Why atheists need to stop using Occam's Razor

[Tomk80]

Because it's logical conclusion was not "God does not exist" or "If something is too complex for us to understand then it's not true". It's premise was that there is a limit to how much science can tell us, and its conclusion is that we should not try to push beyond those limits.

And in exempting god(s) from his original reasoning, he was wrong. We have corrected his mistake, by not multiplying entities beyond necessity. We have found that in the set of entities multiplied beyond necessity, God was one of them.

Again, just because Occam didn't follow his own reasoning through to it's logical end, doesn't prohibit us from using his reasoning but actually following it to the end.

 

[Loudmouth]

Because it's logical conclusion was not "God does not exist" or "If something is too complex for us to understand then it's not true". It's premise was that there is a limit to how much science can tell us, and its conclusion is that we should not try to push beyond those limits.

Occam used special pleading to exclude the Bible. We just removed the logical fallacy.

 

[Smidlee]

The same way I figure out that the 6 foot person walking around is not a hallucination. When others around me react to the same 1,000 foot tall Zeus walking about the countryside then surely it is not a hallucination.

What evidence would you need to believe that Zeus, or even Loki, exists? What about those thousands and thousands of gods you don't believe in?

Titans vs the Olympians sounds more like NFL football teams than gods. Zeus is more like American Idols. You can say people worship them yet I doubt as real gods.

 

[Tomk80]

I've said it already but I'll say it again:

I'm not trying to prove the supernatural exists. My original criticisms were against atheists who say "There is no evidence for the supernatural". I am saying that even if I did have evidence for the supernatural, atheists would not accept it because they structure their arguments in such a way that the supernatural cannot exist.

And you are wrong in that. Atheists have given whole lists of what they would except as evidence for the existence of god(s). Healing of amputees, the stars suddenly forming the words "I am God and I exist" etc etc. Basically, uncontrovertible phenomena that would defy any logical explanation. Our problem is not in coming up with those examples, but in the fact that such evidence just doesn't exist. Since the evidence does not exist, we have no reeason to believe. Something you keep ignoring.

Their reasoning seems to be that if God exists then He is part of the material world. If He is not part of the material world then He does not exist. They can't even imagine anything other than the material world.

Irrelevant. Natural, supernatural, unnatural, they are all just labels. In the end, it doesn't matter if we define God as natural or supernatural or unnatural, the evidence would be the same.

You're using a similar argument: once we find out how something works then it is part of the natural world, not the supernatural. If we don't know how something works, it doesn't make it supernatural - only the unknown natural. It's not that the supernatural doesn't exist, it's that it can't exist.

Nope. There is a difference between not inserting god(s) for phenomena that we cannot explain, and direct evidence in favor of the existence of god(s).

Let me respond here to something else you said, that we need to have an idea of the evidence we would expect to be able to find it. I am very sorry, but that is nonsense. Scientific history is full of instances where new evidence turned up that nobody expected, for phenomena nobody had even an inkling existed. Just because I cannot now describe the evidence that would make me accept that snawgatchers snag betschingas, that doesn't mean that if we find evidence for snawgatchers snagging betschingas we will not come to the correct conclusion.

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

That is a really lame argument. Atheists have listed what they would accept as evidence. I believe the healing of amputees was brought up.

You personally may not use that argument, but I've seen other users who have. In one particular thread two atheist users argued that if we did somehow prove that ghosts exist, they still could not be considered "supernatural".

Atheists have given whole lists of what they would except as evidence for the existence of god(s). Healing of amputees, the stars suddenly forming the words "I am God and I exist" etc etc. Basically, uncontrovertible phenomena that would defy any logical explanation.

You said that, but then you also say "Natural, supernatural, unnatural, they are all just labels. In the end, it doesn't matter if we define God as natural or supernatural or unnatural, the evidence would be the same."

So first you say that the supernatural is that which defies logical explanation (which is the same definition I used earlier) - then you say that natural and supernatural and just labels and the evidence would be the same. Make up your mind.

Yes. Are you reading mine?

Yes, and judging by your responses you aren't granting me the same courtesy.

Other times they argued for the direct action of gods, and regularly occuring phenomena were given as the evidence.

Steven Weinburg is a phyisicist, not a historian. If he (or rather you) are arguing that all civilisations which believed in God never once tried examining nature to explain natural phenomenons then both you and he are seriously mistaken.

The same way I figure out that the 6 foot person walking around is not a hallucination. When others around me react to the same 1,000 foot tall Zeus walking about the countryside then surely it is not a hallucination.

