To anser your question on the same plane: The ability of science to explain any and everything is what a materialist believes. That has no ability to be proven from science either. It is a pact among equals to say it is so, not science.
Philosophical materialism isn't an assumption of science - methodological naturalism is. It's axiomatic that the scientific method cannot distinguish between a miracle and a natural occurrence that is yet to be explained. Personally, I think the track record of philosophical supernaturalism has been rather poor. But I don't consider that a scientific conclusion. (Would that be falsifiable? I don't know.)
From where I sit, the honest observation from nature can only lead one to one conclusion: that all intelligence comes from intelligence,
Except when someone is born with an IQ that's higher than that of their parents'.
inorganic never births organic,
As chrisg2001 has pointed out, organic molecules are formed from inorganic all the time. This was first demonstrated in the early 1800's, IIRC. Then of course there was Miller's simple experiment which produced a very impressive variety of organics.
But if you're referring to the first self-replicating thing that we'd call "alive", then yes, it's still in the speculative phase. Abiogenesis researchers are trying to figure out what scenarios were most plausible, given what we know about chemistry and what we think we know about the particular conditions on the early Earth. We're always clear that the origin of life is on the bleeding edge of biological science.
The speculation that it happened once upon a time was called spontaneous generation and mocked. Now it is believed as a scientific explanation? I personally don't think so.
You have it wrong. Spontaneous generation was the theory that multicellular organisms - flies - spontaneously emerged from rotting meat. This is clearly impossible, as multicelled organisms are way too complex to spontaneously come together from random arrangements of organic chemicals.
The real question before actual biologists is: How complex was the first self-replicator? If the first self-replicating entity was something like the Ghadiri peptide, at a mere 32 amino acids long, then it's quite plausible that the process got going early on. If it takes several proteins and/or RNA strands of 200 units or more to get the ball rolling, then it's clearly implausible. Nobody knows yet just how simple such a system can be. To say that it's been proven impossible because nobody has created life in the lab yet is ridiculous. Give it another 20 years, and if they haven't made great strides by then, then you can gloat.
Every experiment to prove spontaneous generation is initiated by a scientist yielding the very model of intelligent design.
Now this I consider an evil argument. (But it's subtle, so I don't blame you for using it.) If the very fact that an experiment is intelligently designed invalidates any finding of non-design in nature, then that automatically invalidates every experiment that has ever been made about anything. It's the very nature of an experiment to have some aspects of the phenomenon under test to be controlled. The purpose of an experiment is to limit the chaos & variability of wild nature so that we can isolate causes. You can't do that without intelligently designing the experiment. Any experiment, about anything.
It's subtle maybe to a moron, but as you say it attempts to invalidate science itself.
Not too surprising, considering the goals of the Discovery Institute.
Well put.
"We're always clear that the origin of life is on the bleeding edge of biological science."
Again, well put. That's what I've been taught.(if I understand you correctly)
The introducing of Darwin to explain the origin of life is probably one of the most frustrating misconceptions in this whole discussion.
"This is clearly impossible, as multicelled organisms are way too complex to spontaneously come together from random arrangements of organic chemicals."
"way too complex" Interesting choice of words given our topic under discussion. There are limits and boundaries for scientific conclusions to be viable.
ThirstyMan: Every experiment to prove spontaneous generation is initiated by a scientist yielding the very model of intelligent design.
jennyp: Now this I consider an evil argument. (But it's subtle, so I don't blame you for using it.) If the very fact that an experiment is intelligently designed invalidates any finding of non-design in nature, then that automatically invalidates every experiment that has ever been made about anything.
Yes you are very right. In our situation though, the lab environment, primordial as has been said, must have been able to exist without the aid of a controller/designer. From what I've seen so far that environment cannot have existed outside of a lab (due to the presence of hydrogen?).
Nice discussion jennyp, thanks. Sorry for my disjointed participation, my wife went in for surgery yesterday and my 'puter time is very limited.