Unless I am mistaken, the direction in which a photon is emitted from an excited atom is completely random, and so is the time at which it will be emitted. Then we have got Heisenberg's uncertainty principle stating that, for instance, both the momentum and position of a particle (such as an electron) cannot be known exactly (the product of the uncertainties is Planck's constant divided with two pi or something like that).

These examples comes from quantum physics, in the macroscopic world I cannot come up with any good examples of truely random events.

I don't think that's true, It's like saying that a scientist who created a nuclear explosion would have to be greater than the explosion. It doesn't take much to set things in motion. I'm not saying that we may have come from some alien chemistry set, or that we're an out of control weed garden, but the idea that a creator HAS to be more powerful than his creation has always boggled me. If anything we're just one big butterfly effect?

What would be the purpose of calling it god? If it has no rhyme or reason (random) for said actions how can you conclude it might be intelligent?  What factors do you use to determine intelligence over non intelligence?  Can you please define magic?

Ok, I may not have been as clear as I would have liked there. My definition of random in this instance is the same as at www.dictionary.com  1.proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern. Therefore for anyone to find something to be truely random they would have to prove that it has no aim, reason or pattern (Flipping a coin is not random because it lands based on the way you flipped it. It is pseudo-random.). If such a thing were proven to have no aim, reason or pattern it would then fall under the category of unexplainable. It is at this point where I have intended to make the comparison between random and the "god of the gaps" argument as both filling the gaps of the currently unexplained when they shouldnt. (please disregard my magic comment, I do not wish to define it.) I had also no intent to suggest that randomness was god or intelligent.

You're mixing apples and oranges.  Actually, in logic parlance, you're creating an equivocation.  That's causing you to make several more errors.  Ok, first, randomness has a very precise scientific meaning, and it is most definitely not the one you're using.  Natural's explanation is good.  Go back and reread that if you want.  Next, you're using a colloquial definition to try to prove a philosophical point.  To say that a person is acting in a "random" way is to say that he apparently has no purpose.  This is fine, if we're talking about why he chose coffee instead of tea at lunch, but it's no good for talking about the beginnings of the universe.  "Purpose" demands intent, and intent demands consciousness.  (This can go way off the deep end really fast, so I'm keeping it simple at first.  Once you get this part, we can get to something more complicated.)  To say in your context that the universe is random is to say that it is without purpose, and this appears, by all accounts to be true.  

In order for the universe to be driven by purpose, something more complex than the infant universe had to exist.  This thing had to have consciousness, but there's a problem.  Consciousness is dependent on the material universe... so... if the material universe didn't exist, neither did consciousness.  If you want to describe consciousness as anything other than dependent on the material universe, you're not really talking about consciousness anymore.  You're talking about... something else.

So... what is it?  (other-consciousness, that is)

Think about it for a minute.  Consciousness is awareness of and interaction with the material universe.  If there's no material universe, what is consciousness?

So, to suggest a conscious thing predating the universe (of course, time is a real issue before the universe too, but I'll let one of our cosmology geeks handle that) you must suggest a {UNKNOWN noun} {UNKNOWN verb} {UNKNOWN qualifier} the universe.  You see?  The only thing you can define is the universe, which we recognize as not displaying any sense of purpose, but rather following the physical laws with 100% accuracy.  In a very real way, speaking of purpose before the universe is just complete nonsense -- not in the perjorative sense, but it literally contains no sensible information.

a) The universe may or may not contain unknowable elements. This is unknown, and there is no known way to know whether 'the unknowable' exists.

b) The universe may or may not contain random elements. This is unknown, and there is no known way to know whether 'true randomness' exists.

c) There is no known justification for anyone to claim that they know whether there are true unknowns or true randomness.

This is what I meant by "And so it is with randomness in the universe." I meant that they are analogous situations.

Next:

d) The unknown does exist. There are things about the universe that are currently unknown.

e) Not all of the unknown is unknowable. We are constantly learning and discovering all the time; if all of the unknown was unknowable, we could never learn anything.

f) It is unknown whether there is anything that is unknowable. This is the same as a).

g) Given e) and f), and taking into account Occam's Razor, there is no justification for believing that any portion of the unknown is unknowable.

h) Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the unknown exists, but is not unknowable.

This is what I meant by "The unknown exists, but it is not unknowable." We are justified in believing that it is possible to know any particular unknown at some point in the future. (This is another way of saying "Don't give up your search for knowledge just because someone says something might be unknowable.&quot

Next:

i) While it is justified in believing that the unknown is not unknowable, we must accept the fact that we may be wrong. Occam's Razor is a principle of induction, not deduction. A scientist always reserves the possibility that a well-tested theory might some day be proven wrong.

Therefore, in answer of your question, "How, if random is unknowable and the unknown is not unknowable could random or the unknowable exist?" I hope I have made things more clear. The answer is: We simply do not know if the unknowable or true randomness exist, but we are justified in assuming they do not, for the reason of Occam's Razor, and for the purpose of continued pursuit of knowledge and understanding. If one day we somehow find out we were wrong and the unknowable or truly random exist, then at least we learned as much as we could and came to the final realization that there are some things that cannot be known and/or predicted.

