Is it more probable that a universe that looks designed is created by a designer than by random natural forces?

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Here's something we might agree on, at least for the sake of argument: the chance that a (sufficiently powerful, etc.) designer would produce a "designy" universe is higher than the chance that a random selection of natural laws and initial conditions (i.e., "no designer") would do so:

Prob( designy universe GIVEN designer) > Prob(designy universe GIVEN no designer)

But you are wondering about a different comparison:

Prob (designer GIVEN designy universe) ??? Prob(no designer GIVEN designy universe)

But these latter probabilities seem much more problematic to estimate. Are we to imagine being "given" a universe "at random" with no information about it except that it is designy? But what does that even mean? How is this "random" selection made among all the possible designed and undesigned universes? Are we to assume that there is some objective fact, for instance, about what the odds are of a universe being designed rather than undesigned? This matters greatly, for if in general the odds are that universes are designed, then the first inequality above entails that the second should also be a ">"---the odds are that a designy universe is designed. But if most universes are undesigned, then it's consistent with the first inequality that there are more undesigned designy ones than designed designy ones---i.e., that the second inequality is a "<". But how are we to estimate the odds of universes in general being designed or undesigned? It's not as though we think universes are produced by spinning a roulette wheel.

Ah, someone might say, you may be right that there's no good way of estimating objective odds of these things. But what matters is subjective odds---one's degree of confidence. So, imagine that you find yourself ignorant of every matter of fact except that you are in a universe. What then would be the appropriate degree of confidence that the universe was designed? But once again this seems a hopeless question. It'd be like being confronted with a guess-the-number game where I have absolutely no clue about the range in which the number falls nor the process that was used to select it. What's my degree of confidence that the number is less than 10? Less than a thousand? A million? There's no natural, let alone inevitable way to assign these odds. Similarly, there'd be no natural way to assign odds to the universe being designed (even knowing that the first inequality holds).

We're nowhere near being able to establish a moral, but one that might begin to be suggested by these considerations is that the mere "designy-ness" of our universe is not by itself a good reason for confidence that it was designed.

This is just the tip of a large iceberg; the contemporary literature on "arguments from design" is large, sophisticated, and fascinating. I heartily recommend it to members of school boards everywhere.

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