Question

According to the scientific theory of the origin of life on earth, life arose in a series of steps beginning with inanimate chemicals. do scientists think this process is still happening on our planet today?

Answer 1

Not sure what reference you are quoting about "scientific theory of the origin of life on Earth", but there is only conjecture, no viable theory. The inanimate chemicals implies initial chemical evolution, which is a myth like Darwin's "warm little ponds" and Oparin-Haldane prebiotic soup. There is categorically no naturalistic process that caused inanimate chemicals to assemble into progressively more complex levels of assembly, eventually bringing all the chemicals and assemblies into a cellular structure capable of metabolism and reproduction. Even more mystical, is if all the thousands of essential elements and compounds could be strategically position within the cell (there location is not arbitrary), there is no understanding that any process would ever make a non-living clump of chemicals to live.

Scientists do not think this kind of process is still happening on our planet today, primarily because they know that it could never occur because the predominance and ubiquity of organic material would interfere with process, however, the gross ignorance of what processes could viably produce any living entity are paramount to their position of unknowing.