Then the act of reproducing was itself a random event?

If the point of being alive is to stay alive (and at the single cell level I think this is akin to asking a rock if it wants to continue to be a rock), then the act of reproduction has to be an event an organism was "programmed" to perform when it first became alive.

Otherwise, I can't see any reason an organism would spend treasure and resources on reproduction: Why would it do that? It's already alive. Any knowledge of danger to the organism would be killed off when the danger itself killed the organsim.

Mayhap the universe is quite young for life to develop as we know it?