God Shaves with Ockham's Razor

It should be no surprise to anyone who has read my blog that I am a Theist. This means I believe in the existence of God. However, there are those who don’t. We commonly refer to them as atheists. While there are several different arguments for atheism I will be addressing one. That is the natural indistinguishability argument, or the argument from Ockham’s razor. The argument’s basic sketch is that if God exists, since science has shown natural explanations for all observed phenomena, his existence is indistinguishable from nature. Therefore we can use Ockham’s razor to ‘shave’ away God and can justifiably be atheists. There are two problems with this. First, it commit’s the fallacy of composition. That is to say, that because the parts of a whole have some property, then the whole also has that property. This is false. Just because all the parts of nature have natural explanations, that doesn’t mean nature as a whole has a natural explanation, in fact, that would lead explanations ad infinitum. I will be focusing however, on the second and I feel more damaging problem with this argument. That is, even on its own basis, it defeats itself. I will show that the argument fails to apply the full scope of Ockham’s razor and given the razor itself, Theism is actually more preferable in light of the evidence.

Ockham’s Razor: Protection from parsimony

First consider the formulation of the principle of Ockham’s razor. The razor is named after William of Ockham who famously said “we need not multiply causes beyond necessity” and is often used when God is seen to be a ‘cause beyond necessity’. I however find the application only applied to causes to be far to narrow in its scope. Ockham’s razor is almost always used to judge the more preferable of two competing hypotheses and chose the one that better explains the evidence. With this being the case I feel we can reformulate the razor to be stated as: “the less parsimonious explanation is preferable” This formulation preserves the original intent while allowing it to be applied to non-causal hypothesis analysis. The more parsimonious hypothesis is the one that is more ad hoc. That is to say; the one that, in order to accept it, you are required to accept more additional hypotheses than the other.

Atheistic explanations are parsimonious

Let us then consider the stance of Atheism in relation to a question about reality. We shall examine the atheistic position and see what additional hypotheses are required to hold this world view. Lets us then consider the nature of reality. How is it that there exists something rather than nothing at all? On the atheistic standpoint physical reality is on some level a brute fact. This means that it is possible for physical reality to be necessary, that is, a brute fact. Count this as one additional hypothesis that must be accepted to proceed. Now we find ourselves with a problem. Physical reality, at least what we can observe of it, cannot be necessary. The first law of thermodynamics predicts the heat death of the universe in which all matter and energy will eventually cease to exist. Things that cease to exist cannot be necessary. Therefore, on atheism, there must be some higher physical reality that provides for the existence of the one we see, itself being necessary and a ‘brute fact‘. Count this as the second additional hypothesis required for atheism’s account for reality. This is just one example of the atheistic worldview and its parsimonious conclusions.

Conclusion: Theism is preferable

As we have seen, atheism requires additional hypotheses to hold its world view in light of a meaningful question about reality. Theism has no such problem. There is only one hypothesis that is required to hold Theism: that it is possible that a Being such as God exists. Given this hypothesis, God’s being easily provides the answer to the question. This being the case, we can use Ockham’s razor to shave away atheism as the more parsimonious viewpoint. So stay smart and keep thinking!