One of the very fascinating things (well, to me at least) is the apparent order, coherence, and beauty in the things we perceive around us and in the cosmos at large. Although this is not necessarily a proof of God (nor any specific deity), I think this is at least consistent with the hypothesis that, at bottom, all the weird subquantum processes were initially set off by something which itself behaves in an orderly, creative, and almost purposeful manner - in ways relatively similar to the functioning of a "mind," so to speak - as opposed to behaving randomly.
If the underlying process behind everything was truly random, then it wouldn't have been possible for the universe to exist as a self-organizing system, let alone have spawned intelligent beings - aspects of itself - which can, self-referentially, learn about themselves and ponder their own existence and their origin. The countless dust particles floating in space would have been just floating there, and would have never been able to organize themselves into eyes, ears, brains, and the myriads of living things as evolution has made them to be.
Some people like to counter this argument with the infinite monkey theorem. The way this idea goes is that a monkey (or monkeys) hitting keys on a keyboard at random for an infinite amount of time would "eventually" produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. When the same reasoning is applied to the universe, the typing monkeys would be analogous to random quantum fluctuations, which can eventually produce the amount of complexity we see around us given an infinite amount of time, out of pure randomness. However, again, even this theorem doesn't make sense at the most fundamental level of reality.
If there was pure randomness at the very beginning, then it would have always stayed that way. Purely random processes can't give rise to lesser and lesser random processes or a partially random process (such as natural selection, for example). Random processes can't produce anything but randomness unless they have an order or an organizing system lurking behind them.
That being said, what is your take on this?
Do you think that, at bottom, life and everything in this universe was generated by something that can be described as being random in the true meaning of the word, or do you think that there is a subtle order lurking behind all the randomness?
If the underlying process behind everything was truly random, then it wouldn't have been possible for the universe to exist as a self-organizing system, let alone have spawned intelligent beings - aspects of itself - which can, self-referentially, learn about themselves and ponder their own existence and their origin. The countless dust particles floating in space would have been just floating there, and would have never been able to organize themselves into eyes, ears, brains, and the myriads of living things as evolution has made them to be.
Some people like to counter this argument with the infinite monkey theorem. The way this idea goes is that a monkey (or monkeys) hitting keys on a keyboard at random for an infinite amount of time would "eventually" produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. When the same reasoning is applied to the universe, the typing monkeys would be analogous to random quantum fluctuations, which can eventually produce the amount of complexity we see around us given an infinite amount of time, out of pure randomness. However, again, even this theorem doesn't make sense at the most fundamental level of reality.
If there was pure randomness at the very beginning, then it would have always stayed that way. Purely random processes can't give rise to lesser and lesser random processes or a partially random process (such as natural selection, for example). Random processes can't produce anything but randomness unless they have an order or an organizing system lurking behind them.
That being said, what is your take on this?
Do you think that, at bottom, life and everything in this universe was generated by something that can be described as being random in the true meaning of the word, or do you think that there is a subtle order lurking behind all the randomness?
