There exists life, our god would have wanted to create life, therefore our god is real!
This argument is probabilistically valid: life is evidence for gods that would create (universes containing) life, at least before considering anthropic arguments.
For one, if life was evidence for gods that would create life, then this exact universe would be even more evidence for the god that would create this exact universe, including the fact that my Motorola Droid is on the desk right next to me as I am replying to you. Any sequence of dice rolls, the longer the better, would be evidence for invisible gremlins that would want to cause the dice to come out exactly that way, and were able to do so, yet we don’t hear that argument much.
Also, what support is there for picking out of the space of all possible gods the ones that would want to create life, other than blatant retrofitting?
Am I getting something wrong? More generally, in the Texas Sharpshooter example, is shooting a bunch of holes in a wall evidence that the shooter wanted to shoot these exact holes?
You and Nick Tarleton are both correct. Life is evidence for life-creating gods, but our prior for life-creating gods is so low that we still aren’t compelled to anticipate their existence.
in the Texas Sharpshooter example, is shooting a bunch of holes in a wall evidence that the shooter wanted to shoot these exact holes?
The difference is that we know bullet-holes come from people shooting guns, we’ve seen that happen many times, and so in this particular instance we can conclude there was a sharpshooter before we start wondering about his intentions. Whereas there’s only one universe, and no regularity of the kind ‘when you see a universe, there was a god who created it and usually intended it to be this way’.
This argument is probabilistically valid: life is evidence for gods that would create (universes containing) life, at least before considering anthropic arguments.
For one, if life was evidence for gods that would create life, then this exact universe would be even more evidence for the god that would create this exact universe, including the fact that my Motorola Droid is on the desk right next to me as I am replying to you. Any sequence of dice rolls, the longer the better, would be evidence for invisible gremlins that would want to cause the dice to come out exactly that way, and were able to do so, yet we don’t hear that argument much.
Also, what support is there for picking out of the space of all possible gods the ones that would want to create life, other than blatant retrofitting?
Am I getting something wrong? More generally, in the Texas Sharpshooter example, is shooting a bunch of holes in a wall evidence that the shooter wanted to shoot these exact holes?
You and Nick Tarleton are both correct. Life is evidence for life-creating gods, but our prior for life-creating gods is so low that we still aren’t compelled to anticipate their existence.
The difference is that we know bullet-holes come from people shooting guns, we’ve seen that happen many times, and so in this particular instance we can conclude there was a sharpshooter before we start wondering about his intentions. Whereas there’s only one universe, and no regularity of the kind ‘when you see a universe, there was a god who created it and usually intended it to be this way’.