The important point about this, though, is that abiogenesis is a separate theory from evolution. Evolution describes what happened to life once it existed. There is little evidence for how life actually began and there is much uncertainty about abiogenesis and how it theoretically could work. At the moment it would not be inconsistent with the existing evidence to say that God created the first life on earth. But we're not going to learn anything about that if we don't study it.

You can read an excellent article about abiogenesis here. It is quite accessible and makes no pretenses that we are anywhere close to finding answers. But you can read about current theories, as well as theories competing with abiogenesis (it mentions life possible arriving here on meteors from other planets, which is called panspermia).

What makes Russ' rocks-into-people mantra misleading is the fact that evolution explains what happened to life when it began, not how it began. And absolutely no one thinks that "rocks" sprang to life and evolved, though "primordial soup" is a term most people are familiar with.

Peronally, I play my agnostic card here. There isn't much evidence and so I'm happy to say we just don't know. I'm keen to hear about what discoveries are made in this area.