1. The Stanley Miller / Harold Urey experiment of 1952.
This is a very famous experiment to test whether hypothesized conditions during the early Earth, some 3.5 billion years ago (when life is estimated to have begun), would naturally cause simple chemical precursors to form into more complex chemical precursors to life (such as amino acids). Indeed after Miller's death in 2007, vials from the original experiment were unsealed and found to contain more than 20 different amino acids (more than Miller-Urey reported at the time).
What's not generally known by the public is that Stanley Miller continued to repeat this experiment multiple times throughout his life until shortly before his death in 2007, each time adjusting the conditions of the experiment to match the best information from science concerning the likely conditions on Earth at the time life formed. He was able to repeatedly show that indeed more complex chemical precursors to life did indeed form given various hypothesized conditions.
Christian and noted cell and micro biologist Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, of Brown University, describes the repeated success of Stanley R. Miller's over the decades in response to some erroneous assertions by fellow Christian (and apologist) Hugh Ross during this on-stage discussion between atheists and Christians at CalTech (the following link fast forwards you directly to Miller's comments in response to Ross):
http://tinyurl.com/qyzv262
"I certainly would advise any fellow Christian not to stake their faith on the idea that this is a problem [abiogenesis] that science will never solve. We have a way of solving these problems." -- K. Miller
2. The new thermodynamic based hypotheses by bio-physicist Dr. Jeremy England of MIT:
Dr. England's work has investigated (among other formation of life issues) the "inevitable" formation of self replicating molecules as being the consequence of thermodynamics acting upon precursor molecules under conditions like that found on Earth.
“You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,”
I emailed Dr. England to ask him about his work, and he volunteered to me that he was indeed a practicing (God believing) Jew. Clearly he does not see his work being in conflict with his faith. Here's some further information on Dr. England's fascination work:
A lecture he did in Sweden on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91D5UAz-f4
The "hoarfrost" analogy from the above lecture (starting right here):
https://youtu.be/e91D5UAz-f4?t=146
His page of press attention to his work:
http://www.englandlab.com/press.html
3. A number of other recent (w/in the last 15 years) developments in biological science supporting the overall abiogenesis hypothesis:
Wired Magazine: RNA:
http://www.wired.com/2009/05/ribonucleotides/
Wired Magazine: Life evolves in lab:
http://www.wired.com/2012/01/evolution-of-multicellularity/
RNA changes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofFhHcvasHA
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/05/13/in-the-prebiotic-kitchen/#.UZ51iGRgYRG
http://www.diffen.com/difference/DNA_vs_RNA
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130404122234.htm
http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v5/n6/full/nchem.1649.html
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/05/complex-biochemical-processes-possible-at-origins-of-life-on-earth.html
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-rna-life-20130519-story.html
4. While not directly related to abiogenesis, it's clear that order arising from chaos happens all the time:
A simple example is a snowflake. Does it come about by pure "randomness?" NO! Certainly there is some randomness involved: the presence of a piece of atmospheric particulate about which the process of water crystallization starts to form, how long the process lasts, how long it stays in the air, how long till it melts, etc. But the fact that a hexagonally symmetric crystal forms every time, and the many many details about it's structure and characteristics are FAR from "random": they are the product of well understood deterministic natural processes! More generally, order coming from chaos is as commonplace as water freezing!
http://math2033.uark.edu/wiki/index.php/Math_%26_Snowflakes
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-snowflakes-form/
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Good answer from "fdbdgb":
https://answers.yahoo.com/activity/questions?show=33R6A3VOIJCJG5F5KX4WLU4DUE&t=g
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150413014707AAFgwBS&page=1
Simple organic molecules, are the building blocks of life and must have been involved in its origin. Experiments suggest that organic molecules could have been synthesized in the atmosphere of early Earth and rained down into the oceans. RNA and DNA molecules — the genetic material for all life — are just long chains of simple nucleotides. All living things reproduce, copying their genetic material and passing it on to their offspring. Thus, the ability to copy the molecules that encode genetic information is a key step in the origin of life — without it, life could not exist. This ability probably first evolved in the form of an RNA self-replicator — an RNA molecule that could copy itself. Many biologists hypothesize that this step led to an "RNA world" in which RNA did many jobs, storing genetic information, copying itself, and performing basic metabolic functions. Today, these jobs are performed by many different sorts of molecules (DNA, RNA, and proteins, mostly), but in the RNA world, RNA did it all. Self-replication opened the door for natural selection. Once a self-replicating molecule formed, some variants of these early replicators would have done a better job of copying themselves than others, producing more "offspring." These super-replicators would have become more common — that is, until one of them was accidentally built in a way that allowed it to be a super-super-replicator — and then, that variant would take over. Through this process of continuous natural selection, small changes in replicating molecules eventually accumulated until a stable, efficient replicating system evolved. The evolution of a membrane surrounding the genetic material provided two huge advantages: the products of the genetic material could be kept close by and the internal environment of this proto-cell could be different than the external environment. Cell membranes must have been so advantageous that these encased replicators quickly out-competed "naked" replicators. This breakthrough would have given rise to an organism much like a modern bacterium. Up until this point, life had probably relied on RNA for most jobs (as described in Step 2 above). But everything changed when some cell or group of cells evolved to use different types of molecules for different functions: DNA (which is more stable than RNA) became the genetic material, proteins (which are often more efficient promoters of chemical reactions than RNA) became responsible for basic metabolic reactions in the cell, and RNA was demoted to the role of messenger, carrying information from the DNA to protein-building centers in the cell. Cells incorporating these innovations would have easily out-competed "old-fashioned" cells with RNA-based metabolisms, hailing the end of the RNA world. As early as two billion years ago, some cells stopped going their separate ways after replicating and evolved specialized functions. They gave rise to Earth's first lineage of multicellular organisms.
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