If we do not assume the Second Law, or that the universe originated in some extraordinarily special initial state, or something else of this general nature, then we cannot use the ‘improbability’ of the existence of life as a premise for a derivation of a Second Law that is operative at times earlier than the present. No matter how curious and non-intuitive it may seem, the production of life would (if we do not make a prior assumption of the Second Law) be far less probable to come about by natural means—be it by natural selection or any by other seemingly ‘natural’ process—than by a
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