[WildTurkey]

But you seem to contradict yourself earlier by saying (and I paraphrase) 1) evolutionary theory doesn't infer random acts of chance with respect to the existence of species, and 2). evolution may follow the "free will" of chemistry. So which is it?

"free will" does not imply randomness. God may have put into place the necessary chemicals for life and then sat back to watch, knowing that life would develop but not concerned with whether it had two legs or eight, only that at some point, life would evolve to a level that it would be able to understand and communicate with the 'creator'. OTOH, he may have not cared and just got tired of his experiment and went off to bigger and better concepts.

[MoonMullins]

I thought you would say this. The logical conclusion of your argument is that if free will does not imply randomness, then evolutionary chemisty must itself be following an intelligent design, whether its own (unlikely) or another.