See, I disagree with you when you say that such a thing as a coin landing in Trafalgar Square would be surprising. Would it really? I simply can't believe that you really know what I meant, because I would have considered this a perfectly realistic point. If I were walking around Trafalgar Square and found a coin on the ground, I would not find it the least bit surprising that it had been dropped out of a plane. There is no “target” to be hit or missed in this case, because the designation of “here and not anywhere else” is given after the fact.

On the contrary, I would be very surprised to find out that the pilot had determined to hit this particular paver in the square, and had actually “hit his mark”.

Sure, on the hypothesis that the pilot was a normal human, that would be very surprising. But, under the hypothesis that the pilot is omnipotent, it wouldn't be surprising at all. When we are determining our level of surprise at some piece of evidence under some hypothesis, we are asking, “If this hypothesis is true, would we be very surprised to see this evidence?” If we have reason to think that the omnipotent pilot would have reason to want to hit this particular spot on the Square, we wouldn't be surprised at all that the coin landed on that spot. But, under the normal human pilot hypothesis, we would be quite surprised if it had, as a normal human has no ability to throw the coin with any accuracy.

Allow me to clarify. Assume that there is a God, and we are told by some philosopher that He intended to create such a life-permitting universe as we've got, and actually did it, because He's omnipotent and omniscient.

Now, imagine you find a coin on top of a certain paving stone in Trafalgar Square, and are told by some random woman that a certain pilot flying high over London expressed his intention to land said coin exactly there, and actually hit his mark due to his impeccable aim and meteorological skill.

In the case of the pilot and the coin, I would be extremely suspicious of this random woman's testimony. It would be extremely surprising to me that the pilot had managed to land the coin on that particular paving stone on purpose from so high in the air, and so I would conclude that the pilot lied to her, and really wasn't trying to hit the stone at all, but simply hit it by chance and later claimed he was aiming for it in order to claim perfect aim and knowledge of the weather conditions.

I think this is bringing in talk of the prior probabilities of each hypothesis. While this would be important, it is outside the scope of Collins' or my arguments. Collins is only trying to determine the relative degree of surprise we should have at the evidence, given two different hypotheses.

But, talk of the prior probabilities of these hypotheses is needed for the next step: determining how one should revise their degree of belief in each, given this new evidence. And those probabilities can be such that the fine-tuning evidence falls quite short of being convincing.