mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (11/29/84)
In article <511@wucs.UUCP> esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) writes: [>> = me] >> Occam's razor is only usable when you don't care that the explanation >> that it indicates is wrong, in the sense that the explanation produces the >> observations, but is not in fact what produced the original observations. >> In science this is not a problem, because we are only concerned with the >> predictive power of the explanation. >Why do you assume that being wrong (in your sense) does not affect the >predictive power? Anyway, you are being too generous to the Occam fans. >Occam's Razor ought to be disposed of -- it just doesn't work like it's >supposed to. It's not always true that the best explanation is the one >chosen by applying the Razor. (Counterexamples upon request.) Well, the whole idea is that you only use it when you have two theories of equal power and which give identical results; if you don't have these, then you shouldn't use Occam's razor. I submit that this is such a idealized situation anyway that it's not really clear that you can EVER use it. BTW, I for one would like to see one of these counterexamples. >> A very clever god could arrange everything so that we would never know he >> was there. That's O.K. in science because we don't care. In religion, >> we do. >The key word is NEVER. If an hypothesis states that we would never know >(or have evidence of) its truth, it is not worth considering, be it >scientific, religious, or any other kind of hypothesis. Concedo. So here we are again, back at the evidence. The problem is that with all the theistic religions, we don't have scientific evidence, and we have no assurances of ever getting any. The problem I therefore see is this. Science is based upon being able to construct a model of a phenomena which has the property that whenever the same set of parameters is input, the same actions are produced. As soon as you admit an omnipotent God into the system, however, I don't see how you can construct such a model mathematically. If you could describe him mathematically, he would cease to be supernatural and omnipotent. Therefore, I cannot see any way to use science on this question without throwing God out on principle. So we have a big unverifiable assumption here, an assumption who truth or falsity is very important. On what basis, then, do you believe this assumption? Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe