““we are not just talking about hydrogen and oxygen combining into water; we are talking about carbon, hydrogen, and other elements combining into living beings that breathe, move around, and reproduce. In other words, matter must not only have the potential to produce new properties; it must also have the hidden potential to come alive! Matter must, under propitious conditions, be able to manifest itself in forms as diverse as ants that can find their way home across an unmarked landscape using the sun as their compass; or birds that can in winter recover hundreds of food items stored in the fall; or bats that can navigate and find prey in the dark using a form of sound signals called echolocation. Evolution can show why these capacities were selected, but it cannot account for how matter came to possess””
