Occam’s Razor or the Principle of Parsimony:

Defining What Occam’s Razor Really Means

Occam’s Razor is about increasing the likelihood of being correct by not having superfluous ideas (no more ideas than necessary) in an explanation.  Unfortunately, the way it is stated or understood can lead to different conclusions about what should be retained and what should be excluded.  The original Latin is: “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,” which translate to: “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Does it mean the simplest explanation should be preferred?  Some think so, but then we could just say everything is God’s will and that would be the end of any discussion.  Some say “Occam’s Razor states that the explanation for any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible,” but aren’t all facets of an explanation, assumptions?  Some are just “safer” assumptions than others.  Some say “The principle recommends selecting those explanations that postulate the fewest hypothetical entities.”  Again this is vague; when trying to explain something, aren’t all possible factors somewhat hypothetical?  Still others say “One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything,” but how do we determine which entities are necessary?  To a theist, God would always be “necessary” for most anything. The lack of clear explanation in how the principle should be applied gives us a breeding ground for logical fallacies, self-denial, rationalizing, and misconceptions.  Until we ground ourselves in a solid understanding of just what Occam’s razor really means, we can’t use it.  So that is what we must do first.

An assumption is “Something taken for granted or accepted as true without proof,” but that is probably not what is meant above.  The use of “assumptions” used in attempts to define Occam’s razor, probably means reasonable “guesses.”  “Hypothetical” is something that is speculative, suppositional, or uncertain.  It appears that we are being advised to not be needlessly hypothetical or make needless guesses.  Ironically, Occam himself never used his razor in reference to God because he felt that God’s existence was proven by an infallible Bible.  However, this tells us something about just how to implement the principle, in that the more factual something is the less exclusionary it is.  Obviously, if we attempt to use Occam’s razor in a discussion of God, we must ignore the Bible as being evidence and say we are exploring alternative means of proving God.

In coming to a usable understanding of the principle, it becomes clear that we must somehow combine two principles: simplicity and undeniable facts having preference over various degrees of speculation.  There are many possible wordings for a more exact Occam’s razor and you may be able to come up with a better one than these, but the following wordings seems to be clear: “When attempting to explain any phenomena, one should first employ the fewest known facts in preference of the fewest speculative ideas.”  Or, “The explanation that gives preference to the least speculative possible causes while maintaining the most overall simplicity is preferred.”  One might argue that keeping the degree of speculation to a minimum automatically guarantees the simplest explanation, thus we could just say “The least speculative explanation is preferred,” so as can been seen we have gone full circle and thus proven that our rewording of Occam’s razor for purposes of clarity is in fact exactly what Occam had in mind.

It would be beneficial to rank plausible causes in order of preference: facts, safe assumptions, less sure assumptions, educated guesses, speculations, and finally completely fanciful imaginary ideas.  Another helpful idea would be to think – you can’t exclude elements of an explanation that you know exist in favor of elements that you don’t know exists, or a known possibility cannot be ignored in favor of an unknown possibility.

Approaches to Applying Occam’s Law to God

Direct Approach

One method is to attempt deal with the idea of God directly.  This approach deals with just how hypothetical or un-hypothetical the actual concept of God is without comparison to anything else.  Occam’s razor implies that, in the absence of compelling reasons to believe in something, unbelief should be preferred.  In other words, if there is no compelling evidence to believe in something, there is no rational reason for believing in it.  Some theists say “Well, you can’t disprove it, and I can’t prove it, so…” implying it’s a “draw.”   This of course is not the case. It is not reasonable to believe in something because there is equal inability to prove or disprove, as if it’s a 50/50 chance or you can just take your pick.  If there is no reasonable evidence, then there is simply no reason to believe – unbelief is preferred in the event of lack of evidence.  One could say he believes there might be (or “is”) life on Mars, but until there is convincing evidence to support that belief; there would be no particular reason to believe that there is in fact life on Mars.  He shouldn’t believe it just because you can’t disprove it.  Justification for the belief in the tradition view of God as being a type of all intelligent person fails direct application of Occams Razor, due to lack of compelling scientific evidence.

In addition, any details surrounding God’s existence involving angles, Satan, heaven and hell make God himself even less parsimonious.  The God of the Bible is probably a little more parsimonious than complete fanciful ancient mythology that is extremely detailed in complex storylines where the extra ingredients just add more and more hypothetical entities, but the extra ingredients in the Bible’s God certainly doesn’t help matters in trying to prove that particular concept of him.  Occam’s razor probably eliminates the God of the Bible, not only for lack of compelling evidence, but for being just too hypothetical.  

