No difficult or extended process was involved in the origin of life, according to this system. If we set up the right experiment, everything would fall quickly into place. To a predestinist, the Miller-Urey experiment provided the expected validation of his beliefs. If glycine and alanine were present surely the remaining amino acids would also appear in large quantities, and nucleotides too, as soon as the appropriate experimental modifications were made. The immensity of geological time entitles us to postulate more improbable coincidences than a court of law would allow but, even so, there are limits.
Cumulative selection is the key to all our modern explanations of life.
There is no hint of censure of Dawkins by these heavyweights, for appealing to chance to generate the first self-replicating molecule. The sky looked much as it does now, but its gases were strange. In place of oxygen, the atmosphere contained methane, hydrogen, and fumes of ammonia. Life was absent. The planet was covered with a shallow, sterile sea.