My post at 1773 goes into my assertions in more detail, but wrt your point concerning open systems, from the first link:
If one only looks at thermodynamic entropy there appears to be a clear violation in biological systems characterized by life itself and its emergence (autonomy, semiosis, order or complexification, etc.)
betty boop once used a thought experiment to demonstrate the difference between life, non-life and death. She said to take a live albatross, a 12 lb cannonball and a dead albatross to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and toss them over the side. The difference becomes obvious. Non-life and death are subject to thermodynamic entropy et al in one fashion - and life, in another.
To put it in mathematical terms, Shannon-Weaver to be exact, life is characterized by successful communications. In Shannon parlance that is the reduction of uncertainty in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. Actually, Shannon used the term entropy instead of uncertainty but we avoid that around here because it can be confusing.
The bottom line is that as long as the molecular machinery is successfully communicating, there is life. When the successful communication stops, the organism is dead. There is no life where there is no successful communication.
In the Shannon model, information is not the message it is the action. The DNA is as good dead as alive. The elements in the Shannon-Weaver model are source, message, encoder, channel, noise, decoder, receiver. All of these exist in molecular machines.
This is not hype. It is an important area of cancer and drug research.
So just like the refrigerator is a machine designed to do something which seems to defy the 2nd Law yet nevertheless pays the tab for doing it the molecular machine also does something which seems to defy the 2nd Law and yet pays the tab for doing it. For each bit of information gained in a molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state, energy is dissipated into the local surroundings.
Heres the key, though and the thing which points to Intelligent Design. The refrigerator was designed and built by man. Life occurs in nature.
So the question that we ought to be asking is not about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but where did the information come from? What causes this successful communication?
To borrow a metaphor from Schutzenberger, its like the biologists and chemists are fumbling with their keys convinced that one of them will open the lock while the physicists and mathematicians are trying to tell them it is a combination lock.
The origin of information in biological systems is #2 on my list at post 1713.