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To: tortoise
Occam's razor isn't just a nice story, it is a proven theorem of mathematics that started out as a very smart observation. Mathematical proof of Occam's Razor as a correct method for hypothesis selection came centuries after it was originally posited.

You are confused, tortoise. Occam's Razor says that out of competing theories that explain the known facts equally well, one ought to choose the simpler theory, on the basis that the universe is unlikely to waste time with redundancies and needless complication. Implicit in that notion is the idea of an Intelligent Creator who values elegance in His creation. Outside of the value of simplicity and elegance, there is no way to 'prove' the correctness of equally plausible competing theories.

As it applies to the Creation/Evolution debate, for me this is not a debate of competing theories pitting God's miracles against natural processes, except in regards to the question of blind chance vs. intelligent design. I have about as little respect for religious dogma as I have for scientific dogma. For me, true religion and true science are never dogmatic, and far from being imcompatible, are complementary and necessary to a rational understanding of the universe. Thus, I would hardly endorse a literal interpretation of Genesis, nor deny that natural selection played a role in the growth of biological complexity and diversity. Although I have read only a couple of chapters so far of Raymond's book, I do not find him engaged in this either/or type of thinking that sidetracks most Crevo debates. Rather, he is asking if it is probable and hence reasonable that the complexity of life can be accounted for within the presently understood limits of scientific reasoning. If the answer is that the appearance and advancement of biological life on earth ('evolution' is an unprejudiced sense) is not wholly explainable by cause-and-effect reasoning, then his suggestion of an intelligent Designer is reasonable and cogent. Raymond is not a Bible-thumper (nor am I), he is analyzing the proposed theory (Darwinian evolution, as modified and refined over the past century and a half) against the known facts and asking what is the most reasonable hypothesis about how it came about. Unless and until biological science can provide a working model of how lifeless polypeptide chains form themselves into living DNA, RNA and complex proteins, this will remain a reasonable assumption about the origins of life. But today such working models are glaringly lacking, and scientists engage in their own 'material theology' when they hypothesize primordial swamps, soups of carbon compounds, bolts of lightening and such. Yet the primordial soup appeals to the atheistic mind, not for its plausability, but because the atheist fears and distrusts God, and finds a friendly rapport with unthinking chemical processes and blind chance. But since when does anyone's personal comfort level with competing theories constitute rational grounds for preferring one theory over another. Is this also part of 'Occam's Razor'?

God carefully hides Himself in His creation, for His own reasons. (We could get into an entire discussion on this topic alone!) While life admits of empirical explanations in a piecemeal fashion, let's look at some of the things that science has not explained, so far. Science cannot explain how purely material processes give rise to consciousness -- our ability to turn around and look at and understand the very processes which supposedly account for our entire creation. Nor can science provide the step-by-step mechanism by which life evolved from non-life. Scientists would like to, but wishing and having are not the same thing! Life from non-life, consciousness from non-consciousness, exquisitely intricate design from blind chance -- yet so many would deride the 'irrational' hypothesis of an intelligent Designer! Empirical science proceeds by collecting individual bits of data and synthesizing these into patterns, creating categories and concepts useful for understanding phenomena. Scientific theories are formed based on these complex concepts, using mathematical reasoning, and we (when we work as scientists) do the best we can with these theories to explain what we have observed. Yet science never apprehends the whole, never deals effectively with ontological questions and notions like meaning and purpose. I was a student of Bertrand Russell in my youth, and it is amazing how he simply 'legislates' out of consideration all notions of purpose and meaning in the universe. Well, if you start with the assumption that meaning, purpose (ie. teleology, a concept that has largely fallen out of modern use) are absent in the universe, it is hardly surprising when you arrive at the conclusion that there is no evidence of God.

There comes a point when we, as responsible, rational beings, have to put aside the limits and artificial blinders of science and face the universe with our entire consciousness, neither abandoning nor limiting ourselves to formal mathematics and logic, and fragmented observations of reality. We were created whole, and to the 'whole man', considering himself and the world about him, God has left unmistakable footprints on His creation, though he may seem absent when we seek after Him in the everyday world of sensation and 'common sense'. He made the leaf, but when we analyze the leaf, we find Him not, just an intriguing complexity of structure and process. That does not mean He does not exist! He is leaving clues everywhere, urging us to seek further, to gain more insight, to become more intelligent, in a non-linear way. And I am not expecting scientists to one day discover the evidence of Him, for He is not part of His creation, though present everywhere in it. (Nor do I believe God is of the male gender -- that's just a convenient, and time-honored way of referring to what is essentially a mystery to limited human thought.) God is not a thing to be verified by science, He is the Being that informs all beings, that creates and sustains them. Science will meet God one day when it admits the limits of empirical observation and purely logical, reductionistic modes of thinking. Meanwhile, I will rest comfortably in the understanding that there is a supreme Mind that runs the show, while the dogmatic materialists will continue to engage in a futile effort to explain everything, control everything. Science is limited in scope, while the universe reflects the Infinite variation and subtlety of its Creator.

221 posted on 06/25/2002 1:47:31 AM PDT by pariah
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To: PatrickHenry
Placemarker.
222 posted on 06/25/2002 3:38:19 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: pariah
You are confused, tortoise. Occam's Razor says that out of competing theories that explain the known facts equally well , one ought to choose the simpler theory, on the basis that the universe is unlikely to waste time with redundancies and needless complication. Implicit in that notion is the idea of an Intelligent Creator who values elegance in His creation. Outside of the value of simplicity and elegance, there is no way to 'prove' the correctness of equally plausible competing theories.

No, I was correct the first time. Your view of Occam's Razor is rather pedestrian, and you've simplified it to the point of being meaningless for this discussion.

Occam's Razor has relatively rigid criteria for deciding which of two (or more) hypotheses is "simpler". For the purposes of science, you count degrees of freedom by determining the number of unverifiable premises (or assumptions) required for the construction of the hypothesis. The "simplest" hypothesis is the one with the fewest degrees of freedom. Speciation through evolution only has two premises: natural selection and genomic variation. Both of these are trivially verifiable i.e. to attack this you would have to assert that natural selection doesn't happen or that genomic variation doesn't exist. Because these are verifiable premises, they do not meet the criteria for counting as degrees of freedom. Intelligent Design assumes that an Intelligent Creator must exist for speciation. The existence of an Intelligent Creator with respect to most living things is an unverifiable premise, an therefore counts as a degree of freedom under the criteria set forth by Occam's Razor.

ID has one more degree of freedom as a hypothesis than evolution, and therefore is an inferior hypothesis under Occam's Razor. Note that this doesn't say anything about which hypothesis is correct, only which hypothesis is more rational. It is interesting to also note that there are non-evolutionary hypotheses for speciation that are equally strong as evolution in an Occam's Razor sense, though ID isn't one of them. At the core, this is why ID is not taken seriously in the field of science; it is an inferior hypothesis, and even if evolution was falsified tomorrow (always a possibility), there are other hypotheses out there that are still stronger than ID and would replace evolution as the leading hypothesis. Eliminating evolution doesn't lend credence to ID, and it will never be a competitive hypothesis until it eliminates that pesky degree of freedom it contains.

245 posted on 06/25/2002 11:00:23 AM PDT by tortoise
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