[aNYCguy]

It is a staggering improbability that the material cause alone can create a living cell, even adding an efficient cause (light, electricity, and so forth).

This is a mighty bold declaration. Does this mean that you have calculated the nonzero probability of "the material cause alone" creating a living cell?

all systems in nature, living and non-living, are made up of the same exact particles and fields. Matter alone gives us no insight into what makes a thing a living thing.

The second sentence here doesn't even begin to follow from the first. If you're well aware of that and are just making more declarations which are self-evident to you, then please continue.

Otherwise, you should consider that the statements "A living object is made of particles" and "A non-living object is made of particles" do not together imply that "allusion to magic is a requirement of any definition of life."

[betty boop]

Does this mean that you have calculated the nonzero probability of "the material cause alone" creating a living cell?

No, not me; others have done so.

I gather that combinatorial probability anticipates that the actual occurrence of an infinite number of possibilities is equiprobable, given enough time. Yet it actually appears that unless there is an infinite amount of time, this expectation cannot be met. The simple combination model of probability is seemingly incapable of describing the complexity of living systems that we readily observe, let alone accounting for an origin of life from material causes alone.

For instance, Gerald Schroeder points out that a single typical protein is a chain of 300 amino acids, and that there are 20 common amino acids in life, which means that the number of possible combinations that would lead to the actualization of the protein would be 20³⁰⁰ or 10³⁹⁰. He summed up the problem this way: “It would be as if nature reached into a grab bag containing a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion proteins and pulled out the one that worked and then repeated this trick a million million times.” [Gerald Schroeder, “Evolution: Rationality vs. Randomness,” 2000.]

Seems like kinda long odds to me.....

Thanks for writing!