That chemical evolution certainly would have been a random, shot-in-the-dark occurance.
The pre-biotic steps have to be divided into chemical before there is any replication and then some fuzzy thing between chemical and life where there is replication.
While the last word is far from in it is clear that this statment is incorrect. It may have been a shot-in-the-dark occurance but it may also have been near enough to inevitable that the first steps happened and it was not random but a result of the extant chemistry of the time.
You hint here that it was not only random but also very unlikely. It is clear that some of the very early steps are actually rather likely and it may be that the last steps to reach early imperfect replicators is also likely but we just don't know right now.
What is true is that, in light of that ignorance we have, you can not use "certainly". In fact, those steps would NOT be chemical evolution until the chemicals were replicators. Once they are replicators there would probably be a large degree of randomness. Before that they may or may not have been very random but may instead have been inevitable results of chemitry under the extant conditions.
In any case, this is ALL off topic!! We are talking about evolution of biotic entities NOT the pre-biotic steps.
I'll leave your misconceptions about the definition of evolution to others.
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