The fact that there's a defined term for something isn't in any way relevant to that thing's cause.
Random events, by their nature, should not follow a pattern. But we find time and time again that not only do they form a pattern but that they form the same pattern as otherwise seemingly random events.
Put it this way. If you can see gas particles following the same pattern as wealth distribution among people and not at least question your views about a higher power than it's you who is being irrational (Note: I didn't say change your view I said question)
Random events, by their nature, should not follow a pattern.
Just because you intuitively feel some concept is true, doesn't make it so. For example, the idea that heavy objects fall faster than light objects is very intuitive and was Aristotelian common sense until Galileo had the good sense to actually test the idea. Of course, it turns out that idea is not correct.
It is sometimes difficult to understand new abstractions like spontaneous order. But, I think it is worth trying.
Here are some articles to use as a starting point:
Again saying something exists is not a rebuttal to why it exists. Also, any intuitive feeling I have that something is random is irrelevant when discussing how something is not random.
Put it this way. Ask any atheist why we have religion in the world and they'll generally give you the same answer. Humans have a need to put order to the universe so they invent benevolent deitys to give them that sense of order.
But if we discover, as we gain more and more knowledge through science, that there in fact is an order to the universe doesn't that least SUGGEST that MAYBE there is a higher power?
As a theist I have to disagree with your final point. The presence of order in our universe is very clearly necessary in order for us to be able to question the existence of order. That the weak anthropic principle is and always will be a sufficient explanation of the presence of order does not undermine my personal sense of faith, but nothing about the presence of order supports it.
It is difficult to talk about these things when we use the same words to mean very different things. What do you mean by random? I am surrounded by random events, each little flash of light arrives at random, but overall the light in my room is largley uniform, certainly predictable.
So, no, that the light from my lamp comes out in all directions does not suggest to me a higher power.
Think of it this way: Chaos and order are on different side of the same coin.
If there's no randomness and chaos, life wouldn't probably form. There wouldn't be the billion, or trillion of random cominbation that finally form the foundation of life. There wouldn't be any order to recongnize because the universe is inert. There would be nothing to see and nothing to do. Likewise, if there is no energy difference between different area of the universe, the structure of life couldn't form.
Why do spontangeous order exists? Because without spontangeous orders nothing can exists and no life would form. It doesn't need a reason, because its reason is to exist.
In other words, randomness is neccessary for the creation of an anthrophic universe. For that I am a discordian.
Of course a large number of random events do tend to form known patterns/distributions. Go read any introductory statistics books - and pay particular attention to the chapters on random walks and outcome distributions.
Again, the nature of this conversation is "why" something happens. So saying it happens and it's statistics is not a rebuttal to me suggesting a possible explanation as to why it might happen.
This will be my last response in this thread - it seems to be degrading into a flame war. If you want more info email me (my address is in my profile).
I wasn't saying 'statistics' as a magical name, I was just using it as shorthand for the explanation that it provides. Frankly, I don't have the time or inclination to type up a half hour lecture on stats (especially since there are thousands of others who have already done so far better than I could).
But, here's the 10 second explanation:
Many easily measurable outputs (height, weight, wealth, etc) are functions of a large number of roughly randomly distributed inputs. It's very unlikely that all these inputs are lined up in such a way that the observable output is maximized or minimized. It's much more likely that they will, in fact, on average cancel each other out. Given a sufficient number of trials (i.e., a large enough population), this results in a normal/guassian/bell-curve distribution of the observable output.
Given other distributions/correlations of inputs you get the other common distributions of outputs (lognormal, boltzmann, exponential, etc).
> Random events, by their nature, should not follow a pattern
When a woman gives birth to a child, it is random whether it is a boy or a girl. But there is a pattern: when 100 women give birth to a child each, we expect 50 boys and 50 girls.
This article made me question how we think about the interactions between people, that you could make the same distinction in economics as we do between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics.
Random events, by their nature, should not follow a pattern. But we find time and time again that not only do they form a pattern but that they form the same pattern as otherwise seemingly random events.
Put it this way. If you can see gas particles following the same pattern as wealth distribution among people and not at least question your views about a higher power than it's you who is being irrational (Note: I didn't say change your view I said question)