The universe looks very undesigned -- the fine-tuned constants and the like only allow conscious observers and so can be discounted on the basis of the anthropic principle (in a set of near-infinite universes, even undesigned ones, conscious observers would only inhabit universes with constants such that would allow their existence -- there's no observer who'd observe constants that didn't permit their existence) So pretty much all the evidence seems to speak of a lack of any conscious mind directing or designing the universe, neither malicious nor benevolent.

Ok. So in this context, why do you think that one universe is more likely than the other? It may help to state where "conscious" and "intelligent" and "mind" come into this argument. [...] On the contrary, that shouldn't be an "of course". If you sincerely believe and think you have the evidence for a particular religion, you should present it. If you don't have that evidence, then you should adjust your beliefs. Even if one thinks one is in a constructed universe, it in no way follows that the constructor is divine or has any other aspects one normally associates with a deity. For example, this universe could be the equivalent of a project for a 12 dimensional grad student in a wildly different universe (ok, that might be a bit much- it might just be by an 11 -dimensional bright undergrad). [...] What do you mean as an "inherent" reason? Are you solely making a claim here about priors, or are you making a claim about what evidence there actually is when we look out at the world? Incidentally, you should be surprised if this is true- for the vast majority of hypotheses, the evidence we have should assign them probabilities far from 50%. Anytime one encounters a hypothesis which is controversial in a specific culture, and one concludes that it has a probability close to 1/2, one should be concerned that one is reaching such a conclusion not out of rational inquiry but more out of an attempt to balance competing social and emotional pressures.