To suggest, as Ben Stein's funny question suggests, that if a scientific answer to how life came to be cannot be made right this minute, then no scientific answer will be forthcoming, ever, is to suggest something which is false.
>>But the question he asks the “dude” professor in his television commercial for this movie is, frankly, silly: asking the professor how he explains life’s originand thereby implying that if no answer is immediately forthcoming from science, none ever will beis mere sophistry.<<
I have not seen the movie, but to me, that line in the commercial could mean more than what you stated. Remember that the professor had just asserted that different forms of life are explained by “unguided” and “undesigned” processes. I believe that none of us, including scientists, is smart enough to know the answer to Ben’s question, and some apologists for science are too arrogant. Science has some useful and impressive accomplishments, but it has limitations.
Have you considered the possibility that when humans try to understand life through human science, their understanding is like a worm’s understanding of humans?