<< You're not thinking in the correct way. The instigation of any form of
life or pre-life (depending on your definition of life) would be a
chance event that happened to "catch on" and continue due to fecundity
greater than one. >>

TH
Chance event? How can you have a random event
in a non random environment?
Ex. take the Miller prebiotic experiments (which is
nothing but a non random heat cycle) and try it
3 times.
Is each time totally random? No its predictabley the
same.
Life is what came out of a non random heat cycle in
the environment.

Chance event that happened to 'catch on" and continue
due to fecundity? And was it under some magical protection in the meantime? The
greatest enzyme would be destroyed by heat that day unless it first was able
to survive the heat cycle.
Nothing can be selected that is opposed to the environment it is being selected
in. That includes prebiotic life.<< 

RM
Incorrect. All it takes is one chemical that can catalyze its own
production, via an auto-catalytic cycle, to achieve fecundity greater
than one, and that chemical (and all the other chemicals within its
cycle) obtain a survival advantage over the many other chemicals that
aren't part of any auto-catalytic cycle, and in particular obtain a big
advantage over any other chemicals that are alternate byproducts of the
same input chemicals. >>

No they don't. A rock that can survive the heat will last
longer than any autocatalytic cycle that is burned up.
And if you are searching for a magic ribozyme,
you'll have to have an impossible-to-happen fluke event.
Then add another for amino acids, a third for the cell, a fourth for bringing
them together at the same time and same place, a fifth for having them become
symbiotic and work together, etc.

So we have a fluke event to the 5 th power.
Not going to happen.

IF on the other hand all this was environmentally induced
then all would happen as a result of that solar energy imput and  chemical
selection. You would also have
a type of symbiotic chemistry at the same temp each day that would keep some
chemical processes working while destroying others. Thus bringing all the
selected winning parts together automatically.

No need for a bit of independent chemical action or self replication, self
metabolism, self synthesis, etc. for
billions of years. Now which is more likely

A sun powered life for billions of years till it got
its chemical act together
or a fluke event to the fifth power (that flat out can't happen)

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