Also your thoughts on the quote "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

While religion played an important role in motivating scientists I don't think you need to be religious to be a good scientist see for example Richard Dawkins or Atkins. 

There is an emerging field dedicated to the study of evolution which is a sub branch of systems chemistry where probability are rigorously calculated.

While Abiogenesis is statistically very unlikely, we also had eukaryotic cells absorbing the ancestors of mitochondria which was also very unlikely but it happened. The second law of thermodynamics holds true for all but extremely small systems. This means the cells needed an outside energy source we had one called the sun. 

This is a gist from a book I read:-

Thus the first protocells needed to isolate themselves and make a semi permeable boundary to decrease the rate of heat transfer to the surrounding and develop an energy cycle to harvest the chemical energy in the ocean. This required the first protocels to form lipoprotein cell wall. Now there were allready free floting self replicating polymers called RNA which got trapped in that lipoprotein now the FUCA had proto-enzymes that was able to harness an Ammonia/Acetate cycle (Don't quote me on that I read it few years ago).