Disorder increases because quantum events explore every physical option, but that also finds combinations that don’t change, which is order. For example, when an electron and a proton form a hydrogen, they move together so order increases. Electrons in atoms move in two dimensions not three, so fewer degrees of freedom is also more order. Atoms then illustrate how order evolves.
The evolution of atoms by nucleosynthesis in stars creates an order that exists as long as those atoms, not just temporarily. For example, a lead atom has 82 protons, 125 neutrons, and 82 electrons in a high order state that has a half-life of millions of years, which is permanent in our terms.
A cool fridge on a hot day needs a power supply to stay cold but lead atoms don’t need energy to maintain their order, but they do need an unlikely sequence of events, just as an egg does. Matter then evolves by finding combinations that persist, however unlikely, not by maintaining a heat instability. For example, if the first matter arose when extreme light collided head-on (4.3.1), this was by any standards a very unlikely event, but the result was electrons that persist. When light that was free became bound in an electron, order increased, but no energy is needed to maintain it. The evolution of matter increases order in a way that doesn’t need any more energy input.
This evolution doesn’t contradict the second law statement that order requires energy because the search for stable combinations needs energy. Atoms then lawfully formed ordered molecules, as hydrogen and oxygen gases make water, until eventually super-molecules like RNA that copy themselves led to simple cells, so the evolution of life was based on the evolution of matter.
In general, the same quantum law causes both evolution and devolution, so they complement rather than contradict, although they seem different. Evolution increases order by finding stable unlikely states, and devolution increases disorder by finding stable probable states. Evolution creates the possible and devolution creates the probable, but both have the same underlying cause.
If evolution is limited to biology, the second law reigns supreme, but it isn’t. Matter also evolves so evolution is also universal, based on the same quantum law. An unstoppable reality is constantly shaking our universe to possibly evolve, even as it probably decays. The second law of thermo-dynamics describes devolution, but evolution is the other side of the same quantum coin, so it can be seen as a necessary byproduct of evolution, just as neutrinos are byproducts of electrons.
The evolution of matter is an anti-entropy process that by the second law shouldn’t occur, but it does. Evolution was built into our universe from its quantum inception, so the grand evolution of matter and life going on all around us defines the universe as much as physics based on heat flows. That the universe is devolving doesn’t mean it isn’t also evolving beings like us. Evolution then explains what the second law can’t, that life exists because order evolved.