Occam's Razor and God

[Johnny Pneumatic]

I've been thinking, do that a lot, and have hit upon the question could the universe have been created and this would be the parsimonious explaination? Don't get me wrong, I haven't converted, I just have been having trouble working it out on my own. Here's the problem I've been thinking about: Life, as complex as it is, evolved. This complexity springs forth from the fact that matter and energy exist and how the laws of physics and Natural and Sexual Selection work. The universe is made of many things, normal matter including particles that last only a short time, antimatter, space-time fabric, electromagnetic force, gravity, Strong and Weak nuclear force, dark matter and maybe dark energy, negative energy, cosmic strings, magnetic monopoles, Higgs bosons, domain walls, branes etc. God would be one thing, instead of many original things. What if God is a "omnipotent, loving, all knowing force"? He's very simple in his structure? This is probably such an old "argument" for theism that I'll be embarrassed that I couldn't show how it's stupid, but what's the counter?

 

[Batman Jr.]

I've been thinking, do that a lot, and have hit upon the question could the universe have been created and this would be the parsimonious explaination? Don't get me wrong, I haven't converted, I just have been having trouble working it out on my own. Here's the problem I've been thinking about: Life, as complex as it is, evolved. This complexity springs forth from the fact that matter and energy exist and how the laws of physics and Natural and Sexual Selection work. The universe is made of many things, normal matter including particles that last only a short time, antimatter, space-time fabric, electromagnetic force, gravity, Strong and Weak nuclear force, dark matter and maybe dark energy, negative energy, cosmic strings, magnetic monopoles, Higgs bosons, domain walls, branes etc. God would be one thing, instead of many original things. What if God is a "omnipotent, loving, all knowing force"? He's very simple in his structure? This is probably such an old "argument" for theism that I'll be embarrassed that I couldn't show how it's stupid, but what's the counter?

Occam's Razor doesn't instruct that we should blindly choose the most compact theory. Einstein once said that we must make things as simple as possible, but no more. All of the phenomena you describe have been observed and discovered. We don't pull these things out of a hat. Ignoring objective observation in favor of just mindlessly trying to make things "simpler" is not scientific. Simplicity in science is an ethic which prevents explanations for the natural world which are unnecessary for the purposes of comprehending it from seeping into otherwise parsimonious theories which are accurate in their descriptions of reality. Simplicity is our most potent defense against faith marring itself to empiricism. God is not required to explain any of the things we observe; evolution, space-time, etc. are.

 

[wollery]

Two points;

1st, Occam's Razor doesn't say that the simplest explanation is the right one, but that, given two equally likely explanations, the simpler one is most often the correct one (or given two equally predictive theories, the one with the fewest assumptions is more likely to be correct).

2nd, The ideal of science is the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. We haven't got there yet, we may never do so, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, or that we should give up looking. Goddidit is just intellectual laziness.

ps Even if Goddiddoit it doesn't mean that there isn't a G.U.T. of E. and vice versa.

 

[Darat]

...snip...
What if God is a "omnipotent, loving, all knowing force"? He's very simple in his structure? This is probably such an old "argument" for theism that I'll be embarrassed that I couldn't show how it's stupid, but what's the counter?

There is no counter argument in terms of "science".

 

[Roboramma]

Just to add two cents:
Any theory that puts God as an underlying force doesn't do away with any of the complex theories of modern science. It would have to include them. General relativity still holds, and we can do experiments to show that. All the mathematics would still have to be the same, whether we posit god behind it or not.

What I mean is that when someone asks, "why does mercury behave the way it does?" The answer "Because god is all powerful and loves his creation." wouldn't tell us anything. But general relativity would.
(I say mercury because I think it took general relativity to explain some eccentricities in it's orbit, but that's just a vague fact that I remember...)

So, which explanation of the observed facts is the simplest? Well, the God explanation isn't an explanation of those facts. You'd have to get more specific as to how god causes these things to behave the way they do, why they follow those rules, or what (if any) rules they do follow. Now, if that explanation could be simpler, maybe I'd buy the argument.

 

[Beerina]

One could argue the apparent complexity of physics is evidence of no godly designer. I think a normal, cartesian 3-space with spherical atoms, simple gravity, and a simple atomic nucleus (for powering stars) would be more than enough. No need for a cosmic speed limit, or quanta, or wavicles.

(Though it could also be argued that an item of finite size that is indivisible is also logically inconsistent, or at the very least, highly interesting.)

 

[Odin]

What if God is a "omnipotent, loving, all knowing force"?

This God would also be free from religious baggage, since that would make it Unnecessarily complicated.

for the same reason it doesn't need to be loving either.


And it doesn't explain where this force came from.





The other problem is it serves as an explanation to anything that you can't understand (it's like claiming things work by magic.)

 

[c4ts]

Occam's razor was just a refutation of Scotus's dual realities, where he had the Platonic and Aristotlean universes existing at the same time. It was a very confusing system, and Occam said it was convoluted and unnecessary.

 

[Belz...]

What if God is a "omnipotent, loving, all knowing force"? He's very simple in his structure? This is probably such an old "argument" for theism that I'll be embarrassed that I couldn't show how it's stupid, but what's the counter?

If God exists, then he is infinitely complex and requires a great number of assumptions in order to be a viable theory. He's not so simple, after all.

 

[bruto]

Occam's razor was just a refutation of Scotus's dual realities, where he had the Platonic and Aristotlean universes existing at the same time. It was a very confusing system, and Occam said it was convoluted and unnecessary.

True, but it seems that once he had sharpened it, he did indeed use it for more than that. Hardly a modern secularist or logical positivist, nonetheless he made a pretty good step in that direction, explicitly using the principle to suggest that it's correct to study scientific subjects without bringing God in. Of course he also used it to assert that God is exempt from natural law, logic, scientific inquiry, and parsimony itself. He made it pretty clear that we cannot prove that God exists, and because of this, we cannot use God in scientific inquiry or proof of things that are accessible to empirical and logical proof. He was a theologian more than a scientist, and it's reasonable to expect that his purpose here was not really to secularize science but to insulate theology against certain types of skepticism. Nonetheless, it's probably worth noting that he was excommunicated for heresy, too.

However, I am always a little surprised at theists who attack Ockham's razor. If they really think about it, they might find that in winning the battle to stick the bible into science, they will lose the war, because let's face it: Old Jehovah will not stand up to scientific inquiry and logic. He needs that exemption! Ockham's razor, like the principle of separation of church and state, protects both sides.