In our previous session (starting over at first level) the cleric took the fire domain so he can cast 1d6 fire bolts up to seven times per day. Per the rules on ranged touch attacks you can score a critical hit. The problem is no where in the multitude of books doe it say rolling a 1 is a critical failure. If so what happens in the casting just lost, does it fly off in a random direction, thoughts?
Critical failures are not a feature of the base game. A "1" is an automatic miss, but it does nothing more special than if you had just barely missed.
There are critical miss effects for spells in the Paizo fumble deck you could use for these kinds of attacks, but those would be entirely optional.
Critical failure is not a core assumption of the game. Some groups use it as an optional rule, but you wont find it in Pathfinder Role Playing Game books. So neither the sword swinging fighter, bow weilding ranger, or the firebolt firing cleric need worry about rolling a one beyond missing their enemy.
You can look up critical hit tables as well as critical failure tables to change how the base game works though. However, normally a critical hit just multiplies the damage based on the critical modifier. A 1 or automiss does nothing more than miss normally, but both a critical hit and critical miss could exist with additional affects. Such affects exist in the already mentioned fumble deck and critical hit deck.