Like I said, I am comfortable either way. However, I have met *several* people who have this wild notion that most things are unknowable, and therefore there's no point in pursuing knowledge. The reason I've developed this argument so thoroughly is to counter this notion. Plus, it makes for an inspirational perspective for rationalists.

I think the closest you will get is unpredictability. I don't think science currently has a way of distinguishing the truly random from the merely unknown and super-complex pseudo-random. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), unpredictability is not the same thing as truly random, but that's all science can deal with. The foundation of science is prediction.

(I will make an aside in anticipation of likely objections: I currently do not believe it is possible to know everything (in principle), and therefore you could say that since we'll never know everything, there will always be *something* that is unknowable. However, I'm more talking about 'unknowable in principle'. Something that we never learn is not unknowable *in principle*, it is only unknown. Had we chosen differently, we might have come to know it. This also answers the objection of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. While our current best guess is that it's not possible to know both the position and the momentum of an electron, we *can* know one or the other to an arbitrary precision. It's a matter of which one is more important to us. Furthermore, this is assuming that QM is never overturned some time in the future. It is possible that we may at some future time discover that it *is* possible to know both the position and momentum of an electron. The point of my argument is not about our current state of knowledge; it is about our continued *pursuit* of knowledge. While we may never know *everything*, we can, in principle, know any particular thing we choose to study. It's a matter of trade-offs. Much like life: You'll never be the good at everything, but that's no reason not to pursue excellence in one or a few things while you're alive.)

Random, in a mathematical sense, may or may not be possible.  (Hasn't someone else already explained this to you in this very thread?)  The thing is, we will never be able to know for certain -- that much is certain.  You need to get the idea of mathematically random out of your head.  It isn't relevant to the conversation.

Reason and purpose are completely different in this context.  If you don't think they are, then you need to backtrack and define your terms more carefully.  "Reason" as you are using it means "cause."  Gravity is the cause of my chair sticking to the floor.  "Purpose" as you are using it is the conscious intent to cause.  I have the purpose of sitting in my chair, but gravity has no purpose in holding both me and the chair to the earth.

If you want to get into a discussion with a quantum physicist over the idea of cause on a quantum level, feel free.  I'm not your guy, but kiddo, you're not your guy either.  Deludedgod is probably the only person here qualified to begin to talk about this sort of thing.  If you haven't got a bunch of degrees in physics, you are simply not qualified to talk about quantum physics, and anything you think you know about it is irrelevant to the conversation.  Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it gets tiresome listening to people make pronouncements about things of which they haven't the slightest clue.

Are you appealing to the unknown to deny the known?  If so, you can take that nonsense elsewhere.  If you want to start allowing the possibility of the unknown to invalidate any conclusion, then you have to admit that knowledge is impossible.  If that is true, why are we conversing?

I'd like to encourage you to do a little reading on stochastic processes.  You seem to be hung up on random when it simply isn't that much of an issue.  Regardless of whether there is a true "mathematical random," stochastic processes work, and are... curiously enough... predictable.

To get to the heart of what I think is your problem, I don't think you've got a proper sense of scale here.  Assuming for a moment that the universe is deterministic -- that is, once it was set in motion, with enough information and the correct algorithms, one could successfully predict every event in the universe for all time until the complete heat death of the universe, we can make a couple of observations.  The information requirements for predicting something extremely simple (in comparison to the universe) like what my next action will be after concluding this post -- with 100% accuracy -- are astronomically staggering.  It's quite possible that you would need more computing power than has ever existed in all the computers on earth.  

Now, at first glance, this might not seem like a big deal, but consider that information doesn't process itself.  In order to make the calculation of my next action, you must have a computer.  Computers take energy.  If all the energy in the universe is conserved (and it is) where's the energy coming from to make the computation?  After you consider that computing power beyond all earthly capability would be required to predict my next twenty minutes with certainty, consider that there are trillions of trillions of organisms on the planet at this instant.  There have been quadrillions of quadrillions of quadrillions of organisms on earth, and each one requires a ton of computing power to predict. Once you're done with earth, consider that there might be billions of planets with life.  Then, consider that you've only predicted life.  You haven't dealt with the individual motion of subatomic particles in stars.

Each virtually instantaneous prediction is going to require information many, many orders higher than the action itself.  For an entity to exist and have the capability to predict the universe with certainty would require an unimaginably huge amount of information and energy.

In other words, even if there really isn't "random," the practical limitation of computational power makes it, for every conceivable purpose, equivalent to random.

Yunno, I was doing fine right up until you said this. I mean, I get it, it makes perfect sense, but then I took a moment to imagine the number of individual processed that go into a couple of minutes of activity. I would swear I heard my brain make an audible *pop*

As a side note, your last couple of posts went a long way in describing nigel's explanation of how "big" a god would have to be in order to control/predict the entirety of the universe.