Any concept that represents a paradox cannot be true, since a true paradox cannot exist.  Any concept of God that is paradoxical renders it terminally hypothetical and must be removed by Occam’s razor.  The traditional concept of God is that he exists outside the bound of time and space, then one must wonder how he can function to make decisions, plans, etc. to create things, since such activities would require time.  The exclusion by paradox also eliminates all theories that involve a physical prime mover, since anything physical must have its own cause, and thus cannot be a prime mover.

“Miracles are often used as proof of God’s existence, but whether or not God actually works miracles, any explanation that 'God did it' must fit the facts and make accurate predictions better than more parsimonious guesses like “something did it” or else Occam’s razor still cuts God out.”

Indirect Approach

A second approach is not to try to directly prove God’s existence, but instead try to determine how the universe came to be.  If God is likely the cause, then we have both an explanation of the universe and knowledge of God.  Excluding God using Occams Razor here would not refute all concepts of God, but only a creative God (There hypothetically still could be a God or even many gods, and they just didn’t create the universe, though such beings would be excluded using the first application of Occam’s razors since there is no evidence to support such beliefs).  In applying Occam’s razor to what caused the universe we must distinguish what we know from what we still need, and what competing theories are more or less hypothetical than God. 

In trying to explain the cause of the universe, we should probably begin with the axiom “If there was ever a time there was nothing, we would have nothing now.” -- You just can’t get something from absolute nothing.  (Actually, “nothing-ness” is probably more logically hypothetical than “something-ness,” thus would fail the test of Occam’s razor in favor of “something-ness” as being the preferable choice.)  Our very existence being here to contemplate this issue proves something has always existed.  Whatever brought about the universe has either always existed in time or simply exists outside any concept of time.  We can safely assume that neither God, nor anything else has existed forever because infinity, being boundless, cannot be realized by any entity at all, and anything that has always existed must be imagined to have realized infinite time in the past.  Therefore, what existed at the beginning of our universe to bring it into existence must exist outside of time itself -- It just IS. 

We have evidence of the so called Big Bang and of the “gravitational singularity” that the Big Bang emanated from.  It is scientifically accepted that the singularity, due to its massive density and gravitational pull, would have warped the space-time continuum to a point that neither time nor space would have existed – therefore it existed outside of time and just “was.”  The Judaeo-Christian concept of God has always been that he exists outside the concept of time, he just IS.  However, when comparing God to a gravitational singularity, God is the more hypothetical of the two and must be eliminated by Occam’s razor, leaving  = the singularity “created” the universe.  Unfortunately, believing that the singularity is the end of the story is probably not a very satisfying answer for it also would have to have had a cause.  God then, rather then being a competitive concept to the singularity, becomes one of its possible causes. 

The concept of God as being an actual all powerful “Being” that decides to create things is hopeless to compete against any scientific based theory at all because the theoretical nature of such a concept will always cause it to be removed by Occam's razor when compared to any theory emanating from physics.  When determining what caused the singularity, or any competing concepts, one can assume that any theory emanating from physics will just provide something that needs further explanation itself, either going on endlessly or culminating in a cyclic function. 

Conclusion:

There is no God of the Bible.

There is no God Being at all.

Nothing can exist forever.

There is no physical explanation for the universe.

The prime mover must exist outside the space-time continuum.

Anything outside the space-time continuum cannot function in a linear time manner.

Anything that creates requires some sense of intelligence, but does so without "process" that requires time.

The ultimate prime mover can only be a steady state intellect that requires no time or space dimension.

 There is only one concept that fits these criteria:

Pure Logic

2 + 2 = 4,  whether or not there is time or space for anyone to think about it.  Logic just IS.  If logic demands that matter must exist then it does – Something-ness is simply less hypothetical than nothing-ness, and Occam’s razor must "cut-out" nothing-ness in favor of something-ness.  If logic demands a continual process of going from simple to complex through evolution, then that is what occurs. We and everything in the universe is a product of what must be, due to pure logic.  The theistic idea that God is an immutable transcendent mind is, at least in that respect, like what we have here; thus it could be a figurative way of speaking of pure logic: God = Logic. 

Nothing can realize eternity, not even time itself.  Anything created by logic would be as timeless as it itself is, but not infinite.  Consequently, there must be circularity which at some point goes outside of time to a state of timelessness before the physical manifestation begins again.  What we see in the Big Bang is almost certainly a perennial occurrence representing the new beginning of the physical manifestation or consequence of logic; which will exist, evolve, and eventually revolve back to something that is outside of time, ergo another singularity.

(This is incredibly similar to the Buddhist concept of the universe, though no attempt was made to have it be that way.  I was not aware of the Buddhist concept of the universe until someone pointed out the similarity of it to what I determined here. -- Brother Mark)

Issues to Consider: