Did Life on this planet start out with one living cell or not?

If you truly want to know how life started out on this planet go get a Bible and read Genesis Chapters 1&2 it tells you how God made Man and women the animals the stars the sun and the moon all in six days and rested on the seventh day. Thanks for the question.

I'm not saying that life started when lightning struck a pool of primordial soup. But if it was *something* like that, more than one cell might have started because the chemicals and energy were all there.

However, it's assumed that only one of them had all the right stuff to survive and maybe eat the other ones.

No one knows for sure but that's what is currently the most accepted scientific view.

I will just add I think the idea is that multiple cells were formed from organic compounds and these somehow reproduced together and started life on this planet, so not exactly 1 single cell.

I doubt it, but science giving itself a single-cell starting point
and then building on it from there, isn't an empty effort.

For now though, the answer has to be that we simply do not know.

Yes, however that single original cell was in existence long BEFORE Earth began. It then further developed according to the laws of physics pertaining to this particular planet.

You know I have always been a firm believer in the old saying that there is no such thing as a stupid question. I stand corrected.

Believe what is in Bible, reject things that don't align with Bible.
Don't believe everything they teach you in the world.
Devil has many believe we are from animals.

Abiogenesis started life on our planet.

No. Life did not start as a cell, cells came later once life appeared and evolution started. Life began as a replicator, a crystalline structure that could copy itself. Once a replicator appeared, evolution, change over time, kicked in and the replicator began to change. Even today there are crystalline replicators such as prions - the organism that causes mad cow disease - and viruses. These are much smaller and simpler  than cells.

Science suggests it probably did.

There is NO verifiable evidence to the contrary.
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Nope

if that were the case what would it eat?

Both of them do that and more

It is likely to have been microbal.

We don't know.
I find the theory of panspermia to be very persuasive
and IF that were an accurate theory
then life on this planet might have started out with one or more than one living cell.

Without any doubt unless you think it was aliens!!!

Pope Francis says the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand” putting an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design! So the Catholic Church, Church of England and mainstream churches all accept the big bang and evolution!

Lord Carey the former Archbishop of Canterbury put it rather well – “Creationism is the fruit of a fundamentalist approach to scripture, ignoring scholarship and critical learning, and confusing different understandings of truth”!