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Next, you give reasons why you want to make this particular distinction. Because nothing should be implied about origins of life or life without an intelligent designer.

Who said anything about "nothing should be implied"?

If I may be so bold as to suggest that there is a disjoint in your response, it's that it ignores the issue that I suspect Gore3000 was speaking to, namely that there is something special to life, more than the combination of its laboratory components, that humans aren't given to reproduce.

No disjoint. And I didn't ignore the issue since I stated plainly that biological life is an ongoing, self-sustained, self-directed assemblage of chemical reactions and that there is no essence beyond that (the allusion to the vitamin C vitalists) that makes it living. Though I should say that there has been observed no essence or anything beyond the physico/chemical properties necessary for the maintenance of life. In many cases, one can suspend the chemical processes by low temperatures (somewhat below the freezing temperature of water, or in a -80C freezer, or in a liquid nitrogen tank) and start them up again and the particular 'life' go on as before. That this is more easily accomplished in simple (bacteria, yeast, or cell culture) rather than complex organisms or in coldblooded (small insects, amphibians, and fish) rather than in mammals doesn't mean that the biological activity of the more complex and/or mammalian is sustained by some pervading "life force", just that increasing systemic complexity is more easily irreparably disrupted (this is why you can freeze HeLa cells in liquid nitrogen and revive them but not do the same for Henrietta from which they originally came, though people hope to be able to do that for Ted Williams some day).

Whether or not you want it or not, thoughts about the fundamental idea of what life [is] are changing.

And few are in a better position than I to appreciate this.

Who said anything about "nothing should be implied"?

Merely your emphatic statements about what it does not imply about origin of life.

And I didn't ignore the issue since I stated plainly that biological life is an ongoing, self-sustained, self-directed assemblage of chemical reactions and that there is no essence beyond that (the allusion to the vitamin C vitalists) that makes it living.

Yes, but at issue here is starting that ongoing, self-sustained, etc. in the laboratory. That is, breaking the continuity of a previous chain of being and starting a new one. And a disagreement about the newness of this life is not a disconnect.

You bring up some excellent tangents such as nutrition and suspension of life which contribute to the overall difficulty of exactly defining life. BTW, human cells are just as easy to freeze as fish, or whatever. It's just more difficult to freeze larger, whole organisms. But I think you'll agree with me that this is a technical complication and not a theoretical one.

And few are in a better position than I to appreciate this.

Now you have me curious! Care to expand?