I don't think you've adequately grappled with either John's point or Dawkins' point.

John's point is that you quoted selectively to make it appear as if Dawkins was supporting a position that he was in fact rejecting. This is dishonest.

Dawkins' point is that "it had to arise at once" gives wildly, stupendously wrong numbers, numbers that are so mindbogglingly fantastically wrong as to provide us no guidance whatsoever in evaluating whether abiogenesis is plausible. Evolution is such a powerful ratchet that we use it in engineering (see "genetic algorithm")!

What was the start, before a ratchet was applied? Well, we don't know. But that is the relevant question, not the make-believe numbers that pretend that you can't climb mount improbable by keeping the better parts of the bad but not hopeless answers.