>>IOW, the analogy is correct within your coordinate set, where anything that happened has an initial creator. I say there's a viable explanation which doesn't require introduction of an external actor into the game.
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>>I have no problem with the idea that we're here by accident. It may as well be the 9856th repetition of Big Bang - giB gnaB cycle, doesn't matter to me.
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>Ooooh, now that's one I've never been able to accept. Take all the parts for a finely tuned Swiss watch, throw them in a bag and shake vigorously. After n number of times, you will reproduce the Rolex - NOT. It's never been demonstrated.

You expect that shaking would turn the screws and hook the springs into their sockets? Increase n by a few orders of magnitude, then.

But again, you're pulling a wrong example. You begin with something that was a (human, this time) creation, and expect it to be re-created by random recombination its parts. Not the case - we aren't looking for a Rolex here. We're looking for any chemical compound which can reproduce and multiply itself. A more suitable comparison can probably be composed, but I'm not sure I'd recognize a successful outcome even if it bit me. Life may take any form.

> Things tend toward atrophy, not the other way around, which is another BIG problem with evolution.

But life is by definition a local organization of matter to oppose entropy. So if one of the (theoretically possible) cycles (that I don't really believe in, but then can't entirely reject the possibility) yields life, life will fight entropy or die out.