Seeing Evolution in Order

I was sitting there on the 4th floor on the highrise, placidly watching the suburban Chicago traffic. As an army of ants goes to and fro from an anthill, each minding his own business, yet working in perfect harmony, so these cars went about their circuit. As I watched the endless motion, so regular, yet so varied, I asked myself, "Where does order come from?"

I am not wholly opposed to assuming a belief entirely for a set time, in order to work from inside the belief system. So, please allow me to embrace evolution for a minute.

Cars, such as those in suburbia, and even ants, such as those in my yard, challenge my modern evolutionary thought. My understanding, based in modern theories of evolution, has great distaste for these cars operating in such harmony. This type of order presents some challenges for us. Where does order come from? In evolution, we rely on randonimity and chance. It is highly improbable that life, and ultimately man, evolved from mere non-living matter, yet it is possible. And it has happened.

Evolution is random. Given enough chances, the universe exploded into existence. Given enough time, life accidentally sprang into being. Given enough opportunities, beneficial mutations occurred, changed the organism, and created new creatures. By luck, it so happens that we humans are now here.
But where did order come from?

If I truly am to embrace evolution, I must hold that it is the best system. If it is the best system, why is this system not operating around me every day?
Why, our highways should go nowhere; our driving should be erratic. Our cars should take turns at random, and reach our destinations totally by accident! Our airspace should be hopeful, our seas should be unmapped, our lands should have no signage -- We're creatures of chance! Who needs NASA? Our spacecraft will make it eventually -- just give it enough time!
Is order really necessary?

I cannot believe that order has always been necessary, for I do not believe it was necessary for the beginning of the universe and life. But if order is not necessary, then why does it exist? It should have been eliminated a long time ago by Natural Selection. If order is not necessary, where did it come from? If all was created by random processes, then order had to be created by random processes.

As an evolutionist, I hold that random processes can produce order, or at least, an order. If I toss Scrabble pieces onto a table, it is possible that a word (most likely a 2-letter word) will be produced. We would recognize that as order, or at least, as in order. Unfortunately, I must already operate from order to recognize that the scrabble pieces are in an order. So again I am foiled. If I was a pure randomist, I would not notice the difference between my random tossing producing gibberish on my Scrabble table or producing the entire works of Shakespeare. I must understand language, which is an order, to be able to tell the difference.

So while I could argue that randonimity can produce an order, I am forced to recognize that randonimity cannot produce an operating system of order. Thus, randonimity cannot produce order, and order did not exist before the beginning. Order should not exist. But it does.

Order then, must be necessary. If it is necessary, then where did it come from? If order is necessary, why do we say it wasn't present at the beginning of things!?

One might say that order is necessary for life today, and I think they would be correct. But then we have another problem. Just when did order become necessary?

I cannot believe that order has always been necessary, for I do not believe it was necessary for the beginning of the universe and life. Perhaps then, it became necessary at some later point? I cannot say where, however.

But now I am left with another dilemma. At what point did order supersede randonimity? Order is what I observe in the world today. Without it, I would probably have been staring, panic-stricken, at a horrible mess of car pile-ups. Order seems to be the dominant operator in the present world. When did it surpass random processes? Since it did, Natural Selection would teach me that randonimity is weak, and order is superior. But if order is superior, why was it not necessary in the beginning!?

In either case, I still don't know where it came from. I also do not know how. If randonimity is all that operated prior to order, then how did order come into being? I have already found that randonimity cannot produce order. Where did order come from?

If I continue to hold that randonimity was the cause of everything, then I cannot explain why I observe order. Order is necessary, distinct from random processes.
If order is necessary, then why is randonimity? When order could explain it all, why do we insist that randonimity must explain it all?

I could propose that order and randonimity must both exist. But then, order is necessary.
If order is necessary, why do we insist that it wasn't necessary in the very beginnings of our universe and life?


Wouldn't a theory that includes both order and randonimity make more sense? Perhaps we should develop a theory in which order is dominant, and randonimity is variety. Maybe random processes have nothing to do with it. Maybe order created the cosmos, and randonimity mixes it.

Perhaps God created the heavens and the Earth.