The problem is that when you don’t provide details about the painter, there is a problem in assessing the ratio between the probability that the painter exists and the probability that we should remain with the understanding that the painting is self-caused—a brute fact.
The case of a painting is actually a poor example for the physico-theological argument. Because the painting is simply much simpler than the painter. The reason we do assume that there is a painter is only because we know that paintings are not self-caused and that people paint them.

Not true. The probability of the painter’s existence is 1 minus the probability that the painting came about by chance. It really does not matter at all what or who the painter is. When I roll a fair die and get 6 a hundred times in a row, what is the probability that there is some mechanism that biased the result? 1 minus the probability of getting such a result by chance.
The argument that hangs the conclusion about the painter on our experience that paintings are created by painters is also a common atheist mistake (the same mistake I explained in the previous paragraph), and I dealt with it in greater detail in the final appendix to my book God Plays Dice (against an article by Eliya Leibovitz).

That does not sound logical at all. (Even though it was said with full self-confidence.)
For example, when rolling dice, if a random sequence of 12125412 comes up, the probability of that happening is 6^-8.
And therefore the existence of a cheating roller is one minus that (0.999994046)…
To avoid ridiculous absurdities like these, there has to be an assumption asking what the probability is that there actually exists a cheating roller who would want such a sequence. In the ridiculous case I gave, the probability that such a cheater exists is extremely tiny. We know this by using the analogy that human desire simply does not care about arbitrary things like that…
If so, in order to use the physico-theological proof, we need to calculate the probability that God exists as an abstract, spiritual, unified reality, plus a host of other unclear and not necessarily coherent concepts like “above time,” and so on. And after we define the probability of such an entity existing in itself, we need to multiply that by the probability that God would create a world like ours with problems of good and evil, etc.
Good luck to us 🙂

Bonjour,
I never intend to use self-confidence as an argument. But what you wrote is a complete statistical misunderstanding. There have already been long discussions about this here on the site, ad nauseam, and I won’t repeat them here.
See, for example, Column 144 and the discussions following it. There were also several other places.

In one of the comments there you mentioned that, in your view, uniqueness is an objective parameter. Is that the crux of your position?

Indeed. Entropy.

There is a difference between entropy and complexity. Likewise, it would seem to be a subjective description. Would you also see beauty as an objective property?

That is a more subtle question. If that beauty is based on order, then yes. But regarding a series of one hundred 6s, nobody would argue.

“When I see a painting, I infer that there was a painter behind it who created it” — solely because you are familiar with paintings and know that a painting cannot come into being without a painter. But you do not know the first thing about universes, however complex they may be, and what the range of possible ways they may come into being is. Therefore, the analogy that the universe is like a painting, and therefore if there must be a painter there must also be a God, is extremely weak. You said, “When I see a complex universe, I infer that it had some kind of creator,” and indeed this is only an inference, an axiom, and we have no way of knowing whether it is correct or whether this complex universe came into being in other hidden ways that we do not even imagine because of our lack of knowledge or the limits of our perception.

I have already answered this common question in several places (including in my book God Plays Dice).
It is simply not true. The second law of thermodynamics is based on the complexity of a state, and it says that if something complex is formed, there must necessarily be some external factor that intervened in the system and created it (in a closed system, order does not increase on its own). That is the kind of logic I am talking about here (I already distinguished there between this and the scientific law itself). It has nothing to do with experience or with different contexts.
Besides, this proof argues only that there was some factor that did it. When you speak about “other ways,” do you mean ways without any factor? A mystical miracle? Who that factor is, is a question the argument does not address.