The ideas that life evolved by events of chance, and the idea that events in our life happen randomly (without a divine reason) seem to threaten a lot of people. I will expound on that more later- it requires the mathematics of probability and some psychology to unravel. For the moment, I just want to explain my choice of banner- a fern, generated from a not terribly complex equation, plus lots of randomness- fractals.
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The biological world certainly does have the appearance of design- complex parts functioning in complex wholes. And it is difficult to imagine such structures appearing by chance- mainly because it is hard to conceptualize the time scale involved in evolution. But this fern, along with snowflakes and other crystals, proves that random inputs, given a few natural constraints, will form an apparent order organically, through a reiterative process, with beautiful results. Randomness is the opposite of design. But it does not occur in a vacuum; there are laws of physics and chemistry and such. How structures began to reproduce themselves, thus becoming "life", remains a mystery; but one thing is clear- given time and energy, randomness can "create" something beautiful.
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