I've seen several posts from conservative Christians here citing the lack of a scientific explanation for the origin of life as an argument for the existence of God, the validity of creationism, and/or the validity of scripture. IMO, they're all variations of the fallacy of arguing from ignorance, but nonetheless, it's been made pretty clear that this gap in our knowledge is something conservative Christians love to point to.
I've responded to these posts by pointing out the obvious flaw and risk in this argument, namely that if the lack of an explanation for the origin of life is evidence for God and scripture, then if scientists do manage to develop a plausible scenario, logically it would be evidence against God and scripture. Arguing otherwise is a classic "trying to have it both ways". That's pretty risky, especially given the history of scientists figuring things out that had previously been declared to be unsolvable and "the providence of God" (as explained by N.D. Tyson in a video someone else posted here).
I bring this up because I came across this a couple of days ago...
Researchers may have solved origin-of-life conundrum
Now don't go too far with the headline. It's a bit misleading and obviously "click bait", but the point is that in origin of life (OOL) research, there's been a fundamental puzzle about how the basic starting compounds that were on the early earth ended up producing nucleic acids, amino acids, and lipids. Those are three different classes of compounds, so how could they have been produced? From the article...
There's no need to get bogged down in the details, and this is most certainly not a "we've figured it all out" thing. However, this is a very significant discovery in OOL research and serves to demonstrate my point. It's one thing to bet against scientists figuring something out...it's something else to publicly tie your faith to them not figuring it out. History shows that more than likely, you're going to lose. IMO, it's far better to accept God's creation as it is, rather than as you demand it be.
I've responded to these posts by pointing out the obvious flaw and risk in this argument, namely that if the lack of an explanation for the origin of life is evidence for God and scripture, then if scientists do manage to develop a plausible scenario, logically it would be evidence against God and scripture. Arguing otherwise is a classic "trying to have it both ways". That's pretty risky, especially given the history of scientists figuring things out that had previously been declared to be unsolvable and "the providence of God" (as explained by N.D. Tyson in a video someone else posted here).
I bring this up because I came across this a couple of days ago...
Researchers may have solved origin-of-life conundrum
Now don't go too far with the headline. It's a bit misleading and obviously "click bait", but the point is that in origin of life (OOL) research, there's been a fundamental puzzle about how the basic starting compounds that were on the early earth ended up producing nucleic acids, amino acids, and lipids. Those are three different classes of compounds, so how could they have been produced? From the article...
There's no need to get bogged down in the details, and this is most certainly not a "we've figured it all out" thing. However, this is a very significant discovery in OOL research and serves to demonstrate my point. It's one thing to bet against scientists figuring something out...it's something else to publicly tie your faith to them not figuring it out. History shows that more than likely, you're going to lose. IMO, it's far better to accept God's creation as it is, rather than as you demand it be.
