Let us suppose that we select 3 yes/no questions for which the answers are supposed to be kept secret by powerful governments. Suppose we pose the questions to 8000 people chosen by some (inevitably non-random?) method. Each combination of answers to the three questions can be put into one of eight categories.
If we get approximately 1000 people giving all three correct answers, then we would normally consider the possibility that this can be explained by random chance. Do you for some reason want to persuade me that this is a misrepresentation of somebody’s point of view? It does not even seem to me that this issue has any connection with atheism.
There is functional “random” and absolute random.
The situation you describe is functional random. If we were to follow up on why those people gave the responses they did (and the likelyhood of getting anything like the percentages you suggest in a sample size of 8000 is extremely unlikely), there are reasons for them choosing the answers they did.
It appears random on one end if no follow up is done, but things are never ultimately random.
People use the term random more and more these days to describe things that are in no way ACTUALLY random. The less one examines a thing, the more random it appears.
If suddenly over dinner I interrupt the normal conversation and ask if you recall a certain episode of the Pink Panther cartoon, you might remark “well, that’s random” seeing as we were talking about car financing, but likely if you asked why I came up with this, I could tell you what jogged the thought.
Once, while I was teaching science, I gave a large number of dice to a large number of students and had them toss the dice and record the results. People consider dice rolls to be fairly random. Over tens of thousands of roles it became clear that was not absolutely the case. If you toss the same die 1000 times you might find out that a particular die tends to roll four more often than the other numbers. If one then investigates the die one might find there is a slight imperfection or imbalance in the distribution of weight or density in the die. There is a reason that it rolls four more often than predicted by “random” chance.
Random is a concept used to describe an idea. There is no ultimate and absolute randomness. there is always something behind the something behind the something.
Some people believe that something to be god. Fair enough. That does not make the only other option “random chance”.
This is where the invisible Pink Unicorn example comes in. If we can assign causality to something we have no empirical proof of, than it could be God, or an invisible Unicorn, or some force or attraction within the Universe that we are not able to perceive or measure
.Scientists sometimes do the latter and have a theoretical explanation for something that they use as a basis for further inquiry. Without some empirical proof, without some clear and obvious pattern one cannot clearly say that X is the absolute cause and force.
I posit that many believers use the concept of god in the same manner.
In the end believers and unbelievers find there are many questions they cannot really answer.
Similarly, given human nature, people of both camps often assert that given time, all will be answered by that which they put their faith in.
