The notion of random and variation has been accepted by biologists for many years - the statement by Gould is often quoted (if it is started again, we would get a different result).
Collins in his book, The Language of God states:
Darwin proposed that all living species are descended from
a small set of common ancestors—perhaps just one. He held
that variation within a species occurs randomly, and that the
survival or extinction of each organism depends upon its ability
to adapt to the environment. This he termed natural selection.
Recognizing the potentially explosive nature of the argument,
he hinted that this same process might apply to humankind,
and developed this more fully in a subsequent book, The Descent
of Man… and … descent from a common ancestor with natural selection operating
on randomly occurring variations. and
The most major current objections to BioLogos arise, however,
from believers in God who simply cannot accept that God
would have carried out creation using such an apparently random,
potentially heartless, and inefficient process as Darwinian
evolution. After all, they argue, evolutionists claim that the
process is full of chance and random outcomes. If you rewound
the clock several hundred million years, and then allowed evolution to proceed forward again, you might end up with a very
different outcome.
I would appreciate comments that dealt with these notions of random. The conclusions adopted by TE/EC advocates has been that evolution is random to us but not to God. So I cannot see how this argument is developed by denying that it is random from the outlook of biologists.
My personal view is that biological processes and mechanisms are extremely complex and the Darwinian paradigm is too primitive to provide a scientifically satisfying (or adequate) understanding, notwithstanding the arguments from biologists. Extensions of this theory to other areas is thus inappropriate. However, should a mathematical formulation that may deal with such extreme complexity be developed, we may obtain a greater understanding of biological processes.