This article might introduce a new and interesting concept to some, which is interesting, yet is confusing a conventional and intuitive notion of life with a more general definition.
I think trying to define life so it fits our intuition about the term, RNA-hypothesis can be necessary and sufficient. Darwinian evolution on the other hand is a more general concept that can potentially go beyond the life on our planet. It might be encoded into the physics of the universe. In that case self-organization, growth, reproduction and complexity can take place in many other contexts from computer viruses to ideas and from social memes to a potential/theoretical/extraterrestrial “life”. (As the article agrees)
My point here is that one random appearance of such physics may have given birth to RNA-based life on our planet that we can call Life One. Accepting the RNA hypothesis, that it evolved once, and that all its instances are relatives, there wouldn’t be much debate on what’s Life One. And Life Two or Life Thousand, theoretically predicted or really observed, wouldn’t confuse us.