Why then are all living things trying to work against entropy?

I am not just talking about human intelligence or behaviour, but every single living thing is trying to organise chaos into a habitable frame for themselves to survive and expand. Survival of the most symmetrical or whatever.

The point is... Why did every atom in the universe arrange to make cells to make organisms to make life to make intelligent life to counter entropy, if it was just entropy happening? Some say that life is just a temporary disease, but then why do these functions even exist, if they're not "supposed" to be used?

I don't think "the universe" has a say. Shit just happens, and it doesn't have an explicit reason to be chaos nor structured. Both are extreme cases of idealistic outcomes. If we assume that either will succeed, we have to ask what happens "after" and also "before" the universe.

I used too many double quotation marks. That's because quite frankly, I think it's a contemporary lullaby storyline. We won't ever know.