When presented with the obvious truth that tornadoes do not assemble automobiles from broken parts in junkyards and earthquakes under mountains of beer cans do not assemble accurate timepieces some people still believe life could have assembled itself by blind chance.
The problem is obvious. Such people will believe anything someone tells them if they think that someone is a "scientist." Over a hundred years ago there actually were "scientists" seriously considering that life might be assembled by blind chance.
The notion has become for some people an "established fact" that no amount of evidence to the contrary can dispute. The overwhelming scientific evidence today however is that blind chance assembly of life is impossible.
Does the Second Law of Thermodynamics allow for local areas of decreasing entropy?
Such decreases in entropy as occur in the "open system" argument are trivial in the inanimate universe. That means things don't build up by blind chance over time even in an open system. Livings things are capable of significant local decreases in entropy, the inanimate universe is not.
Imagine a tall stack of boxes. Natural forces; winds, rains, earthquakes, tend to knock boxes off the stack. Infrequently a box bouncing around might land on top of the stack. If the stack is very low the probability of building the stack from bounces is greater. Boxes are not likely to land on the top of a taller stack. A very tall stack, or much decreased entropy, is only possible where a living thing deliberately and intelligently puts boxes on top of the stack. Without living things decreases in entropy are trivial and very close to total entropy for that area.
Having established that there are no observable "random" agencies in the the inanimate universe, could there be such agencies below our level of detection?
If there were any they could not possibly assemble anything complex since their constructive tendency would be very substantially offset by the "destructive" effects of natural phenomena. Remember the stack of boxes. It isn't enough just to put a box on the stack once in a long while. To build the stack it is necessary to put boxes on faster than natural forces take them off. Such an agency would have to be observable. With or without such undetectable random agencies smoke only swirls, it never spells out plays by Shakespeare. Similarly snowflakes only make hexagonal patterns never spelling anything. There is no agency, random or otherwise, in the inanimate universe with the charateristics necessary to assemble life. There are igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock formations in nature. There are no "deck of cards" rock formations.
Are there self replicating molecules?
Various types of "self replication" in chemistry occur. It has been hypothesized that if life did begin by blind chance some sort of self replicating molecule must have been in the earliest stages. It is incorrect that any self replication of the sort that might lead to life has been observed in any lab. Even given all the basic ingredients for that to happen it does not.