Is the natural explanation a dead end???
For example...
Can it explain or offer the reason for "the origin of life"???
And if not..does it matter?
Not an easy question to answer, since either yes and no are right depending on what you mean by natural explanation.
There is very little data on what early life was like. The oldest bacteria fossils that are generally accepted as incontestable by the scientific community are a little over 3 billion years old. There are carbon-based rocks that appear to be made by biological chemistry dating to 3.8 billion years, but there is no concensus that these truly represent life.
The oldest rock formations on the surface of the Earth are only slightly over four billion years old, but there are some ancient crystals from Australia which date to over 4.2 billion years. Moon rocks brought back by Apollo and some meteorites on earth have been found dating back to 4.56 billion years.
So, no, based on the little data we have, there is not enough fossil evidence to draw any scientific conclusions as to how life arrived on Earth.
However, biologists have reasoned that the precursor to our type of DNA-based life was preceeded by life based on RNA alone.
Life for the last 3 billion years has been based on the three "magic" polymers, DNA, RNA, and proteins. However, there is persistent evidence that RNA can substitute for DNA and proteins for biological functions. This is because RNA can both store information (like DNA) and catalyse biological metabolism (like proteins). Also, many of the most basic metabolic molecules, such as ATP, AMP, GTP, and others, are constructed from single molecules of RNA. RNA alone isn't as efficient as DNA plus RNA plus proteins, but it looks good enough to support a primitive earlier version of life.
A number of biologists have experimented with self-replicating RNA molecules and have already even made them evolve in a primitive way. If the world before life based on DNA was preceeded by a world based on RNA, what preceeded the RNA world? No good answers, so far.
One conjecture that I happen to like is that life originated around undersea volcano vents. The high-temperature water circulating through these vents supports many complex chemical reactions, and I think it plausible this energy source is sufficient to act as a basic "metabolism" for supporting the precursors to life. One big advantage of this hypothesis is that life can arise without a star (the Sun) providing a stable energy source. A volcano-vent "cradle of life" can work on any planet or moon that has water, regardless of the temperature provided by the local "Sun".
On a related subject, scientists in India observed a "red rain" after a certain meteor shower in 2001. Examining the rain water, they found many microscopic cell-like structures, only without nuclei or DNA. These cell-like structures reproduce. Even at very high temperatures approaching 600 degrees (F), beyond the tolerance of any known life-form.
Are these alien life-forms? Or some Earth-bound life forms previously undetected? Or is it all just some poorly-done science?
If we sent a probe to some distant star, and life is detected, it will matter a great deal if that life is the same as ours or not. If such life is not based on DNA, RNA and proteins, or even if it is not based on the same genetic code, then such life originated independently of our own.
