billions of years of tinkering and it would be improper to assume that life started with the same degree of complexity we see today. Thus it is more reasonable to presume life started out simple and work from there to reconstruct the plausible pathways leading to early life forms.
Fine. But let’s not compare it to an observed natural process that you then replicate. You have an advantage in observation.
Since life arose, it may have done so through natural mechanisms we are yet to discover. This is the rationale behind OoL research. If life arose naturally, that means it was a “natural process” we did not observe as it unfolded (because it happened billions of years ago), but we can try to figure out how it happened.
We can observe a cell now and even have an advantage there, but can’t get close, and even coming up with the simplest of ideas sounds like a pipe dream when I read through what they’re doing.
This statement reeks of the same attitude vitalists had before the ground-splitting in vitro synthesis of urea. Like I said, time will tell and OoL research is getting more exciting.
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(iii) We don’t actually know whether life spontaneously arises somewhere in some environment.
I think it’s important to point out that individual cells are generally not visible to the naked eye, and many of the kinds of environments hypothesized to have been relevant to the origin of life, aren’t really continuously monitored at the required level of resolution.
Bacteria-like organisms might not arise on your kitchen table (and you wouldn’t be able to see it if it did), but that doesn’t mean it’s not occasionally arising somewhere in the Earth’s crust, in volcanic lakes, deep sea hydrothermal systems, or what have you.
Even after centuries of having populated every continent on the planet we’re still steadily discovering new species of macroscopic organisms. We simply can’t claim with any appreciable degree of certainty that some sort of life has not arisen many, many times throughout Earth’s history even up to and including recent human history.
None of these things are alive. 
Thanks for pointing this out.
At least you had the “if” there. The rest of your comment supposes there is no “if”
Glass houses? 
We have pretty good evidence the Earth didn’t start out with the atmosphere it has today.
True - they also set the conditions of the experiment. I don’t think you will find any experiments where the researchers we expecting to create life. If you can find one in a credible journal I will send you a $20 Starbucks gift card.
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Scientists are always asking “what if” questions. That’s how we generate hypotheses. You could imagine two Norse men pondering on the what causes lightning. Person A might say, oh its Thor that causes lightning as our Holy Hammer says, but Person B might say “what if” its something else which causes lightning. Person B then goes on to formulate a testable hypothesis on the mechanism of lightning formation. I guess you know how history played out. Now we are at the same cross road with regards to the OoL. Maybe aliens seeded our planet, or God created the first cells and made them evolve or the first cells arose through unknown physicochemical pathways. Its obvious option 3 is the most amenable to methods of scientific enquiry. Take a chill pill and give science time.
That’ wasn’t part of your argument. Put those goalposts back.
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