Abiogenesis

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. (John 1:3-4 KJV)

Omnis cellula e cellula (All cells arise only from pre-existing cells) Rudolf Virchow, 1855.

The term abiogenesis simply means getting life from non-life. It is used both for spontaneous generation and for chemical evolution.

In the olden days, people believed that life can come out of non-living things. In the 17th century, a physician and chemist named Jean Baptiste van Helmont conducted an experiment. He put a sweaty shirt together with some wheat and claimed that mice were born 21 days later. According to him, the sweat in the shirt was the main ingredient that gave life to the non-living matter.

Then cells were discovered.
In 1665 Robert Hooke looked through a microscope at a sliver of cork and used the word cell to describe microscopic structures he saw.
In 1674 Anton Van Leeuwenhoek used microscopes to view many things and found bacteria and other single cell living things.
In 1839 Theodor Schwann and Matthias Jakob Schleiden discovered that cells were the basic unit of life.
In 1855 Robert Remak proved that cells came from cell division and Rudolf Virchow declared that all cells can arise only from pre-existing cells.
In 1859 Louis Pasteur conducted experiments with meat broth and proved that spontaneous generation is not possible.
By the middle of the 19th century in the face of overwhelming proof that living cells can only come from living cells, the theory of spontaneous generation was effectively disproven. Today if I were to tell you that mice can be made from sweaty shirt and wheat in 21 days, will I be treated as a comedian or some serious person?

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his Theory of Evolution. Cells evolved from cells, but there had to be a Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) cell which had to come from non-living chemicals. Thus, the modern hypothesis of abiogenesis, that very first living cells had to be evolved from some non-living chemicals, was asserted, but without proof.

Mice came from wheat and sweaty shirt was not a stupid idea in the 17th century. Life coming from non-living chemicals is not a stupid idea today.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, (Romans 1:22 ESV)