Miller and Urey Experiment: What has changed?

I'd consider that an argument in favour of abiogenesis. If viruses have some of the characteristics of life but not all, then the distinction between living and non-living matter is blurred.

Viruses are pretty successful as they are. What environmental "pressure" would there be for them to evolve a fundamentally different lifestye?

I'm not sure what "intermediate" has to do with it. My point was that there is no fundamental difference between non-living and living matter; in fact, you have to bring in artificial criteria like metabloism to make a classification. It's possible that a virus-like "thing" could evolve a metabolism-like capability if there was some advantage to it.

You don't have to work so hard at missing the point. Cearly, there is controversy over whether or not viruses are "alive". That makes my point. There just is no clearly-defined difference between "alive" and "not alive".The broader point, again, is that some virus-like "thing" could have evolved a metabloism-like capability if there was some advantage to it. That possibiliy is all that is needed for abiogenesis to happen.