[unlearner]

"I suppose you can make a word mean whatever you want it to mean, but self-assembly ought, in my opinion, require some actual self-assembly."

It is the best I could come up with to reference a supposed self organizing mechanism (or group of mechanisms) within nature. My comparison is the self organization of periodic elements. Any better description you come up with is welcome.

"If the process is gradual and effectively continuous, the borderline is arbitrary and the definition is fuzzy."

I have dismissed any requirement to establish the borderline. What must be demonstrated is that the process, at some point contains only lifeless matter, and, at some point, produces life. A distinction must be made between what is alive and what is not. If you cannot pinpoint the precise moment of the transition, it does not matter. But the transition must exist. And it must be evident.

"Is a citrus cycle an example of non-living matter?"

Now, what do you think? I have already clarified why things like assimilation and reproduction do not qualify. You must start with an environment which is naturally occurring and without life. From this environment must come life. So, no, no metabolic processes qualify. Living organisms are made out of components which are not alive by themselves - water for example. So the components are not a measure for the criteria.

[donh]

It is the best I could come up with to reference a supposed self organizing mechanism (or group of mechanisms) within nature. My comparison is the self organization of periodic elements. Any better description you come up with is welcome.

The chemical elements did not "self-organize" themselves on the periodic table. An abstract description of a thing is not an example of that thing self-organizing. This is a self-serving corrupt definition, and I think you should drop it.

What must be demonstrated is that the process, at some point contains only lifeless matter, and, at some point, produces life. A distinction must be made between what is alive and what is not. If you cannot pinpoint the precise moment of the transition, it does not matter. But the transition must exist. And it must be evident.

Or you'll take your ball and go home? How will your proposed lab experiment produce this effectively infinite stretch of continuous gradual change from lifeless to lifeful? I think it does matter. Your proposed experiment, as I have suggested before, can only demonstrate something about the instantaneous !poof! version of abiogenesis--for the obvious reason that IS a !poof! experiment. It can't significantly address what science actually does think is the way life formed--the only leverage we have for digging into that question, is the historical evidence buried in DNA, and in the stars, and in the rocks. None of which as much of a chance of being subject to affordable laboratory recreation any time soon.

"Is a citrus cycle an example of non-living matter?"

Now, what do you think?

I think you belong in the 14th century, in a monastery, constructing air-tight proofs of the existence of God, from the sheer force of your capacity to propound definitions. There's no reason I shouldn't consider a citrus cycle caught in closed system, such as a free floating bubble, a possible example of early life. I'm not all that far, morphologically, from describing an earthworm. The exact definition of "life" is not a touchstone of scientific inquiry, even though it is for your desperate attempts to make an imagined rigorously accurate laboratory creation of "life" somehow significantly relevant to the likelihood of natural abiogensis.