Thanks Martin, I can't answer for them of course, but referring to Walker and Davies comments in From Life to Matter, I think they would say, yes, there are natural processes that result in features such as what you describe. (I quoted the relevant comments in my post so you may want to look at that.) That is what they call the "easy" problem of life. But the hard problem is the reality that information is needed, and if information, then memory and time. Information is not needed for the salt crystals, but is needed for the creation of high copy numbers of very complex objects and especially the combination of very complex objects necessary for life.