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The toss of a coin is quite determined, but we don't have the information to make accurate predictions. If we did, then we could. I'm not certain, but I think the results of a precisely designed mechanical coin-tossing machine would be easily determined.

I suspect the mechanisms that cause mutations are also determined (being physical and chemical) but it's all to complicated for us to predict which cell will mutate. In principle, however, if we had enough information, we could make good predictions. Or so it seems to me. Natural selection is also predictable, if you know exactly what's in the environment and what the living creatures are capable of. We can demonstrate this to a limited extent with bacteria in petri dishes. In the wild, of course, there are too many variables for us to handle. But in principle I think determinism rules the whole show, until you get to creatures like us with complex brains and free will.

Eyes all seem to rely on photo-sensitivity, but there is a great variety in such structures. Some simple creatures have only photosensitive spots. Complexity goes from there, all the way to us. And our eyes aren't that great. We're quite blind to most of the electro-magnetic spectrum. And we can't see at the micro-scopic level. Our eyes are just good enough to allow us to gather food, find mates, and survive. To do more we need to build instruments.

Thank you. : )

That's what I was thinking... the processes of both evolution and coin tosses are determined by laws of biology, chemistry and physics... While each can be purposefully influenced, whether by a coin-toss machine or genetic engineering, neither requires an intelligence to guide them.

Just trying to answer the "in the rush to divest God of any role in our affairs we have adopted a paradigm where action and purpose are ascribed to "chance" argument supported by a coin toss analogy.

If a coin is tossed high enough and is bounced on an elastic surface (so that the bounce is inelastic), it is impossible to compute the outcome from initial conditions that have any amount of uncertainty in measurement. Within any tiny but finite region of initial conditions, there are equally as many outcomes of heads as of tails.

Of course, I'm extrapolating the above from rigorous compuations for dice. I assume that coins are not less subject to the laws of physics than dice are.

If we did, then we could. I'm not certain, but I think the results of a precisely designed mechanical coin-tossing machine would be easily determined.

Actually, chaos theory was developed in part to understand why this is not true. It goes back to sensitivity to initial conditions that is so great that unmeasureable differences in those initial conditions can produce widely divergent results.

I rarely post to these threads, but I read them often. While convergent evolution as described here is an interesting idea, how does one reconcile that convergence with the entire concept of divergence that most say is the engine that drives evolution? It seems conflicting to have a model that says that similar species "want" to become dissimilar, but dissimilar species "want" to become similar. (let's not argue the word "want" in this context).