Thank you so much for sharing your insights and concerns, dear brother in Christ!
Please, Dear Sister, share your preferred term, so that we "mere" scientists don't profane your love of "random" mathematical perfection -- even within our own minds... AND, so that we can discuss the above (the closest we've yet come to examining the conditions at "time=zero" so far) without offending your "peeve"... '-) LOLOL! BroJoeK's answer works for me; namely:
"Outside the purity of mathematics, "random" is a general term used to describe unpredictable events -- the flip of a coin, motions of air molecules, etc. -- but what it really means in those cases is: we can't take the time and effort to measure precisely every force influencing the results, and so we'll just pretend those actions are "random".
More specifically, the motion of gas molecules is isotropic meaning it has the same value regardless of direction (not relative) whereas the cosmic microwave background is anistropic meaning it has different values in different directions (relative.) For Lurkers, metals are examples of isotropic materials - they have the same strength in every direction - whereas woods have different strengths in different directions, e.g. against the grain versus with the grain.
Neither isotropy nor anistropy are "random" in the meaning of mathematics. Rather, they are pseudo-random because they are the effects of prior deterministic events.
Statistical randomness (the property being described in the physical sciences with the use 'random' - the unpredictability) is not the same as algorithmic randomness. Under Kolmogrov complexity, for instance, a numeric sequence must be incompressible to be considered random. Indeed most views in algorithmic randomness would insist on that property as well as the inability to make money betting on it (Martin-Löf–Chaitin Thesis et al).
Thank you, Dear Sister, for that clarification!
Indeed, where I was headed was to expound on the apparent and observed anisotropy of our universe, as illustrated by the CMB measurements, and in its current state -- as observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey:
AND THEN, to marvel that our very survival depends on the fact that we are generally surrounded by an isotropic atmosphere, and that many things (including the water we require for life) also behave isotropically.
(Of course, our atmosphere can get a bit anisotropic at times (think, "F5 tornado")... '-)
Of course, if the "primordial soup" had remained isotropic ("without form and void"), this
could not be observed -- and we could not exist to observe it...
Yet... our very existence depends on local, isotropic conditions.
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Without anisotropy we could not exist;
without isotropy we cannot survive.
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Almost makes one tend to believe in "Divine Providence" or an "Intelligent Designer", eh?
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QUESTION: how can one explain (mathematically or otherwise) that both isotropy and anisotropy coexist in our universe -- without invoking an external "Cause"?