Investigations typically begin with ambiguity and seek to better resolve the picture. Anyone interested in applying teleological concepts to the study of life might pay close attention to the way Origin Of Life (OOL) research is conducted in order to extract useful lessons. If one surveys this literature, you will find all sorts of speculations proposing how things might have happened, along with the circumstantial evidence that fits with these scenarios. In fact, there are so many different views that Michael Ruse once observed, " Indeed, to the outsider, one of the most striking things about origin of organisms inquiry today is the lack of unanimity" You will even find disputes about the nature of scientific inquiry itself:

quote:

In the field of the origin of life, scientists are divided into segregated schools that do not even agree on the standards of scientific inquiry. Ordinarily, science is perceived as the difficult search for an ever-more-comprehensive, true explanation of the world. But in the words of J. L. Bada and A. Lazcano ("Some like it hot, but not the first biomolecules," Perspectives, 14 June, p. 1982), the research into the prebiotic soup theory of the origin of life aims "to construct a coherent narrative." This is a remarkable statement. The objective scientific principle of a search for the truth is replaced by the subjective aesthetic principle of a well-constructed story. - Günter Wächtershäuser, Oct 25, 2002, Science

But you will not find powerful arguments establishing that abiogenesis did happen, even in a scientific sense. Clas Blomberg, a researcher of abiogenesis, writes that origin of life research "is aimed to show how it could have happened"(emphasis added/ J Ther Biol 187:541-554). And when it is time to evaluate various speculations about the origin of life, Blomberg points out that the "primary question is not: "is this the way it happened?", but rather, "what arguments support the possibility that it could have occurred this way and what speaks against it?""

A nice example of the ambiguity that is inherent in such investigation is found here. OOL researchers propose a speculative hypothesis that is supported by evidence that is little more than appearances. Yet I think there are three points that stand out:

1. Note this : We'll never have much definite information on the origin of life, he says. "But then, just because we'll never know why the Roman Empire fell doesn't mean it isn't worth talking about." But if life were designed, we'd likewise probably be without much definite information. Yet just as standard OOL are still worth talking about ,so too are notions of life's design. In fact, simply talking about life's design can leads to speculations of what this entailed and this in turn can feed back into a better understanding of life. The bottom line here is any attempt to squelch discussions of design until we first extract a data base of definite information (i.e., actual mechanisms, identity of design, etc.) are seriously misguided and do not understand the proper way to brainstorm about an ambiguous topic.

2. Note also that the researchers have a solution to one of several fundamental problems in origins - why do archaea and bacteria have very different membranes? However, notice what Thomas Cavalier-Smith, a leading expert, says about this part of their hypothesis - " It's quite impossible that it could be right." Yet the hypothesis is published in the peer-reviewed literature. Just because a leading authority may declare a speculation impossible, and even seems to have a point, doesn't mean we should not think about the speculation. All speculations, in their initial stages, are vulnerable to hyper-skepticism. To expect any speculation to somehow cause all the facts to suddenly fall into place is unrealistic.

3. Note this also, as it speaks for itself: "It may be that no theory is going to fit all the evidence. The trick is to pick which bits to ignore, says John Raven of the University of Dundee, UK. "To create a coherent hypothesis we have to say 'this bit of data doesn't fit, but we're going ahead anyway'." This illustrates what is commonly seen with OOL research - a good degree of slack is cut to these speculations, as everyone realizes the ambiguity of the topic and the great problem of extracting definite information about these events. Thus, when brain-storming, sometimes you have to ignore some lines of evidence, with the plan of returning to them once the original hypothesis is better worked out.

To summarize, we can see that OOL research is a field of inquiry that lacks consensus, focuses on how things could have happened because such speculation itself is simply worth talking about, tolerates hypotheses that some experts label as 'impossible,' and entails a certain degree of cherry-picking of the data. This is important to keep in mind because many expect ID to adhere to a much higher standard, whereby an initial ID hypothesis is supposed to have the properties of a scientific theory that has matured at the hands of thousands of scientists working over decades. ID theorists need only follow the example scientists have laid down as they explore the OOL.