[Strategerist]

It's amazing how terrified people are of the word "random."

[ClearCase_guy]

Has anyone indicated that they were terrified by the word "random"? I just don't see how random processes can result in the complex life forms we see today.

I might even refer to Occam's Razor. Did the Life on Earth arise through billions of years of random mutation? Or did a transcendent God create it through supernatural means? The simple explanation seems more likely to me.

[muawiyah]

"Random" probably doesn't really exist in our present Universe. The set of numbers or "points" in use is certainly quite large, of course, but we do not yet have a really good "proof" (a rigorous mathematical construct) that "random" can or does occur ~

As is all too often the case we find that this particular Universe has "values", e.g. Cosmological Constant, Planck's constant = 6.626068 × 10-34 m2 kg / s, einstein's e=mc squared, and so forth.

Other "values" are not available although they must certainly exist under other conditions in other universes. Maybe even the speed of light changes. Randomness, if it were "real", would sometimes select for different values in those constants.