It's not really random. Natural selection isn't quite the same as getting bonked by a falling hailstone or something. Anyway, the process of natural selection -- culling out the less fit as the more fit go on to create the next generation -- has been likened to the process of a free-enterprise economy. Unplanned, made up of zillions of individual actions, yet the result looks as it it had been designed. Invisible hand and all that. Whereas the concept of a Designer is analogous to a planned economy.
This to me does not discount some sort of Creator or some sort of panspermia, and I gather that there are those on both sides of the argument here who even agree with that.
The origin of life on earth isn't known. Lots of ideas, but nothing really solid. Organic molecules seem to form in nature, under various conditions. It's an open question. Evolution kicks in after life starts and reproduces.
Well, in my mind, while the culling is not random, the happenstance of the birth of those mutationss which are more fit surely is random. It's their survival which isn't.
"has been likened to the process of a free-enterprise economy. Unplanned, made up of zillions of individual actions, yet the result looks as it it had been designed. Invisible hand and all that. Whereas the concept of a Designer is analogous to a planned economy."
Yes, that is what I was trying to say, thanks.
"The origin of life on earth isn't known."
Nor do we know even what life really is. It follows that we can't define its origin, except by faith.