So third party perspective means it must be a miracle? So what do you make of this:

In 1917 in Portugal, 70,000 pilgrims claimed the Virgin Mary parting the clouds, revealing a shining disc where the sun would be. The disc began to spin and several multicoloured rays of light shone from it, strong enough to be seen from miles away. It started and stopped three times for a total of twelve minutes. It looked as though the shining disc began brighter and brighter until it resembled a ball of fire - and just before it seemed to hit the Earth it vanished, and the sun was back in it's place. Apparently it also cured anyone in the crowd who was sick or crippled. This happened several times between May and October 1917, always on the 13th of the month.

Was this a miracle? I don't know and I don't really care, because I try to avoid using miracles as proof of God's existance. My point is that it's hard to explain how 70,000 people could see the same thing. Obviously we can't blame it on hallucinations either. But is third party perspective really enough to prove that miracles and other supernatural events are real?

 

[Tomk80]

Yes, and judging by your responses you aren't granting me the same courtesy.

NSP, I see no reason in Loudmouths post to think that he is not responding to the points you make.

Protip: You both strongly disagree with each other and sometimes may be talking past each other. This does not mean you don't read each other's posts and respond to the best of your abilities. Accusations of not reading don't really help the discussion.

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

NSP, I see no reason in Loudmouths post to think that he is not responding to the points you make.

I questioned whether he was really reading my posts because seemed to be under the impression that I'm trying to use the supernatural to prove God's existance - which I'm not. And I did say I wasn't trying to be rude.

 

[Tomk80]

Inserted quote by me:
"Atheists have given whole lists of what they would except as evidence for the existence of god(s). Healing of amputees, the stars suddenly forming the words "I am God and I exist" etc etc. Basically, uncontrovertible phenomena that would defy any logical explanation."

You said that, but then you also say "Natural, supernatural, unnatural, they are all just labels. In the end, it doesn't matter if we define God as natural or supernatural or unnatural, the evidence would be the same."

So first you say that the supernatural is that which defies logical explanation (which is the same definition I used earlier) - then you say that natural and supernatural and just labels and the evidence would be the same. Make up your mind.

No, I said that evidence for a God would be stuff that defies a logical explanation. I did not make any statement on whether God would then be natural or supernatural, because as I said before in this thread, I think the label "supernatural" is inherently illogical, inconsistent and quite frankly, nonsense.

I notice that I still haven't gotten a single reason from you why I should think god(s) exist if there is not evidence in favor of the existence of god(s).

Steven Weinburg is a phyisicist, not a historian. If he (or rather you) are arguing that all civilisations which believed in God never once tried examining nature to explain natural phenomenons then both you and he are seriously mistaken.

Not what Loudmouth was arguing. Both are only arguing that older civilizations had a habit of ascribing certain natural phenomena to God, not that they ascribed all phenomena to God or never resorted to natural explanations.

So third party perspective means it must be a miracle? So what do you make of this:

In 1917 in Portugal, 70,000 pilgrims claimed the Virgin Mary parting the clouds, revealing a shining disc where the sun would be. The disc began to spin and several multicoloured rays of light shone from it, strong enough to be seen from miles away. It started and stopped three times for a total of twelve minutes. It looked as though the shining disc began brighter and brighter until it resembled a ball of fire - and just before it seemed to hit the Earth it vanished, and the sun was back in it's place. Apparently it also cured anyone in the crowd who was sick or crippled. This happened several times between May and October 1917, always on the 13th of the month.

Was this a miracle? I don't know and I don't really care, because I try to avoid using miracles as proof of God's existance. My point is that it's hard to explain how 70,000 people could see the same thing. Obviously we can't blame it on hallucinations either. But is third party perspective really enough to prove that miracles and other supernatural events are real?

Is it just that simple as seeing and corroborating, no. But the basic point is easy enough. We would look for evidence that is clear, can be corroborated by others and possibly objectively verified. We know that mass hallucinations happen and nobody is saying that just a single event would suddenly prove God. That does not mean that evidence could not be acquired if god(s) really existed and left evidence.

 

[Tomk80]

I questioned whether he was really reading my posts because seemed to be under the impression that I'm trying to use the supernatural to prove God's existance - which I'm not.

I did not get that impression from his posts.

And I did say I wasn't trying to be rude.

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

I notice that I still haven't gotten a single reason from you why I should think god(s) exist if there is not evidence in favor of the existence of god(s).

You wrote "Evidence for a God would be stuff that defies a logical explanation". That to me would be something supernatural, but you've decided to simply ignore that definition.

I explained back on page 2 why relying on the supernatural or anything that defies logical explanation as proof of God is not a good argument (link). I'm not trying to make you believe in God - I'm simply pointing out the inconsistancies in the common arguments atheists use.

But the basic point is easy enough. We would look for evidence that is clear, can be corroborated by others and possibly objectively verified.

