How are evolution of complex organisms compatible with the second law of thermodynamics?

Answer 1

The second law requires that any natural process increase the entropy of the UNIVERSE. It is pretty obvious that plenty of natural processes decrease entropy locally while increasing it on a more macroscopic level. Very complex assemblies are created naturally all the time, but the creation of the complex assemblies always comes at a cost of increasing the entropy of the universe.

With that said, remember that thermodynamics does not account for the effect of intelligence. If you want to ponder on that a bit, go do some reasearch on "Maxwell's demon". Various ideas have been suggested to account for intelligence in thermodynamic terms, but so far thermodyamics is essentially silent on intelligence except in very, very limited frames like the operation of computers. It neither supports or disproves the assertions of athiests and "believers".

Answer 2

No because the process of creating that organization creates more entropy in the surroundings than any reduction in entropy represented by the organization of the coyote. If the coyote were a closed system with no energy exchanged across the boundaries (which it isn't), then we might consider it a violation of the 2nd law.

Answer 3

As a consequence of growing, organisms create more disorder in their environment than the decrease in entropy associated with their growth