Is it reasonable to rule out God as an explanation for the mystery of the origin of life even though we do not have a current natural explanation? Note that this is under the assumption that we haven’t ruled out natural explanations for the origin of life. It is one thing to say that we don’t know a natural explanation for the origin of life. It is another to say that it is impossible for it to have occurred naturally. I am assuming the former since the latter has not been proven.
With that being said, my proposed argument would be an inductive one, assuming that God is not bound by the current laws of physics.
1.) Every physical process that we’ve observed has a physical cause
2.) Life is a physical process
3.) God is not a physical cause as per traditional conceptions of God
4.) Therefore God did not cause the origin of life
Note that in statement 1.) I do not say that a physical cause is the only cause. One may try to attack it by pointing out that I may use my mind or mental states that may arguably be non physical to move my hand. But there would still be a physical cause for my movement in two ways: a) in the fact that my mental states wouldn’t exist without the physical brain and b) the sequence of events that lead to the mechanical movement of my hand would be physical.
My second argument would be to argue to rule out God even if He was physical and only worked with physical causes (although I recognize this isn’t often argued). The argument would be as follows:
1.) If god caused the origin of life physically, this must have happened through some physical process
2.) Whatever physical process He would use to create life must be itself less complex than God Himself, given that He is proposed to be an infinite, all knowing, and all powerful Being
3.) God is assumed to be a brute fact, a Being with certain kinds of infinite attributes that exists without reason
4.) If G is for God and P is for the physical process, two possible explanations for the origin of life now are (G+P) and P by itself
4.) As per Occam’s razor, given the complexity of God, if one had to pick between (G+P) and P, it is more reasonable to simply believe that the physical process that would be bound by physical laws just existed as a brute fact that caused the origin of life
5.) Therefore, it is reasonable to rule out God as an explanation
If this kind of reasoning works, can this be applied to any other mystery of the universe as well? If it doesn’t, I’m interested in the weak points of these arguments.