Is the universe random, or does God uphold and orchestrate things, as the Bible says He does? Randomness is a term used to describe things that are unpredictable to the human mind. However, the laws of physics are consistent enough that things don’t just happen for no reason. 

Even coin flips can be predicted with 100% accuracy if one knows all of the parameters with precision and then sets up controlled flips with fixed parameters. With the knowledge of things like the mass of the coin, flatness of the landing surface, the starting height from the ground plane, as well as the torque and force used to flip the coin, one can figure out how many flips the coin will perform while airborne. Then it’s just a matter of determining the number of flips and whether it’s an even or odd number that will decide how it will land.

If the coin’s spin number in the air is even, then the coin face that’s up when it lands will be the same as the initial up face. If the coin’s spin number is odd, then its landing face will be the opposite face of the starting one. So if we start heads up, an odd number of flips will land tails up, and an even number will be heads up. We can adjust the parameters and observe how the coin’s motion is affected, making accurate predictions of how it will land, as the acceleration of gravity on the Earth’s surface (-9.8 m/s^2) and the mass of the coin are consistent variables. Meanwhile, height, surface type, and flip force can be adjusted; however, with the right equation, one can determine the outcome of every kind of change.

The ability to calculate things like this comes from the fact that the universe isn’t random. The sky doesn’t randomly turn green, people don’t randomly turn into statues, cars don’t turn into butterflies, etc. If things were truly random, wouldn’t we be popping in and out of existence? Nothing we know today should exist consistently if everything were random. This writing should disappear along with all of us. Everything is engineered to be what it is; nothing randomly deviates from its true attributes. Every action is the result of another action (Newton’s third law).

I make this point to illustrate a concern I have with the naturalist worldview, which posits that the universe randomly exploded and all life emerged randomly. Naturalism requires that components of a cell form and exist in a sustainable state before they randomly come together to form a cell. Yet, many components inside a cell cannot exist outside of the cell, so how can anyone claim that to be true when it is not observable? 

Science media tell us that the presence of water suggests life on another planet, yet water itself is anti-life, as DNA and RNA dissolve in it. This is because water dissolves sugar; the sugar molecule that connects the phosphate group to the nitrogen base cannot survive in a primordial soup environment if water is present, due to the solubility rule of “like dissolves like” in chemistry. 

The laws of conservation prevent matter from being created or destroyed; therefore, we do not exist in a world where matter randomly appears, thereby violating the rule. The matter must have pre-existed the law, but then, where did the law come from? How can there be consistent rules in a totally random universe? Who or what turned off the random? Some force outside the rules of the natural world had to create the material world and then subdue it with regulations to maintain consistency. The 2nd law of thermodynamics suggests that chaos doesn’t lead to order, so how did the universe, seemingly in chaos, create itself and then subdue itself with order? Again, who or what turned off the random?

I leave you with a quote from a French scholar and polymath, Pierre Simon Laplace:

“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.”

— Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities