He knows without his protection, Lucifer will surely lead them to destruction, or an attack on the rightious - which is deserving of destruction.

Here is a video of a genetic algorithm creating the image of a human face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS5HWBNvf9U

Is that face designed or the result of happenstance(in this case a RNG)?

You haven't established (and I think it's wrong) that these categories are both disjoint and exhaustive. Sorry, I'll put it a way you can't argue with:

"perhaps it's a combination of both"

there, I'm safe.

What about radioactive decay? The process is random, but the overall result is predictable.

It seems that if abiogenesis and evolution, then there’s certainly sentient life throughout the universe, despite all that random activity in the early universe. We just couldn't predict from an early state of the universe where and when that life would show up, but it would show up as intended, if intended.

I would say that is inaccurate to say a genetic algorithm created a human face. The face was designed by an intellect who used randomness as a tool to derive that design.

I don't think you can say for certian that it is random....it only appears to us to be so.....so we consider it so.

there is no evidence to suggest that it is NOT random, when the cells are making copies of it's entire DNA there is no mechanism built into in which somehow guides what should be copied incorrectly ... you do realize that , right?

Phew. Glad I didnt say that, I wouldnt want you to think I was speaking inaccurately.

RLK was spot on.

Yeah, you're mostly right here, I got a bit confused. What I think I can say is this: a predictable system can still be random. So if the universe is completely deterministic and we don't have to worry about Heisenberg, then we could trace the history of evolution backwards and forwards. Assuming that we don't interfere with evolution, then we could predict what would happen, but it would still be "random" in the sense of unguided, of being without purpose.

However, this doesn't work when applied to god as his picking out a particular possible universe to be instantiated would be a form of guidance, although one that is completely compatible with the actual theory of evolution.

I don't think it's random if we can predict a result from a prior state of affairs (I dont think whether it's guided or not is important, I think the guided part rules out randomness, but is not an essential feature). Consider two hypothetical universes, both creatorless, with a coin continually being flipped. One has a physical law that it will always alternate between heads and tails. The other has a physical law that it will land with a 50% probability on either - the result of any individual flip being unaffected by the result of previous flips.

Suppose, in both universes, we begin with HTHTH..., I dont think we can call the first one random (it's about to be tails) even though it's unguided.

We may be unable to distinguish between them initially, but ultimately the first is random, the second is non-random and after sufficient flips of the coin we will have good grounds for identifying which is which. It will take a long time before we can have confidence that the second is random and not the result of some alternative algorithm - more complicated than universe one, but still predictable.

I'm not sure I agree with this (mostly due to a difference in our usage of "random"). The theory of evolution by natural selection posits a mechanism to describe the genetic and morphological changes we observe in nature. It says that these changes are primarily due to random (in the sense of without purpose or unguided, not uncaused) mutations in the genetic code of different organisms that are then passed on to future generations if they increase the chances of reproductive success. If we posit that these mutations are actually controlled by god in some lawlike or guided manner, then it isn't clear to me why we need the theory of natural selection at all. After all, we do distinguish between natural and artificial selection on something like these grounds.

I dont accept that 'in the sense of without purpose or unguided' is the meaning of random in TOE literature/theory.

I think the literature can be read whilst being agnostic as to whether there is some underlying guiding principle, unknown to us. Positing God causing each genetic error or positing it as some kind of working through of a quantum fluctuation doesnt impact on the theory. One cannot read it in an unchanged way if one considers these are predictable.

If they were predictable, artifical selection would be much easier than it actually is and it would presumably have far-reaching ramifications when it came to coming up with new genetic therapies (or similar). If it were somehow known that God is doing it (but it's still unpredictable) - our theory of evolution and its consequences continues unchanged.

I dont think the philosophical understandings of evolution are 'part' of the TOE - obviously theres a significant metaphysical difference between unguided and directed, but I dont think the actual biology/genetics as practised is at all dependant on the answer to that dichotomy.

