JaeIsGod

Hi , im have been lurking this forums for a while now. I just kissed Christianity goodbye ( hopefully forever) and you guys here played a large part in it. So thanks for freeing me from my fundie roots =]

Anyway , what I wanted to ask , what exactly is Occams razor? I have seen people bring it up in discussions on religions quite often , but I still have no idea what it really means. Could you help this newbie out?

Andries H.

Vylo

Best I remember it, it states that if all things are considered equal, the simplest solution is the correct one. I was never a fan of occams razor myself, but many seem to get some enjoyement out of the loss of ambiguity.

fishbulb

Ockham's razor is the principle that you shouldn't assume the existence of a being or entity in order to explain something that can already be explained adequately in terms of things you already know exist.

For example, if I can't find my car keys, I might surmise that I misplaced them last night. Alternatively, I might surmise that leprachauns stole them in the night. Both hypotheses account for the lost keys, but the second one requires me to assume that key-stealing leprachauns exist -- and there is no good evidence to suggest they do. Therefore, I should prefer the first explanation.

That doesn't mean that the first explanation -- or either explanation for that matter -- is right; Ockham's razor doesn't always point to the truth. It is a principle, not a rule or law, based on the observation that events and circumstances usually turn out to be the result of forces we already know about, and only infrequently are the result of unknown forces.

livius drusus

For an excellent in-depth discussion on Brother William's razor, see here.

Oh, and Jae, many congratulations on your recent emancipation. Please do stop by the Lounge and introduce yourself should you feel the urge.

JaeIsGod

Ah , something along the line of dont try to solve a problem by making it an even bigger problem =p

Oh , and leprechauns do exist =o

JaeIsGod

Hmm , why is called Razor anyway? Did this Occam guy came up with the name himself? I dont see why this reasoning involves a razor =]

CJD

Preposterous. This is an atheist's hijacking of a philosophical maxim penned by William of Occam (c. 1285–c. 1349), who was a Franciscan professor at Oxford. He wrote that "it is futile to do with more elements what can be done with fewer." This is also known as the "law of parsimony", and the principle itself intends to stress simplicity. As such, Occam favored nominalism (look it up) over against the concept of universals in his theological system. Note the word "theological" here. Occam believed in an entity that made knowledge possible in the first place.

By the way, JaeisGod, Occam was not a fundamentalist, and fundamentalism was not your only option within Christianity. Quite possibly, what you have kissed goodbye might have been a puerile understanding of orthodox Christianity.

Regards,

CJD

Shadowy Man

The context in which I was taught it was this:

When choosing between two theories with the exact same observational consequences, the one with the fewer theoretical constructs is the preferred one.

JaeIsGod

Well , I was raised in a town filled with fundies. Since I was young I saw problems with the literal interpretation of the Bible , so I was somewhat of a liberal christian at age of 9-10 if I remember correctly. After that my faith started declining , because I started to find the Bible more and more bogus. Also I never recieved any answers when I prayed. I went back and forth between agnost-weak theist for many years untill I started visiting sites with religious discussions. After that the last remains of my faith died quickly.

So I did try out Christianity in all it forms , but in the end if you dont believe that God created the earth , if you consider most of the OT to be nonsense and also not believe that Jesus actually existed its hard to stay a Christian =]

fishbulb

I suppose that "hijacked by atheists" could be seen as equivalent to "adopted by scientists," in an unabashedly partisan way.

Your description of the razor doesn't seem fundamentally different from mine. No doubt, Brother William would have been surprised that his own principle would be used to suggest that many of his own beliefs were unparsimonious (the Universe can be explained without god just as adequately as it can with it, making it "futile" to do with the unneeded element), but then Occam carried the assumptions of his day which we no longer do. This is no different than the assumptions of great scientists being proven false by their descendants using the very methodologies they had pioneered. So goes the advance of knowledge.