So seeing an event which defies explanation is not enough. Having thousands of others witness an event which defies explanation is not enough either. Now we need to it be objectively verified. How exactly would we do that? Especially event the so-called miracle occured many years ago?

 

[Tomk80]

You wrote "Evidence for a God would be stuff that defies a logical explanation". That to me would be something supernatural, but you've decided to simply ignore that definition.

To you, not to me. As I said, I think "supernatural" is a nonsense concept. It is also irrelevant for the existence of God, since the evidence would be the same, regardless of what label we attach to it.

I explained back on page 2 why relying on the supernatural or anything that defies logical explanation as proof of God is not a good argument (link). I'm not trying to make you believe in God - I'm simply pointing out the inconsistancies in the common arguments atheists use.

So seeing an event which defies explanation is not enough. Having thousands of others witness an event which defies explanation is not enough either. Now we need to it be objectively verified. How exactly would we do that? Especially event the so-called miracle occured many years ago?

The problem with your argument is that you want us to employ a different standard in evaluating the existence of a God then in evaluating other phenomena, without giving us a good reason to do so, or a good idea on which other standard to employ. Because if we ask you for that, you answer that you're not trying to prove the existence of God.

The inconsistency you perceive (and as far as I can tell it is your perception at issue here, not an actual existing inconsistency), is purely a consistent question for evidence. Regardless of whether you call god(s) natural, supernatural or unnatural, if we have no evidence for their existence, we have no reason to assume they exist. I mean, when you say something like this:
"The difference between the natural and the supernatural is not that one exists (i.e. occupies space and can be perceived by the senses) and the other doesn't. The difference is that natural beings and phenomena conform to a set of laws whereas supernatural beings and phenomena don't. God is supernatural because he is not subject to the natural laws He created. Why would He be?"

As far as I can honestly see, the only thing you are doing here is inventing a new standard out of whole cloth so you don't have to pony up any evidence for your claims.

Now, I never said that this evidence would be easy to come by. It will at least have to adhere to the same standards we have for evidence of other phenomena. The problem is compounded by the fact that theists do not have a coherent concept of what God should be,

But it is not incumbant on us to provide it, that's the task of the claimant (ie, you). We may not even know exactly what kind of evidence we are looking for, but we don't have to. If the evidence is convincing, just as with science, the conclusion will logically follow (as I stated before, your claim that we have to know beforehand what kind of evidence we are looking for to be able to obtain or evaluate that evidence, is wrong).

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

The problem with your argument is that you want us to employ a different standard in evaluating the existence of a God then in evaluating other phenomena, without giving us a good reason to do so, or a good idea on which other standard to employ.

Not really. That was the opposite of what I was trying to argue. My criticism was that it's illogical say that we can only believe in God if we witness something supernatural - why should God only be able to prove He exists by violating the natural laws he created?

Occam was the one who argued we need to employ different standards. When we evalulate nature we use reason and logic, but to evalulate God we need divine revelation.

The inconsistency you perceive (and as far as I can tell it is your perception at issue here, not an actual existing inconsistency), is purely a consistent question for evidence. Regardless of whether you call god(s) natural, supernatural or unnatural, if we have no evidence for their existence, we have no reason to assume they exist. I mean, when you say something like this:
"The difference between the natural and the supernatural is not that one exists (i.e. occupies space and can be perceived by the senses) and the other doesn't. The difference is that natural beings and phenomena conform to a set of laws whereas supernatural beings and phenomena don't. God is supernatural because he is not subject to the natural laws He created. Why would He be?"

As far as I can honestly see, the only thing you are doing here is inventing a new standard out of whole cloth so you don't have to pony up any evidence for your claims.

What claims? I haven't made any claims proving God's existance - especially ones which rely on miracles and the supernatural - so I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

I'm a theistic evolutionist, so as far as I'm concerned trying to disprove God using His own creation is absurd. Demanding that God break the natural laws He created to prove His existance is equally absurd. Even Jesus, when asked to perform a miracle to prove he was the son of God, refused to do so.

Sorry if I sound a bit snippy, but practically every thread I've come across which criticises the type of logic and arguments atheists often use almost always tries to shift the blame back onto Christians. It's as though they're saying "I don't have to justify the way I think - all I have to do is discredit the way you think!"

And by the way, how do we objectively verify miracles?

 

[KimberlyAA]

‘Entities [of explanation] should not be multiplied beyond necessity’.

Put a little more plainly this maxim says that with any problem: ‘All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.’ When applied to different theories about nature, for example, this does not mean that nature is not complex, but only that, when accounting for any observed phenomenon in nature, the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is most probably the correct one.

