[jonnathanson]

Quanta isn't The Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. It's not a scholarly scientific journal, meant for an audience of specialists in a particular field. It's a popular-science publication, meant for a lay audience. A smarter-than-average lay audience, perhaps, but a lay audience all the same. From the About page:

"Quanta is an editorially independent online publication launched by the Simons Foundation to enhance public understanding of science."

The key phrase here is "enhance public understanding." It's natural that the public, upon encountering a theory of the origins of life, will think about Darwin. The article anticipates this line of thought and addresses it.

I see nothing egregiously wrong here. Shouldn't we support publications for attempting to bring thoughtful, well-meaning, reasonably well researched science journalism to the lay public? This article does some spoon-feeding, but spoon-feeding is better than junk-feeding, and it's certainly better than no feeding at all.