Well said.

The other question to consider is how natural selection can even engage before an organism of sufficient complexity is first built.

Of course, it's plain to most of us that natural laws are deeply insufficient to build anything with any degree of complexity. Instead, we see entropy at work, and she is the perfect demonstration of what natural laws do over time:

Break matter down to its simplest stable form.

This is what we observe.

With this before us, natural selection is a moot point.