Does Occam's Razor Favor Creation or Something from Nothing?

Question

I once heard an atheist say Occam's Razor would be that something (all that exists) came from nothing (before the Big Bang) . . . Do you agree? Or do you think the simplest conclusion would be that everything we see came from Someone who made it?

Answer 1

Occam's razor would favor creation only if God is a simple substance. The religious have been making the argument that God is simple explanation over other explanations but is God really simple? It would seem that an all powerful being, all knowing being that is conscious isn't really that simple. The simplest explanation would seem to be to accept the fact of existence and to see the Big Bang as a change in the order of existence, which many many theories are now proposing (M-theory, etc). So, I would say that Occam's razor doesn't favor creation.



Add:



Yaoi seems to be confusing the person to the principle. We were not talking about how Occam himself saw something, we were discussing the principle.



Morpheus seems to accept the notion that God is a simple substance. I don't find it reasonable to consider an all powerful, all knowing being as simple.

Answer 2

For now, Occam's Razor favors creation. It is a simpler, more straightforward explanation than science can offer. The secrets, however, of how life and the natural world exist are slowly yielding themselves to scrutiny. Perhaps someday it will change around.

Answer 3

Where exactly did the "...Someone [sic] who made it" come from? This is an explanation that explains nothing, it merely postpones the inevitable next question of our ultimate origin.



If you postulate that this entity (I'm avoiding the use of the word 'God' since you did not use this word) is infinitely old why not save a step and say the universe is infinitely old? Thus, this "someone" is an unnecessary arbitrary assumption and by Occam's Razor should be discarded.



Peace.

Answer 4

I believe Occam's Razor favors theism. One God with a design and a purpose seems far simpler than the random chance that absolutely nothing spurred absolutely everything purely by accident.

Answer 5

Oddly, Ockham himself "did not hesitate to declare that God could create other worlds similar to ours," http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12047a.htm which implied God created ours.



Creation Ministries says this: "However, by invoking Occam’s Razor, sceptics make a rod for their own backs for, as we shall see, once the validity of Occam’s Razor is admitted and this criterion is applied to aspects of the creation/evolution debate, the results are clearly on the side of creation and against evolution." http://creation.com/occam-s-razor-and-creation/evolution



However:

"Among its practical applications, Occam's Razor has been used by atheists to argue against the existence of God.[1] Let us take for an example the origin of intelligent life on Earth. One possibility for intelligent life is naturalistic evolution via natural selection. A second possibility is that God used evolution as His means of creation. Occam's Razor allows us to eliminate God from the hypothesis, since the idea is an unnecessary additional assumption. The 'simpler' explanation (that which makes fewer fundamental assumptions) is that God had nothing to do with the development of Intelligent Life and that it came about as a result of natural processes. Therefore, the earlier explanation is the most reasonable to believe.



It is, however, important to note that Ockham himself did not accept this reasoning; indeed, he considered the existence of God and the authority of Scripture to be truths which trumped the principle. While Occam's Razor is frequently articulated as "The simplest explanation is to be preferred," what he actually said was "For nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture." [2] " http://www.conservapedia.com/Occam's_Razor



THEREFORE: Occam's Razor as we COMMONLY know it disproves creation; but as Occam actually stated it (see above) it does NOT disprove Creation.



Occam did not believe in "something from nothing," since the Catholic Encyclopedia (link above) proves he believed in Creation.

Answer 6

The Big Bang only refers to the possible beginning of THIS particular universe or plane of existence...it says nothing of there being 'nothing' before it, that is just your assumption.



But the actual answer to your exact question is simple, something came from nothing in BOTH scenarios, so the simplest explanation would be the latter.

Answer 7

the two theories look at diverse a source/ nonsource of nature. Evolution by no potential addresses the place count come from initially. advent says that's created by God. With one among those significant distinction, simplification won't come to a decision it