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Living organisms emerge and survive despite the surrounding thermodynamic entropy of non-life – they act willfully (i.e. the will to live, want to live or struggle to survive).... What is it about the living organism - which does not exist in a dead organism or in non-life - that causes it to translate the will to live to the molecular machinery which then obeys the thermodynamic (and all other) physical laws?

Very well put, Alamo-Girl! Living systems must "go against the grain," must counter the natural pull towards equilibrium. This is not a random process, rather it gives every indication of being an informed, or information-based process. And as Paul Davies has pointed out, "The laws of physics…are algorithmically very simple; they contain relatively little information. Consequently they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules…life cannot be ‘written into’ the laws of physics….Life works its magic not by bowing to the directionality of chemistry, but by circumventing what is chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural’. Of course, organisms must comply with the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are only incidental to biology.” [Bolds added]

I don't know why it is, but it seems many people have difficulty recognizing this.

Thank you so much for your excellent post!

Thank you so much for the encouragements and especially for that great excerpt!

I don't know why it is, but it seems many people have difficulty recognizing this.

Perhaps there are many people who cannot comprehend intangibles or universals?

Life is not a stochastic process. It is an organic process. Neverthless there must be a net flow of energy through the life system so it follows the law of entropy as a system. In fact, steam engines do the same; so do rain clouds and stars. Life is a willful thing once it achieves a certain level of organization, and this should prove that all the attributes are potentially present in the constituents of life. The attributa potentia are present in atoms, in protons, in electrons, in the carriers of electromagnetic force--photons, and in carriers of other forces such as gravity. It's all there, has been there all along and will be there long after our sun cools to a cold, dark lump and we are frozen to near absolute zero.