Occam's Razor; Dull and Over-Hiped (evolution, Biblical, God, Christian)

[Mr Spinkles]

I am reading this thread all at once (I have been absent from the forums for about a week) and it may take some time for everything that has been said to sink in.

Deut's original comments were directed at what I said in another thread in the following paragraphs:

Occam's Razor

Scientists employ Occam's Razor to remove any unnecessary entities from an explanation. In other words, in science the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. Isaac Newton's scientific description of gravity involved a force pulling massive objects together. Now, it would violate Occam's Razor for Newton to state that demons live in massive objects and exert a force on other massive objects. Undetectable demons could very well live in all objects and cause the force of gravity, but this explanation is unscientific: the scientific explanation obeys Occam's Razor by only including that which is essential to explaining the observed phenomenon--the "force" of gravity. Besides, undetectable demons might not be the ones causing the force of gravity. It could be undetectable unicorns, or pixies.

ID violates Occam's Razor because it adds unnecessary entities into the equation. If a supernatural event is an acceptable explanation for our origins, it would be simpler to say "The universe and life just appeared," than to say "An intelligence caused the universe and life to just appear." Notice that both explanations can account for what we observe (the universe and life) but that the first explanation is simpler. Science still does not claim that this simpler explanation is "truth" but only that it best fits observation--and of course, science is constrained by observation. In the words of actor Harrison Ford in the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", science "...is the search for facts, not truth."

I guess I should define "simplicity" here as precisely what Deut/Popper have suggested-- "ease of falsification". In other words, a scientific theory's "simplicity" depends on its relationship to what has been/can be observed.