No offense taken but I'm pretty sure there is nothing known about that "trigger".
Then you would be wrong. Let's go over the basics.
There's two separate things that you're conflating here. One is evolution, the other is
abiogenesis.
Abiogenesis details how life began, and it's what you refer to when you say "creating something that truly lives". In order to get life from matter, you first need to get organic compounds. Then you need those organic compounds to form a simple self-copy mechanism (early DNA). That is life. And that is when abiogenesis ends.
The experiments you allude to have shown that you can create organic compounds from simple matter and energy. We have not yet, however, been able to simulate the creation of DNA. This is why we're investigating the possibility of life originating on other planets (with different conditions than earth), or proposing, if I may, opposing views and theories. Until we're able to replicate and find the conditions in which life began, we won't know for certain how it did. Chances are, the process by which DNA was created is very long and not something you can do in a single human lifetime.
Evolution, however, has been tested and fully understood. It takes over the second life begins - the second that molecule starts replicating itself. It details the process by which that "perfect eye" (btw, the human eye has several structural flaws that make it incredibly shit as a sensory organ no matter how awesome it looks from a distance) goes from basically nothing into the very complex organ of today. How does it work?
To simplify it, DNA is really, really small. Because it's really small, it's affected by things that work at an atomic level. Radiation works at an atomic level. There is radiation everywhere in the cosmos, left over from supernovas, collisions etc. It's bombarding you right now, passing through you. You're not affected because you are big, and there's not a lot of it. But DNA is small. Radiation is basically atoms that are magnetized. As they pass near or through the DNA, they move its atoms around because magnetism. This is not a random process, but it is unpredictable. With its atoms rearranged, the DNA now copies itself a million times. It becomes DNA's retarded cousin x1.000.000. This repeats for every piece of DNA that is affected. Most of them die. Some of them actually fare better. Some of DNA's retarded cousins then get their atoms magnetized too. And so on, and so on, and so on, for like a billion years.
On a macro scale, it's more or less the same thing. Living organism X has children. DNA is imperfect, therefore children imperfect. Some more imperfect than others. Most of the super-imperfect ones die quickly. But sometimes the imperfect ones breed and make a shitton of kids. About half of those kids will be just as imperfect as the father. And so on.
The world is cruel and harsh though. Over many years and generations, imperfections don't survive unless they're not actually imperfections, but improvements. A frog that is poisonous survives because shit doesn't eat it. All of its non-poisonous brothers though, they're off the food chain. This is not a random process. This is throwing a million million piles of shit at a wall and selecting the one that most resembles a snowflake. Of course, one's gonna be pretty damn close to a snowflake just because of the amount of times you tried. And then you copy that a million million times and try again. Natural selection isn't random.
It's lengthy though. Since mutations are at the genetic level, they're incredibly gradual. If one generation is 1% smarter than the others, chances are no one will notice until that smarter one takes the slightly better stick instead of the bad stick and doesn't get eaten by the tiger. Slowly, through life and death, very, very small changes are done and tested on the habitat of the planet. And only the best adapted ones survive.
As for the eye, it started out as a very simple light sensor when we were fish. Maybe we didn't even "see" light back then, just felt it when the sun shined on us more. For a more in-depth explanation, I'd recommend watching the new season of Cosmos, they actually go into detail on how the human eye evolved and how it got to where it is now.
The easiest application of evolution and the fastest one to see the results of is dog breeding. See all those breeds of dogs? We made wolves fuck eachother and killed the puppies we didn't like. And then we made the ones we liked fuck eachother. And so on and so on for about 20.000 years. Therefore, poodles. You think dogs are man's best friend because that's how they are? Nah bitch. That's how WE made them.
