"Calling some process natural should suggest it is a common thing found in nature" - not in the least! 'Ball lightening' is an entirely natural phenomenon but is extremely rare. The same can be said of other phenomena.
We do see rare examples in nature of some phenomena, the fact we never see somethings credited being in nature is quite another, especially when the exact opposite is the rule.
I ask again: Is it possible to state categorically that life could not have originated on Earth by itself? Much too early to say.
I ask again: Is it possible to state categorically that life could not have originated on Earth by itself? Much too early to say.
Unless there is some possibility, even at highly unreachable odds, you have to have something to suggest makes life remotely possible on its own. You don’t have even a hypothesis let alone a theory, so you are basing your hopes on we don’t know, not it is possible, but we don’t know.
You lack a detailed understanding of cell biology, as much as I do, in order to make such an assessment.
Highly trained professional biologists who devote their working lives to research into this subject clearly believe a natural explanation is achievable. Otherwise, why they waste their careers, not to mention scarce funding, searching for an impossible solution?
I ask again: Is it possible to state categorically that life could not have originated on Earth by itself? Much too early to say.
Biology doesn’t address life’s beginnings so you are completely wrong here, chemistry does and you have rejected two chemists already with one a world class chemist. There is nothing for biology to discuss until there is life! What I know about design theory is something that you ignore without any reason you can defend. Your argumentative approach is you don’t know, not a strong argument to make a case.
Arguably, 'life' is the point at which mere chemistry becomes biology?
Of course it's a proper field of investigation for Biologists and research into the origin of life continues apace. All we can do is to follow that research and await developments.
What we would be wise to do is to avoid rash speculation when we don't possess even a fraction of the knowledge needed to draw such conclusions!
How is suggesting without interference matter will on its own without anything directing the processes to form up and become life, where matter would have to form up against the natural tendency to degrade, not rash speculation?
The question is deeply intriguing and the challenge of recreating an event from some four billion years ago, when we don't even know the precise conditions that existed, is monumental.
But does that mean we're in a position yet to reach a firm conclusion about the explanation for life? No!
You may hate to your back teeth that we all need to be patient and wait for developments in the field of research but that's where we are and you're not in aposition to declare what the outcome must be at this time.
If everything we see and know in the here and now refutes the possibilities of self-formation leading to life, how is it that you think we don't know enough to dismiss the hypothesis outright?
Even in manufacturing the start of building a device in a factory's clock for processing time so they know the throughput of their processes only starts when the parts are delivered to the factory floor so they could start being built. All of the billions of years before the parts are all in the same place, in the right qualities, in the right conditions, and so on are meaningless. From that point on it isn't how much time we can use, it is the timing for formation events that must be joined at the right time, in the right ways, in the right conditions. Forming life isn't helped by saying billions of years took place at the start of time.
"Calling some process natural should suggest it is a common thing found in nature" - not in the least! 'Ball lightening' is an entirely natural phenomenon but is extremely rare. The same can be said of other phenomena.