>>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 origin—and thereby implying that if no answer is immediately forthcoming from science, none ever will be—is 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?
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.
I don't think it's about our being smart enough to answer Stein's question, but rather about our having enough information at the present time to answer it. As for the limitations of science, they no doubt exist, but where they lie precisely with respect to any specific empirical question cannot be determined a priori; we have to keep working, continue moving towards seeing what it is we can know and what it is we can't know.
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?
No, not really. Living things are part of the furniture of the physical world; there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to continue to expand our knowledge of them indefinitely, or until we decide we've learned all there is to learn about them (and who knows whether that day will ever come?).