Personally I believe in Panspermia (life on Earth was seeded from extra terrestrial sources, asteroids and stuff).
Which has the very important aspect of: how long does it take abiotic stuff to become alive?
If you believe Panspermia, it could take 3 billion billion years per cubic kilometer of ocean, once life developed
somewhere it would spread through the universe.
Personally I think life is to irreducibly complex to evolve from scratch over and over again. It can be done a small handful of times, but too much is just going on.
My own ex nihilo sim: 12 million cycles. One of the bots has learned to move forward constantly. :/
This is something that has been very interesting to me since autumn last year when I first heard about it. If they find an answear to this question, then life whould no longer be a mystery. Either there is a god or we can say goodbye to religion.
I think you misunderstand the nature of religion. If you ever get a chance, read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". In the book the androids try to prove that the dominant religion on Earth is a sham (Mercerism). They track down the actor who played Mercer, and show him to be not only not dead, but quite poor and destitute.
One of the main characters then says something to the effect of "it won't matter". The author might have meant it disparingly, but I don't think so. Personally I think that sums up my own faith quite well. If you could prove to me that there is no God and Jesus was just a man, it still wouldn't change my faith. Lots of people feel the same way I think.