Well, I've managed to avoid opening the new incarnation of this continuing thread up to now, but I see that we still seem to be going over the same ground again. But there's one of pete's concerns that I don't think think has been addressed yet. He's said quite a few times that "abiogenesis is a massive problem"; but really, I don't see it as a problem at all. It's true that if you think of a lifeless material giving rise to an enlivened one it's hard to see how it comes about, but that's much more to do with language than with what is present in the world. If challenged, I think both pete and others on this thread would be willing to say that life is a complex concept, including such characteristics as self-organisation and reproduction. Assuming that is agreed, there is no reason that all of these need appear simulatanously, meaning that the tranisition from non-living to living need not be an event, but a spectrum in which non-living and living denote the endpoints. And there is some support for this being a linguistic issue when we look at debates on whether things like viruses are living are non-living. Don't get me wrong - viruses are still extremely complicated and I am not suggesting viruses as an intermediate form in any other sense than linguistically.