I would suggest that for a system to be predictable there has to be some non random elements to it. The outcome of a trial of coin tosses is predictable because there are just two sides of the coin. If we designed our coinage to have 4 sides the outcome of a trial of coin tosses would be much different, but still predictable. However if the number of sides of the coin is also random, you have no way of predicting the outcome of the trial of tosses.

Evolution is unguided, do you really think GOD pre planned everything? Like where should each tree grow, how tall, for how many years, and where should a seed land and which seeds should grow, temperatures , rainfall, etc, etc, etc, etc,etc... this comes to EVERYTHING surrounding us on earth. Everything surrounding life affects that life form and it's evolution, every second, minute, hour, day, etc... affects life...

This is true.

You would if some non-random element such as natural selection were thrown in. If every time side A were tossed it survived (or was plotted) under conditions X,Y and Z, and were taken out in all other instances, then when side B were thrown it survived only under conditions D thru F, side C survives under some other such combination of conditions, etc. you possibly could predict future outcomes once you recognized the pattern or conditions under which each survives/perishes.

So the random element of how many sides there are combined with the non-random element of natural selection makes predictions possible.

People always seem to forget about the very non-random process of natural selection when discussing evolution and random mutations.

Natural selection guides the evolution of creatures.

this is not the guidance I am talking about... I am talking about the intelligent guidance from above... natural selection is not really guidance as the meaning we are speaking about here...

The point I am making is that evolution is not unguided. You cannot find one genetic algorithm that doesn't include some sort of fitness paradigm which ultimately shapes the final product.

Its the existence of this fitness paradigm which renders the claim in the OP false.

"guide" in any sense is a poor choice of words when it comes to natural selection even if it's not totally wrong. as in,
The crash rails "guide" the sled down the run.
The driver "guides" the sled down the run.

Totally different situations, same word. Bad for business.

The rails serve a limiting function rather than a forward-looking function. Natural selection is nothing like the drivers process and much like the rails process.

It is unguided... where do you find guidance in the whole process?

And whatever science says is 100% true, right? Certainly scientist 100 years from now are not going to look back and laugh at what today's scientist believe.

Yep. that is certain.
It's a "shoulders of giants" thing.

Science doesn't claim truth and "believe" is not a good term for the position that science has on a topic at any stage. Used? yes, descriptive? not really, when it's erroneously taken at it's meaning in other contexts.

When it comes to randomness in evolution, if in fact there is not an element in chance in genetics, reshuffling of genes, and mutations, then how is it that Mendel could predict exact phenotypic ratios of offspring in plants? Why is it he can make a prediction, then do the experiment breeding hundreds or thousands of plants, and get a ratio very damn close to the prediction?

If it were not true, why is it anyone anywhere in the world can keep track of the ratio of boys born vs girls born, in a hospital, and always find a near 50:50 ratio?

"Evolution is unguided, do you really think GOD pre planned everything? Like where should each tree grow, how tall, for how many years, and where should a seed land and which seeds should grow, temperatures , rainfall, etc, etc, etc, etc,etc... this comes to EVERYTHING surrounding us on earth. Everything surrounding life affects that life form and it's evolution, every second, minute, hour, day, etc... affects life..."

This is true. Ever hear the story of someone traveling back in time, stepping on a mosquito and then, when he goes back to his present time, everything is different? This might not be inaccurate, as long as the organism you kill is important. For example, say in a population of 1000 original unicelluar organisms, one of them has a mutation that allows light (photon) to enter and trigger a chemical reaction. These 1000 bacteria have been living on Earth for about 2 billion years, and finally one has an astronomically rare mutation that will eventually lead to huge complex diverse life on earth. Killing this bacteria could mean present day earth has no life forms besides 1000 microscopic bacteria.

Throughout this post you have made some terrible analogies. The chance of dying while playing russian roulette is pretty high. You can calculate an exact number if you know the number of chambers and the number of shots you take. I'm sure the number is high. When you get to something complex like dealing a royal flush in poker, it's probably less than .1% chance. And when get to something unimaginably more complex, like life on earth, the chance of the first organism eventually evolving to human beings, as they look like today, must be less than .0000 (insert several billion zeros...) 0001%.