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Quoth Szostak: "Since the first cells had no biochemical machinery to mediate the growth and division of their membrane boundaries, there must be purely physical and chemical processes that allow membrane vesicles to grow and divide. Our goal is to find out what those processes could be."

Cannot we see that here Szostak is "begging the question?" If the natural world conducted itself according to Szostak's own personal will, then surely his statement would be correct. The point is, the statement is incorrect, because the natural world is not subject to Szostak's personal will. It is what it is, independently of Szostak's desires for it. He wants the universe to be intelligible on his terms. Evidently he has yet to consider that it may not be intelligible on his terms. In which case, he has a choice: He can be either a scientist or an ideologue.

You wrote: "Szostak's model will eventually have to come to terms with this need to gather (non-autonomous) messages while not losing the ability to toggle back to being autonomous." You can't rely on "smart chemistry" forever. But if you could, you'd first have to explain how the chemistry "got smart" in the first place.

Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for your excellent essay/post!

Cannot we see that here Szostak is "begging the question?" If the natural world conducted itself according to Szostak's own personal will, then surely his statement would be correct. The point is, the statement is incorrect, because the natural world is not subject to Szostak's personal will. It is what it is, independently of Szostak's desires for it. He wants the universe to be intelligible on his terms. Evidently he has yet to consider that it may not be intelligible on his terms. In which case, he has a choice: He can be either a scientist or an ideologue.

Very well said, dearest sister in Christ!