A big misconception amongst the religious community at large (essentially a majority without a proper education in basic biology) always throw on believers the concept that evolution is incorrect (which without the explanation of evolution by natural selection we wouldn’t have modern biology today) and ask how living things came to be if not through a deity.
I cannot stress this next sentence enough to the religious layperson.
EVOLUTION IS NOT ABIOGENESIS
They are two separate topics in biology that essentially are filling in different parts of the timeline of how living things are the way they are now by looking at our history (evolution) and how they formed. And in more detail how non-living materials became the first living creature (which is abiogenesis and a very hard question to answer).
Evolution (by biological definition: change over time) by natural selection explains how the simplest single-celled organism changed over time to form more complex single celled organisms, then multi-celled organisms, then multi-celled organisms of even deeper complexity. There is a key note here: Evolution starts off with the simplest single-celled organism as its base. Life is existing already. Note that it does not say how or why or very accurately when that first single celled organism formed. Evolution has shown that favorable genes get more represented in populations over time which helps the species survive its environment better.
Through science and especially the field of biochemistry, scientists have discovered what chemical elements and compounds make up the more complex structures in our cells and how they form the basic structures such as cell membranes, organelles, proteins, DNA, RNA, the nucleus, etc. What isn’t known is how the chemical soup that existed on early earth (and could have come from other celestial bodies like comets and other planets) over time formed these basic organelles and structures which then in turn became the first living and replicating cell. From the non-living pieces to living cell. That’s abiogenesis.
Think of it as the origins timeline. From the beginning of our universe, to the forming of galaxies, stars, and planets. To the formation of our solar system: the sun and the planets. To Earth itself and its changes in its ecosystem since it was around, to the first living cell, then on and on as described before all the way to now, highly intelligent humans that have a brain that can comprehend some of it. Note I said some of it, not all of it. And at each step along that timeline, there are humans asking how did this happen (and philosophers who ask the why). The timeline itself as we know it right now is for all intents and purposes is pretty well established. Now we are trying to figure out the how the major events played out: Human Life and Health (genetics, medicine) back to simpler organisms such as sea creatures and plants, back to the first single celled organism all living things derive from (evolutionary study), to how did the first living cell form and replicate from non-living materials (abiogenesis), to the complex chemicals that made up those first cells and how they formed (chemical reactions), then as to how all the elements came about to even have all of what we have currently (astronomy and physics).
