No Witnesses

Facts don't have to be repeatable. In science, the observation of facts has to be repeatable.You don't have to be able to replay the eruption of a volcano. You only have to be able to observe the ash layers, lava flows, etc. to infer what happened.

For example, we can observe objects moving in the universe and from those observations we can infer that that motion must have had a beginning. We don't have to observe the Big Bang directly to know that it must have happened. We have observed the chemistry. We understand the individual steps petty well. All that's missing is the exact sequence of steps required to form an organism.(By the way, no intelligent agency can do anything but manipulate the natural behaviour of the chemcals.) It's still pretty early in the season. The stubble is pretty short but I can't jump as high as I used to.

In the case of the Big Bang, we infer an origin from the observed motion of "heavenly bodies". In the case of abiogenesis (not evolution), we infer an origin from the observed chemistry of organisms. Where's the difference? It's incorrect to say we have "no scientific explanation". We have a scientific explanation that isn't quite complete. You're suggestng that there's no road from New York to Los Angeles just because a few miles haven't been paved yet. I'm saying that it's all natural processes. No intelligence that we know of can do anything but tweak the natural processes that already exist. Intelligence is a complete non-answer to the question of origins.

Certainly. And if the road we're on turns out to be a dead end, we'll abandon it. But for the moment, there simply is no alternative. It's the only road we have and it would be silly to stop in our tracks just because there may be some unforseen obstacle ahead. Instead, we should be prepared to handle the obstacles when we do meet them. You're just adding another unknown. Why not go with what we do know instead of hypothesisizing some spooky miracle?You seem to be suggesting that because there might be some impassible stretches on the road, we should rely on aliens to teleport us to LA. I'm suggesting that we should just get in the car and drive until we can't drive no more.Edited by ringo, : Add'd an apostrohe.

Saying that abiogenesis is a fact is not the same as saying that we've "arrived". Abiogenesis is a fact in that there once was no life and now there is life. Abiogenesis happened, whether by ordinary every day chemistry or by God-given miracle. We haven't "arrived" at a complete expanation yet but we do know a lot about how it could have happened naturally. We know absolutely nothing about how it could have happened miraculously - and we never can know. I find it odd that you consider partial knowledge of how chemstry works "less plausible" than zero knowledge about how God works.