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"Well, see, there you go. Nearly everyone would understand that "evolution" means the origin of life -- life from non-life."

No, nearly everyone would not, and those that did would be mistaken. Evolution is about the adaptation and change of life over time.

"Charles Darwin's book was titled "The ORIGIN of the Species."

Right, not "The Origin of Life". If that's what he meant that's what he would have said. All the many species originated after life existed. He said "origin of species" because that's what he meant.

"But since no one can agree on what "evolution" is exactly, how can you claim that there is proof of something that is ill-defined?"

Just because you are confused about something doesn't mean everyone else is. The concept of evolution is not ill-defined.

"Life began only once."

That's an assumption. You are doing what you criticize others for. In fact you don't know that it couldn't have originated in multiple times and locations and either had very similar chemistry each time, or the more robust variation overwhelmed the other starts.

"Life began only once. That is why it is beyond the competence of science to investigate how life began. Science can only test through experiments phenomenon that are occurring in the present. "

Again wrong. There is no reason in principle that scientists couldn't test hypothesis for the origin of life in a lab. In fact many such tests regarding various elements of such scenarios have been tested in labs over the years.

"Life began only once." That's an assumption.

Well, that's true. But what I was trying to say is that we cannot observe, much less test, the creation of life. The origin of life is in the past.

Life is not originating NOW, in the present tense.

As a result, we cannot observe the creation or origin of life and we cannot test or experiment on the creation of life.

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There is no reason in principle that scientists couldn't test hypothesis for the origin of life in a lab.

That's not correct.

And this again highlights confusion over what you mean by evolution.

You could test the hypothesis: Researchers can create life in the laboratory, true or false? Or more accurately state the NULL hypothesis: Researchers cannot create life in the laboratory, and then try to prove the null hypothesis false.

But that is not the question with evolution.

The question of evolution is where did we come from? How did we get here?

First, if scientists created life in the laboratory, they would be using the fore-knowledge of how life operates by "reverse engineering" and copying from existing, natural life. So they would be "cheating" in effect.

That is, they would be imposing INTELLIGENT DESIGN upon their efforts. They would be using what we know about life to GUIDE the re-creation of life.

But the first time around, there would be no benefit of any intelligent design to guide the process. So it is not the same thing at all.

Second, all the researchers would be demonstrating is that researchers can create life in the laboratory... NOT how did life actually begin on Earth.

Again, the problem is DEFINING what the question is. IF the question is what happened the first time, as I insist it is, you cannot test that without a time machine.