re americans and evolution on tue apr gmt bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner wrote robert singleton bobs thnext mit edu wrote sure it isn t mutually exclusive but it lends weight to i e increases notional running estimates of the posterior probability of the atheist s pitch in the partition and thus necessarily reduces the same quantity in the theist s pitch this is because the divine component falls prey to ockham s razor the phenomenon being satisfactorily explained without it and there being no independent evidence of any such component more detail in the next post occam s razor is not a law of nature it is way of analyzing an argument even so it interesting how often it s cited here and to what end it seems odd that religion is simultaneously condemned as being primitive simple minded and unscientific anti intellectual and childish and yet again condemned as being too complex occam s razor the scientific explanation of things being much more straightforeward and apparently simpler cute characterization bill however there is no inconsistency between the two statements even if one believes that religion is primitive simple minded and unscientific anti intellectual and childish one can still hold the view that religion also adds an unnecessary level of complexity to the explanation the ideas themselves don t have to be complex before being excised by occam s razor they only have to add unnecessarily to the overall complexity of the description which is it to be which is the non essential and how do you know i think the non essential part of an explanatory system is one that adds no predictive capability to the system considering that even scientists don t fully comprehend science due to its complexity and diversity maybe william of occam has performed a lobotomy kept the frontal lobe and thrown everything else away huh this is all very confusing i m sure one of you will straighten me out tough watch it your freudian slip is showing mike mcangus the truth is still the truth mam mouse cmhnet org even if you choose to ignore it some of the old sig viruses are still the best
