"No matter how abiogenesis and spontaneous generation are lexicographically manipulated, they share the meaning of life arising from nonliving matter."
Simplistically, yes. But not phenomenologically. Spontaneous generation never tried to mechanistically explain how living matter could be derived from nonliving matter. Also, spontaneous generation assumed that whole, modern, adult, functional organisms arose from the material of their immediate environment. Spontaneous generation was also infected with the concept of vitalism, the view that life was somehow special, energetic and powerful, a kind of all-prevailing force that permeated the biosphere and could reorganize inanimate matter into animate life.
Abiogenesis, on the other hand, has many explanations for how living matter could be derived from nonliving matter, all based on known physiochemical mechanisms and nearly all testable. Abiogenesis assumes that the first "living" matter would be the molecules of life, that these molecules would then be organized into primitive molecules, that would then be organized into primitive cells. Meanwhile, natural selection and mutation -- good old fashioned Darwinian mechanisms -- would evolve these primitive molecules and cells into better, more efficient molecules and cells. Abiogenesis also rejects vitalism in favor of known mechanistic physiochemical processes that are not governed by some overall guiding organizing force, but are governed by the basic laws of the universe.
The important difference is that spontaneous generation was one last attempt to preserve the mystical in the face of scientific advancement, whereas abiogenesis is pure science.
"There is no importance in whether the event was spontaneous, like the Egyptian serpent, or aided, like Prometheus' clay man."
But there is if the process is gradual and governed by known y is true, and is still observed today.
"...he falsified the drawings of the embryos and his long-lived contribution to evolution has become known as one of the most famous fakes in biology."
This claim is an out-right lie. Haeckel committed no fraud. Nothing has ever been proven and his contemporary accusers were mostly other scientists jealous of his success. The most he did was in fact a common practice before the development of photomicroscopy, and in fact is still common practice today. Finely detailed drawings were necessary only in educational texts; otherwise microscopic objects can be so detailed that to show everything would have been confusing. As such, it was (and still is) common practice when drawing microscopic objects to emphasize important details and de-emphasize or ignore unnecessary details. Haeckel not only did nothing wrong, he did exactly what a professional biologist of his time was expected to do.
The fact that Haeckel committed no fraud can be easily verified by anyone in this group, even Joseph. If you look through a microscope at embryos in various stages of development, you will see exactly what Haeckel saw, which is what developmental biologists still see. It's a little hard for Haeckel to perpetrate a fraud when his observations can be directly verified or refuted by anyone with a microscope.
Kevin L. O'Brien