There was selection for polymers with enzymatic properties facilitating polymerization and replication. Simple repetitive structures in proteins and RNA coupled with lipid membranes and concentration of activity at the interface between imiscible fluids are all selectable prior to the first viable cellular form. The cell organelles for instance are all inclusions (originally just food) or symbionts that have evolved into permanent obligatory constituents (mitochondria, ribosomes, chloroplasts, etc.). Your statement that selection does not operate prior to the first cellular life form is simply false.
"Now as to natural law. What do you mean by that? Are you postulating that the wind could have created such an orderly thing as a single cell? Or perhaps heat? Or perhaps gravity? There are no natural forces capable of creating anything as orderly as a cell, none at all." -- gore3000
Wind, gravity, and thermal gradients all exist, don't they? Therefore the evolution of the first life form must be consistent with the existence of these properties of the physical world. The more important laws, which you should have mentioned if you had actually given this any thought, are the laws pertaining to chemical kinetics. Life is just a set of chemical reactions. It does not violate any known laws. Therefore it must have arisen in a fashion entirely consistent with those laws. Under the right conditions life is inevitable. There are even extremely simple bacteria on this planet that live deep underground in fissures in basaltic rock.
"My question to you is: who made those laws?" -- gore3000
Why postulate the existence of a maker of laws? The laws exist. Beyond that there is only speculation. Postulating an anthropomorphic god who designed the Universe and wrote all the natural laws falls into the realm of the supernatural (i.e., beyond the natural). It is an unsupportable hypothesis: It cannot be proven logically (Hegel demonstrated this). And it cannot be shown by evidence in the physical world. Therefore my answer to your question is simply that the laws themselves have a proven existence. Perhaps the Universe is the be all and end all in and of itself.
Not so fast. Who did the selecting? In evolution you at least have living things doing the selecting, but before there was life you cannot say that. So the question is who did the selecting? What force did the selecting. No, the chemicals that make up life do not mix together to make anything complex without the help of living things. There has not a single protein been found in nature which was not produced by living things. Yes, chemicals mix such as oxygen oxidizing iron and there are lots of other similar chemical reactions. However, there is nothing even closely as complex fashioned as a living species by non-living matter.
"Wind, gravity, and thermal gradients all exist, don't they? Therefore the evolution of the first life form must be consistent with the existence of these properties of the physical world.'
You keep saying "must have" because your belief is that God could not have had a hand in the creation of life, but that is the question we are discussing so must have is not an answer. It is a tautology which says because I do not believe in God, then God cannot be the answer so natural laws must have created life. You are begging the question.
So tell us: what natural laws created life, how did they accomplish it? Give some examples of very complex things which have been created totally by the natural forces which you believe created life.
"Why postulate the existence of a maker of laws? The laws exist. Beyond that there is only speculation. '
I have postulated nothing. You came up with the answer of a maker of the laws, not I.
Regardless, if the universe is just random forces, acting in random ways, achieving random results - how could there be any natural laws at all? What constrains them from acting differently every time? What keeps them in check?
Let me just say this in conclusion - if the universe was not ordered it would not exist. It would have blown up, there would be no life, there would be nothing. It is because there is order in the universe that life and the universe itself is possible. Against this self-evident truth, the atheists in desperation have posited a universe of universes. This of course could not be, because if there were such a universe of universes with all but this one behaving chaotically, at least one of them would have destroyed this universe. So as you can see, there is no way you can get past the question of how did these natural laws arise? Who enforces them? Why are they enforced?