Order vs. Randomness

[Rayaan]

Something can be "beautiful" without having been "designed" though.... which is what you were hinting at.

Yeah ... but the context of your previous comment (perhaps I interpreted that wrongly) seemed to be focused on just the beauty part, not design. You wrote, "We have, on occasion, had theists show up touting how beautiful the universe is and how everything operates like clockwork." You didn't specifically connect that statement with the word "design" anywhere. And the critical tone of that sentence - as well as your pointing out of the craters on the moon - seemed to me as if you don't agree with that view (i.e. that the universe is beautiful). Hence I may have misunderstood your point of view.

Our earth is a spec in a spec in a spec in who-knows-how-many-more-specs where nearly everything else is completely random and chaotic.

Indeed, the earth is an infinitesimal spec in this universe amongst many, but I disagree that everything else is "completely random."

Complete randomness in nature is not only unproven, but is also impossible at the smallest scales.

Now if we were to discover that life is a common feature within star systems, that would certainly raise some interesting questions regarding the apparent necessity of order and life in our universe.

If life was found to be more common in this universe, then I suppose that would be just more evidence of order. However, my point is that if there exists any amount of order in this universe at all (especially the amount of order that exists in biological systems), then there also must be order at the most fundamental level of reality.

But just the fact that the Universe operates on an apparent algorithm that sometimes births apparent orderliness does not suggest a divine designer to me.

Since orderly systems cannot arise from purely random processes, nor out of nothing, it must come from an underlying pre-existing order. And, in my mind, the concepts "order" and "design" are inseparably fused together with the idea of an intelligent designer because order is an aspect of intelligence, not of randomness.

Even the universe operating on an "algorithm" (as you said) implies that the universe is best described by an underlying order, not randomness.