But sometimes those first-pass takeqs reveal errors in your position that would lead you to abandon it - shouldn't the fact that your position survives this process give you some (maybe not much) higher degree of confidence in it?

(Which, of course, opens up another line of attack on the argument, which is just the problem of evil...I'm teaching the design argument again tomorrow, and I struggle to both explain the argument AND cover all the objections in two class periods!)

Is this a presumption of the design argument or a conclusion? I think a design argument advocate would say P(life|God who wants things exactly as they are) > P(life|some other conception of God), so the fact that there's life is supposed to give us evidence for both God AND God's preferences.

Similarly, I think the multiverse design argument you proposed needs to explain why universe 42 is special to motivate us caring about P(life in universe 42) over P(life somewhere). Without some motivation, we should default to caring about the latter over the former.

I mention this because I think my students' response to this example is right: this exact sequence isn't special to us or God, so what we care about is P(sequence), not P(this EXACT sequence).

When I teach the design argument, I roll a 100-sided die 3 times and point out that there is a 1/1,00,000 chance (very small, but I could roll more to make it smaller) of random rolling giving us this sequence but a 100% chance of getting it if God wanted us to see that sequence of numbers today.

I haven't taught it yet, but I like Lucy McDonald's "Dehumanizing Speech," and it seems like it would pair well with "Genocidal Language Games." I plan to teach both in a seminar on dehumanization this fall!

My sister, whom I've tried, unsuccessfully, to get into ttrpgs for years, has really enjoyed Sweaters by Hedgehog. I love what these newer rpgs bring to the medium! hauntedoak.itch.io/sweaters-by-...

"We encourage you to find a job in the private sector as soon as you would like to do so. The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector."

I teach small, discussion-focused classes and try to reserve the last 5ish minutes of our last class for a "closing bit", but I usually let my students talk for too long early in the class and then rush to cram my closing bit in in like a minute. Never lands like I hope.