Suppose you were using a telescope and zooming into Jupiter on the surface and saw a rock that had a face that looked very very much like your great grand mother. Suppose that it was very detailed to the point where it looked about 99% similar to her face (not something vague like the man on the moon picture you can find on the internet). After a few days, you look at Jupiter again and now notice the top of another mountainous region that looked 99% similar to your great grandfather!

Suppose now that there was no evidence that any human could have sculpted it, after all no one has been to Jupiter, much less been there to try to sculpt a rock that looks like your great grand mother.

Let’s now make one further crucial assumption. Imagine as if you could somehow know that this occurred purely from natural laws. What I mean by this is assume that you knew that no physical person or alien could have literally sculpted it. It occurred through completely natural processes

Now imagine these two candidate explanations.

A) the initial conditions and laws of the universe just happened to be set up in a way to create faces on Jupiter resembling your great grand parents almost exactly

B) God or some super powerful being outside of space and time did this on purpose

I think, or I suspect, that no matter how much you tried to rationalize for A, you would never actually prefer it and prefer B, especially with enough details in the face, Or atleast most people would.

But notice that technically, B) is superfluous. In B), because the faces occurred through natural processes, the initial conditions were still set up in such a way to produce the faces that they did. Except that they were set by God. And yet still, A) seems like an explanation that wouldn’t sit right.

I suspect this is because we can imagine many different ways the rock would have formed by nature but not many different ways the rock would have formed if there was a God interesting in sending down a sign.

I suspect this is also because B) gives us a reason for why the faces occurred that A) doesn’t. But it gives us one more reason. It doesn’t give us a reason for why that God exists and why He would want to do that in the first place. And yet it still seems instinctively preferable.

Is this because of psychology or this because of a valid philosophical instinct? In this sense, are agent explanations “better” in some sense than non agent ones?

Suppose you were using a telescope and zooming into Jupiter on the surface and saw a rock that had a face that looked very very much like your great grand mother. Suppose that it was very detailed to the point where it looked about 99% similar to her face (not something vague like the man on the moon picture you can find on the internet). After a few days, you look at Jupiter again and now notice the top of another mountainous region that looked 99% similar to your great grandfather!

Suppose now that there was no evidence that any human could have sculpted it, after all no one has been to Jupiter, much less been there to try to sculpt a rock that looks like your great grand mother.

Let’s now make one further crucial assumption. Imagine as if you could somehow know that this occurred purely from natural laws. What I mean by this is assume that you knew that no physical person or alien could have literally sculpted it. It occurred through completely natural processes

Now imagine these two candidate explanations.

A) the initial conditions and laws of the universe just happened to be set up in a way to create faces on Jupiter resembling your great grand parents almost exactly

B) God or some super powerful being outside of space and time did this on purpose

I think, or I suspect, that no matter how much you tried to rationalize for A, you would never actually prefer it and prefer B, especially with enough details in the face, Or atleast most people would. And if you would still prefer A) just keep imagining more and more detail to these faces. There must be some level of detail to the faces at which point you would be hard pressed to still prefer A).

Now, notice that technically, B) is superfluous. In B), because the faces occurred through natural processes, the initial conditions were still set up in such a way to produce the faces that they did. Except that they were set by God. And yet still, A) seems like an explanation that wouldn’t sit right.

I suspect this is because we can imagine many different ways the rock would have formed by nature but not many different ways the rock would have formed if there was a God or some trickster being interested in sending down a playful sign with regards to our grandparents

I suspect this is also because B) gives us a reason for why the faces occurred that A) doesn’t. But it gives us one more reason. It doesn’t give us a reason for why that God exists and why He would want to do that in the first place. And yet it still seems instinctively preferable.

What I also find interesting is that A) technically does give us a reason: the reason being that the conditions were set up in a way to result in the faces. And yet, this kind of reason doesn’t seem as satisfying as the kind of reason that involves personal intentions.

Is this because of psychology or this because of a valid philosophical instinct? In this sense, are agent explanations “better” in some sense than non agent ones?