Occam's Razor is a logical principle that holds that one should should not make more assumptions than is needed. In other words, the best explanations are the simplest ones. E.g. if we were modeling a few datapoints on a graph, it would make sense to find the simplest curve that encompasses them all, rather than some convoluted curve that fits the data just as well.
Occam's Razor is often invoked by the atheist argument that we can explain everything without introducing metaphysical concepts such as God; bringing God into the picture adds unnecessary complexity.
Bob's Corollary
The more powerful the entity, the less likely it is to exist.Explanations that attribute 'everything' to the existance of a God are suspect because they are untestable. E.g. If I had a scientific test for the existance of God like a litmus slip that turned red to indicate that God did not exist and the slip showed red, this result could be explained away by arguing "God changed the rules so now red means God exists".
-Bob
Strong theories make testable predictions that have proven true time after time. A theory that invokes an all-powerful God that can change the laws of universe at any moment escapes falsibility. So, in other words Bob's Corollary says that theories that rely on omnipotent beings are weakened by the fact they potentially can never be refuted.
8 comments:
Interesting post. I cannot think of any refutations for either.
However I can think of one way in which Occam's Razor can maybe be invoked to show the likelihood of the existance of God - the beginning of creation. If you go back in time, all the way as far as you can go, constantly compressing the universe all the way to the Big Bang, and even before that, what do you have?
I think the answer is nothing. Eventually most people agree that in terms of matter, time, space, whatever, there was at the very beginning, before anything that ever was, there was nothing.
Is it more likely for Something to come from Something, or for Something to come from Nothing?
It seems more feasible (and requires fewer assumptions) that the universe was created by a Creator, rather than the universe (Something) came from Nothing. Neither can be proven, but that matter/energy was created out of nothing by a God is more believable than that matter/energy came from nothing, i.e created itself.
Maybe? Or does that only make sense to a Theist, and an Atheist automatically assumes Something coming out of Nothing is more feasible?
Assuming that the universe was created by a Creator brings up the sticky and potentially complex 'who created the Creator?' question.
I think the assumption that somthing necessarily arises out of something is definitely more intuitive, however modern physics shows that reality really isn't what it seems to be. Special relativity and quantum mechanics account for a whole slew of bizarre, unintuitive phenomena like time dilation, superfluids, black holes, etc... With regards to the feasibility of whether nothing can come about of something, quantum field theory allows for random energy fluctuations in a vacuum, i.e. energy can spring forth from nothingness. This is called vacuum energy or zero-point energy if I remember correctly (I'm too lazy to dig through modern physics text to verify this).
Here's a good sci-fi piece that speculates on the beginning/end of the universe. This piece is similar to Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question"; Here's a link to a short summary of it.
The "who created the Creator" question is irrelevant when you allow for a Creator that transcends time and space. It's a bit of a cop-out to endow this special property, but it is something we cannot endow on physical matter as we know it (or maybe science will prove that assumption wrong).
It is natural to believe our brains can only comprehend so much, but it is the many times when man has tried and succeeded to understand the world around him that inspire us to continue.
People have believed many crazy things in the past, declaring them to be irrefutable truths. By observation most of these theories (world being flat, merits of human sacrifice) have been disproved. It is quite possible that nothing we observe is real, there are even some religions that posit that the tangible, perceptible world is all an illusion masking what really is the truth. However, and I guess this is a completely existential argument, observation is all we have to validate any sort of truth; beyond that any efforts are hopeless to begin with.
So, based the foundation of theories that have passed and continue to pass the final test of observation, we attempt to build more into what we think we know, making sure that when things fail the test of observation we do not continue to insist that the theory validates truth rather than observation.
How is the "who created the Creator" question made irrelevant if the Creator transcends time and space?
I think it's relevant because the belief in the existance of a Creator rests on the assumption that the universe has a cause. Our day to day observations generally seem to verify our belief in cause and effect and thus it makes intuitive sense that the universe would have a cause, a Creator.
However, our claims of the cause and effect are valid only within our experience, our own space-time construct. If we try to generalize cause and effect to the cause of the universe, we are making an unwarranted generalization because the events that led to the creation of our universe are not within our own space-time construct. And if we do make the generalization that events beyond our own time/space have causes, then the conclusion that the creator must have a creator follows.
Tim, I agree that these kinds of arguments about existence and truth are pointless in the sense that they only stimulate 'thought' and the 'true' answers will probably never be known by humans. Do you think that the future will be closer to the 'truths' than we are because of our efforts?
Like I said it's kind of a cop-out answer but the Creator trascends time, whereas cause-effect relationships always involve time where cause precedes effect. The Creator is not bound by time, ex. the Christian God is said to possess infinite/limitless qualities as opposed to the finite/limited qualities of man. God's name in Hebrew translates to "I am," and is also referred to as the one who "was, and is, and is to come." So while the material world is bound by time and apparently by causality, the Creator is not bound by these things.
I think one has to at least admit this as a possibility, and as a possibility at least as probable as the universe arising out of nothing.
The creator is often attributed to causing events to happen at different times in our universe. In that sense it appears that a creator would work within a temporal framework (at least in our universe anyways). I think the Hebrew translation "was, and is, and is to come" supports this idea; that the creator works within a temporal construct which is eternity.
When you say the Creator transcends time, do you intend that the creator that exists outside of time or that the creator exists eternally?
On a different note, do you believe in free will?
I think perhaps I mean to say that the Creator is not necessarily bound by time at all, even to say that the Creator created time itself, and that time is subject to the Creator rather than the Creator being subject to time. It's a very Judeo-Christian point of view to worship God to the point of attributing such inconceivable power to him.
I do believe in free will, but at the same time in an all-powerful Creator being who, I suppose, allows us to choose, but knows what our choices will be, and has planned around that... something like that. It's really has no influence right now on how I live my life.
Tim also makes a very good point about words. I kind of wish you'd taken an interest in academics because all of this theory of knowledge seems to come to you so easily.
It is true that words are merely symbols of true meaning, and as a consequence human understanding is limited. The question is how close have we come to that limit? The answer is oftentimes not nearly as close as we once thought.
Comparing philosophy and art is fair, but I think you have to include science, history, and probably all other subjects - they are all influenced and reflective of the times in which they came about. I think what speaks the most to the forward progression of all of them is that they all take their pasts into account as much as possible. This is the most visible in the sciences where everything is far more tangible, i.e it is fairly easy to say that Einstein's theories are more advanced and closer to the truth that Newton's, or to say that we have made progress in medicine or chemistry. Measuring progress in sociology or political science or philosophy is far more difficult, and it's even possible that we sometimes get further away from the truth, but as long as we continue to take the past into account as much as possible, over the long run people will get closer.
The limits to human progress as I see it? Oil. I still can't fathom how we can find a way to continue living our lifestyle where so much energy is consumed to make our lives that much more convenient. Eventually it seems like we all have to go back to farming, perhaps with the benefit of all the knowledge of the past, but survival takes up a lot more time than it once did, and assuming there isn't some huge series of wars, progress will slow down considerably.
This is probably crazy talk but that is my understanding of it at this time.
Post a Comment