| Runa216 said: I just want to interject here and say you're all understanding Occam's Razor wrong. "The simplest solution is the best" is NOT Occam's razor, that's just lazy. No, the Razor is about making as few assumptions as possible. God creating everything is simpler to grasp and to understand, but makes many grand assumptions (namely, that God exists, that God cares about us, and that God is omnipotent) The Big Bang (or whatever other geneis theory you have) makes fewer assumptions because almost all aspects of the theory has scientific backing, so it's not about assumptions, it's about following the evidence. Occam's Razor is a principle that generally recommends, when faced with competing hypotheses that are equal in other respects, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_Razor Educate yourself before looking like a tool. Wikipedia (and Google) are both right at your fingertips. |
I think Ssenkahdavic and myself already addressed this issue in our discussion. It was poor wording on my part in the original post, Ssenkahdavic pointed it out, and I agreed. This hardly means we understand it wrong or that we are tools, especially given the fact that we agree with your bolded statement.
My point, and I believe his point as well, is that absent the evidence for the Big Bang, evolution, etc, there is a good case to be made that God is a simpler explanation. On a purely deductive or theoretical basis, Ockham's razor could be used to justify belief in any number things because we would just be looking for the explanation that results in the correct outcome that makes the least unnecessary assumptions. Without empirical evidence, there is a very likely chance that the utilization of Ockham's razor will result in the justification of a false statement. That was my main point. Ockham's razor should be used with caution because it is not a foolproof method for justifying explanations.
