The real issue is that atoms and molecules can build universe observers. That is enough creation evidence for me.
The problem we have is that we don’t have deterministic mechanisms to explain the grand theory of universal common descent other than reproduction which is a limited explanation. This is the same problem at OOL and the same problem at the theoretical human and chimp split.
That’s always going to be the case to one degree or another. If they waited till they knew everything about a crime they’d never be able to bring anyone to trial. I think it’s a matter of looking at things objectively and coming to a reasonable conclusion. I would think 60 years of research is a reasonable amount of time to at least have an idea of whether or not there is any plausible known natural cause. How long do you think is reasonable.
I’m assuming those that hold to methodological naturalism would claim that there is no metaphysical explanation whether or not we can see how a natural cause is possible.
Not so sure about that. There are a number of assumptions in science that are based on naturalism being true that I would say are pretty skewed ideas of reality.
Jim, I think you are conflating two different ideas.
First scientists (who"do" science based on methodological Naturalism), and secondly atheists / agnostics (who don’t believe in the metaphysical).
Scientists who are atheist and even agnostic, will believe a natural solution will be found for the OOL as they believe that’s the only option, and will obviously therefore continue to seek the natural mechanism.
Scientists who accept a God who created the world, will also continue to continue to seek a natural mechanism, because that’s what scientists do, but they may (probably?) acknowledge the possibility of a supernatural intervention by God.
As Christian outside observers (non-scientists) we may lean towards a supernatural mechanism, but we have to simply accept that science (rightly) will continue to look for a natural mechanism, because that’s what science does.
Well, I think you work on developing a model, starting with the most basic you can think of, testing it, and see if you can make it better. Sometimes, which I think this is probably more where you are, you can’t just make an all-encompassing model, so in that case you model bits and pieces. For instance, in OoL research, homochirality is just one of several big problems that would need to be solved. The homochirality problem is one that I would think would generate several predictable models that could be tested.
Ultimately, we never know exactly what happened (I’m totally open to God’s intervention) but I firmly believe that current OoL research is just scratching the surface of what we could explore.
So what? Live your life with a gap of knowledge that we don’t know the OOL.
Given all we have to do where should the priority be here?
Can you expand on this?
You think 60 years of research is a long time?. It took 100 years to detect gravitational waves from Einstien GR (1915) to LIGO (2015). It took mankind a few million years to walk then run a 4 minute mile. And it took for life on Earth 4 billion years to make an Iphone X max. What’s your rush?
For who? Science research progresses by level of funding and the progress being made. The money pours in once a key breakthrough is made.
OK, I think that’s reasonably, but very subjective. That’s fine, but I wouldn’t expect scientists, especially those in OoL research, to agree with you. 
I personally would never want to suggest anything but wild speculation, but I would give it another 50 years or so. I think we’re now getting many of the tools (especially in computational and molecular biology) that should help. I would guess we’ve rounded the corner on actually trying to understand the main problems, the next stage probably involves generating more complete models, before finally getting to the point where we could really determine which model is most likely.
Absolutely not! There are many many Christian scientists, for instance, who hold to methodological naturalism (rules of the game in science) and would absolutely claim that there are metaphysical explanations.
In fact, it’s the metaphysical/theological explanations that are more important to me, by far. That God created the universe and all that is in it (including the first life) is a fundamental doctrine to Christianity.
Well, because it’s probably still a chemical problem, not fundamentally a biological one. So for instance autocatalysis and the kinetic vs thermodynamics models in that paper should be explored to determine if they can lead to plausible homochiral precursors.
Ultimately for life you have to mass produce AA’s we know that system produces homo chiral AA’s
Here is a partial diagram. We could possibly test to see if life is possible with a subset of this or without this. I am pretty skeptical of life without this system.
I’m not sure, but to me methodological naturalism seems to be based on the premise that only natural causes are possible. So as I see it, what ends up happening is that scientists are forced, it seems either willingly or unwillingly, to make statements to the effect that either “we don’t know,”, or we haven’t yet found a natural explanation, but we expect to eventually. They are not allowed, I contend unjustifiably, to say that there’s also a possibility that it may be a cause outside of the natural realm even if it’s a reasonable and truthful statement to make.
I think this gives a false impression to the public in general, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that God is not an option, which to me whether intentional or unintentional is wrong at best and deceitful at worst. And it seems to me a case can be made that the media, and naturalistic scientists and academics exploit this to convince especially young people that God is “unscientific” with the connotation being it is just foolishness.
I understand the underlying principle of making an extensive search for natural causes, but at the same time this shouldn’t be to the point of going beyond the reasonable to what, I would say, is obviously way beyond those bounds. But I believe this is what happens when the underlying assumption of MN, that there are no other causes but natural causes, is adhered to.
So I see that it’s not only misleading to the public, but leads scientists to more or less waste countless hours of manpower and funding on chasing after pretty far fetched ideas when they could be focusing on more concrete ideas that will be beneficial to society. If it wasn’t for those downsides I frankly wouldn’t be bothered about it.
Why is it an unreasonable and unjustified assumption since in the entire history of human scientific endeavor there’s never been a single independently corroborated case of supernatural intervention. Not one. Ever. In anything.
You get the same offer everyone else who rails against MN gets. Please explain how to do scientific research when you have to allow for unpredictable, undetectable, and unrepeatable interference from a supernatural Loki God. If you have no “supernatural” methodology then you have no right to squawk about the proven effectiveness of MN.
Why? Why would you judge at all based on hearsay? Why not withhold judgment?
Wouldn’t that just be more hearsay?
I would suggest as scientists, they have to expect to find a natural explanation, and therefore comments along the lines of we don’t know yet, but expect to eventually find a natural answer, are normal and expected, even from Christians, when talking as scientists.
Supernatural answers, by definition fall outside of science. As Christians we should be speaking up to suggest the possibility of supernatural answers, but we shouldn’t confuse that with science. It shouldn’t be up to scientists to suggest God as an option, that should be up to Christians to make sure that message is conveyed to the public.
Scientist’s who are Christian’s are in a somewhat awkward spot. In an ideal world, they could talk as scientists and as Christians, but I think it’s hard for them do that without their words being taken out of context either by one side or another in the public debate.
It’s well above zero. Scientists have found functional RNA enzymes in randomly assembled RNA libraries:
What are scientists supposed to do with the possibility of supernatural answers? Imagine if we are talking about a detective trying to solve a murder. If we told the detective that the murder victim might have been killed by God, what is the detective supposed to do with that? Should the detective stop looking for a human suspect?
So should we just stop doing research on abiogenesis? Should we take everything we currently don’t know in science and say that they all have a supernatural answer, close down all of our labs, and then be done with it?
So let’s say that we do take God as an option. What do we do next? What’s the next step in this research?