Agree, but science is working on it! And answers are starting to come in. Little results here and there. Little by little. That’s how science works. Knowledge increases in small steps. While religion is static. I am hopeful that we will learn much in the years ahead.
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Yes Patrick… you are hopeful… just don’t mistake your hope as having already been established.
Learn to differentiate between actual science and the things you believe/hope for based on your faith/world view. This will help you understand what exactly you believe and why.
For example scientists could make progress and conclude that self organisation doesn’t happen beyond a limit. It won’t be the first time a promising hypothesis has been disproved.
Expectation of scientific progress is not the same as expectations that science will confirm our beliefs in the future. The latter is faith.
Give him a break 
, he did just concede the point. You are right too. We just do not know how the first life emerged.
I am not bullying him. Its my observation that many people confuse hopes based on materialism with actual science. This leads to an inability to differentiate between faith based convictions vis a vis evidence based convictions.
And since Patrick takes a lot of comfort from his beliefs being substantiated by evidence… I thought knowing the boundaries would be beneficial to him. 
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I’m glad you pushed back. Just don’t kick him while he is down. He gave a really good and correct answer.
Affirm the common ground instead of continuing the assault, right?
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Its not an assault. My brother and Dad are atheists. I am just pointing out what i have observed to be a blind spot. The purpose is to be helpful.
Sometimes they genuinely don’t realise the boundary between their beliefs and science.Take Dawkins for example… He seems to think science provides a framework for approaching things like the meaning/purpose in life.
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Just a metaphor. You were being nice. No worries.
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Yes, I am hopeful that medical science can find the cure for a disease before I (or you or our families) get it.
And yes, I am careful about false claims and pseudo science like homeopathic medicine. A concern I have is the hindrance of science by various religious groups. The whole discussion of limitations on stem cell research was unfortunate. I am all for ethical research but most times that religions stick their nose in science it is not to protect humans but to instead to protect or to not offend their God.
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By that, you seem to mean that you are hopeful that science will eventually provide an account of the origin of life which requires no planning, no design. In other words, that is the answer that you would prefer – as opposed to the answer that says planning was necessary. But why let preferences guide one in origins questions? Why not just say: Maybe design was needed, and maybe it wasn’t; I will accept whatever the truth turns out to be? Why the wish that the non-design answer should be the right one?
No, by that I mean that I am hopeful that in my cognitive lifetime, science will gather enough data to be quite sure how life on Earth started. Look at how big bang cosmology has matured into a precise science. And how the fossil and DNA evidence of human origins and human history has progressed. The OOL on this planet will come in focus from chemistry, astrobiology, and biology. And I look forward to many surprise discoveries that no body would have ever guessed.
As for ID, this god of the gaps ideology will wither and fade away.
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I see no reason to waste a nano-second of any neuron’s time speculating whether any God was involved in the origin of life, but I voted “don’t know” simply because to say that I know would be to assign a level of certainty to the claim I don’t think can really be supported. I also don’t know that life wasn’t created by an extraterrestrial civilization, or demons, or ghosts, or fairies.
It’s a bit like saying I also don’t know that influenza isn’t really caused by a virus, it could be God doing it. How could I claim to know a divine being isn’t causing influenza? Or obesity? Or that God is making it rain today?
I suppose it comes down to what exactly we mean when we say we know something. If knowledge requires being absolutely certain, then we don’t know.
The history of science is one long argument against waiting around for supernatural explanations, however.
Coming to a horse race where one horse(natural explanations) has won millions of races against the other horse(divine and other types of occult “explanations”), and yet somehow still being convinced this next one will be won by the Occult-causes horse that lost the million previous races seems irrationally hopeful in the extreme.
Sure, it could win it, I can’t predict the future, so do I really know for certain that it won’t? No. Is it worth seriously entertaining the idea that it will for that reason alone? No.
History is a teacher here. Science has found there was a natural explanation for the diversity and evolution of life, and so many other things, and that there is even a physical and material basis for life (cells are physical and chemical entities), so I’d say we already know enough to say that a direct role for God in life’s origin is extremely improbable and not even worth considering.
If a God has had any role in life’s origin, it must have been very indirect, perhaps through the laws of physics being set up in a way that in a large enough universe, the conditions conducive to life’s origin will obtain on at least one planet. But literally pushing the molecules around and zapping DNA and other stuff into existence? Don’t be ridiculous.
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