[Fatalis]

However, even if such a 'first cause' existed, that would be at the beginning of the chain of events that led to the existence of life, which means that you could still have 'blind materialistic forces' being responsible for life, so long as those 'blind materialistic forces' were, themselves, part of the chain that began at the 'first cause'.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but your statement seems to say that it's OK to call the forces blind, even though science isn't addressing the question of whether or not the forces had a cause that wasn't blind.

Why is there a need to characterize material forces as blind or otherwise, from a scientific perspective?

I don't see any, and it seems to me that letting such nonscientific statements leak into the discussion is the source of a lot of mischief.

[Dimensio]

Why is there a need to characterize material forces as blind or otherwise, from a scientific perspective?

Blind, in this context, simply means that there's no intelligent drive behind the forces. Science assumes as much because, thus far, there's no evidence to assume some extraneous intelligence. If there is some intelligence behind it all, then it's thus far remained outside of the observations of science (and if the intelligence is supernatural, then it will always be outside of science's scope).