Some basic evidence - please forgive my lack of links and garbled interpretation here - leaving a page on my iPad erases everything I've written so this will simply be some things I have read that I am regurgitating badly.
1/ The earliest fossils show simple life forms and as the fossil record progresses through time we see complexity increasing as mutations and information multiply so giving rise to larger life forms. We can wind the clock backwards and point to times when there was no life on earth. In between the no life, earliest fossil records of life something occurred. There are several possible options: life was randomly seeded from other planets on meteoroids, abiogenesis occurred or a life form engineered simple life forms. What is not an option is that magic occurred. Since our planet is constantly seeding bacteria onto other planets within our solar system and with some notable unknown possibles (like Europa) it is clear that bacterial seeding faces massive challenges since we haven't got abundant manifestations of life on nearby planetary bodies.
2/ Self organising systems occur spontaneously when energy gradients operate upon molecules. Under certain circumstances and chemical recipes complex molecules observed within living cells form. We can observe mud in solution forming tiny bubbles with osmotic properties including the all critical electrical gradient ( as salts leach out or in - cant remember the direction ) an electrical imbalance occurs like a battery. Within the mud bubbles complex chemistry can occur which shows similarities to cell functionality. Apols again for not having the link but it was in the New Scientist mag.
3/ RNA shows many of the characteristics of DNA but critically can express proteins without the extra catalysts observed when DNA does so. RNA is an excellent precursor to DNA as a self replicating chemical system.
4/ Viruses show how replicating systems can exist without the full capabilities of more recognisable life. The very first replicating system, if abiogenesis was how it occurred here, would not be recognisable as life today but would have more in common with viral life than our cells. New abiogenetic systems might occur all the time but are unsuccessful in a world teeming with far more evolved life forms.
5/ New mathematical models show that simple information sets can contain the rules for more complex supersets, in short certain mathematical rules allow mandate increasing complex sets from an initial starting simple set. This is exciting because while we observe the complex deriving from the simple all the time in our human designed world the mathematical rules recently discovered show select circumstances where non intelligent information can drive to complexity simply because it must. BBC news report plus others.