"I Googled the topic. It seems that almost all sites that refer to this prize are Creationism/ID sites. They seem to have taken the position that because the question is being asked, it cannot be answered."
Oh, wait, scientists cannot admit that they don't know how life began. That's .... er, ... um, ... heresy! It's heresy, by George!
Those darn IDers will distort this issue. We may not know all the "details" of how life began, but we know with near certainty that it happened by random chance with no intelligent design! We do know that, don't we? Of course we do: Carl Sagan said so, and he has a Ph.D in SCIENCE.
It is very true that science does not know the answer to the origins of life. Science is seeking those answers for the benfit of mankind. Science can not should not hampered by the "It is God's will" philosphy that has keep Islam rooted in the 6th century.