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In light of this, I find it impossible to believe that "chance" had anything to do with the process that created life.

Keep in mind also that if life arose by chance on earth, the chances that it arose anywhere else is the square of the chance that it arose by chance on earth. The chance that intelligent life arose in 1000 different systems throughout the universe is the chance that it arose by chance on earth raised to the 1000 power. Of course, people have realized for a long time that chance isn't going to work. Besides chance, you need a mechanism, the operational output of which is measured in terms of chance. Chance can't bring a mechanism into being any more than accounting can cause money to come to exist in a bank (C. S. Lewis made a similar point in Miracles when he said that "the laws of nature" can't be appealed to as the cause of nature because you have to have nature first before you can have anything such as natural laws). Because of these insurmountable difficulties there have been two main approaches to solving the problem. One approach is the leap of faith approach and to say, as Julian Huxley did, that the appearance and development of life on earth through evolutionary means is clearly impossible but that the only alternative, special creation, is unthinkable. This is also seen in the "It must have happened because we are here" so-called argument. The other approach is the other leap of faith approach and to say that since it is impossible for life to have arisen on Earth by chance (much less anywhere else) that spontaneous generation followed by evolution of life is an inherent property in the universe and, therefore, is quite likely. There is a significant percentage of people, though, who keep on with the monkey-typing-Shakespeare myth.