Part of (creationists) problem surely comes from the act of confusing “random” with “indeterminate.” In ordinary speech, when we say that something is random, we generally mean that anything can happen, with all outcomes having equal probabilities. The shuffling of a deck of cards, in the hands of a competent and honest dealer, produces a truly random outcome in which any of the many (fifty-two factorial) arrangements of the shuffled deck are equally probable. Physical events, generally speaking, are not all all random in this sense because all outcomes are not equally probable. The possible locations of an electron around an atomic nucleus are given by a probability wave that tells us which locations for the electron are most likely and which are so unlikely that they need not be considered as possible. Until we actually observe the location of the electron, we cannot tell where it will show up in that probability wave, and that is why its actual location is indeterminate. But this does not mean that an electron could, with equal probabilities, be just anywhere. Events at the atomic level are indeterminate, and those patterns are the ones we sometimes elevate to the status of physical laws.
