From a brief review in Scientific American of A Brief History of Creation: Science and the Search for the Origin of Life (Bill Mesler and H. James Cleaves II, Norton, 2015):
No scientific quandary is as confounding, controversial or important as the question of how life began, argue journalist Mesler and geochemist Cleaves. “It touches upon not only how we came to be, but why we came to be,” they write. “It is, in a sense, the ultimate question.”More.
Maybe. How much of the problem is rather this: The search is not so much for what happened as for what happened that is consistent with a naturalist perspective?
Thus we hear about chance, law, self-organization (which is actually not completely consistent with a naturalist perspective), and of course, the kitchen sink.
The origin of life is the origin of information.
origin of information. When we solve that, we will understand better. Much of the other stuff just sounds like attempts at magic: information from nothing by accident
See also: Is there a good reason to believe that life’s origin must be a fully natural event?