As well as being good philosophy, this method of reasoning is also sound science. For example, the main advantage of the Copernican Theory (that the earth revolves round the sun) over the Ptolemaic Theory (that the sun moves round the earth) was the reduction in the number of separate assumptions from 79 to 34. Later Isaac Newton was able to account for the movements of both the earth and the heavenly bodies by just one assumption—the Law of Gravitation.

Let us apply Occam’s Razor to the two theories of origins, namely evolution and creation, and in particular to the respective answers to several fundamental problems which either theory must be able to explain in order to be viable. We will consider the evolutionists’ dilemma first.

1. Where did matter and/or energy come from?

If one says matter/energy is eternal, then as a logical consequence, the universe must be eternal. But the universe is running down in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and sooner or later will reach heat death—when everything will be at the same temperature, a few degrees above absolute zero. If the universe was eternal, heat death would have happened a long, long time ago, but it hasn’t. Therefore the universe is not eternal; it had to have a beginning.

If one says that matter/energy is the result of the alleged big bang, where did the energy for the big bang come from? If one says it came from the ‘cosmic egg’, there is unleashed a flood of assumptions, or questions for which evolutionists do not have answers.

For example, where did the energy of the ‘cosmic egg’ come from? What caused it to be compressed into a single dimensionless point (a ‘singularity’, which is another way of saying nothing)? What triggered the expansion of nothing? If gravity was near infinite, i.e. the ‘single point’ was a black hole, how come anything expanded? How come this explosive expansion produced all the order in the universe? And so on.

2. Where did life come from?

The next time you eat a can of beans or stewed fruit you might like to reflect on why it is that you do not die of food poisoning. The reason is that cans of food, after sealing, are sterilized by heat to destroy all the bacteria within them. Once all life has been destroyed, new life is not generated.

This is the Law of Biogenesis: Life gives birth to life, but non-life does not. Another place where this law can be seen at work is in a hospital operating theatre. The principle of asepsis (sterilization), arising from the work of Pasteur, Lister and others, depends on the fact that once all life has been eliminated, non-life does not and cannot produce life.

Where, then did life come from? The usual evolutionist answer is that it arose from some chance combination of atoms and molecules in some primeval soup. (The view of Francis Crick, called Panspermia, that life came from some other part of the universe, merely pushes the problem of life’s origin into the obscurity of outer space.) But this involves multitudinous assumptions and is contrary to thoroughly-proven principles like the Law of Biogenesis, which we test every day, as outlined above.

3. Where did information come from?

Living things are replete with information, stored mainly on their DNA. This information specifies how to make and use all the components of the living organism, how to reproduce, etc. Humans have some 3,000 million ‘letters’ written on the DNA, which specify how to make over 100,000 proteins and much more, much of which is yet to be discovered (like how embryo development is orchestrated).

This sort of information specifies something. For example, the letter sequence ‘soad tm eihwras euoolben’ says or specifies nothing and there is little to indicate that anything other than a random process was responsible. If someone rearranged the same letters into ‘she owns a red automobile’, we immediately recognize information that an intelligence created.

Random processes, whether evolutionary or not (i.e., with natural selection), cannot produce the voluminous information needed by living things. It is a totally unwarranted assumption to suppose that they do.

4. How do things change?

If, as per evolutionary theory, an animal needs to develop a particular organ (for example, a dinosaur developing wings in order to escape from its predators), such an organ would have no survival value in its intermediate stages. An animal whose front legs have become part-legs and part-wings could no longer run as fast, and could not yet fly. It is therefore less fit to survive, and by definition (survival of the fittest) the intermediate forms would be eliminated. So how did such things form?

The answers to these questions must be within the parameters that each philosophy (evolution or creation) lays down.

The theory of evolution postulates mutation, a chance random process, and natural selection. However, chance random processes cannot account for and are unable to originate matter/energy, or life, or information.

What then of the theory of creation? What are the creationist answers to these fundamental problems? None of these presents any problem at all to a creationist because creationism postulates an eternal, self-existent God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and who exists everywhere at once. Thus for the Christian creationist:

1. The origin of matter and energy poses no problem—the omnipotent or all-powerful God created them in the beginning. Matter (nature) cannot be eternal, but God is.

2. The origin of life poses no problem—the eternal, self-existent, living God imparted life to plants, animals and the first human pair in His creation in the beginning.

3. The origin of information poses no problem—the omniscient or all-knowing God designed the order and complexity in the universe, and then gave man the intelligence to see and understand it and to use it. He spoke things into existence—speech involves information.

4. As to dinosaurs developing wings and turning into birds, how much simpler it is to think that God created dinosaurs to be dinosaurs and that He created birds to be birds. He created different kinds of organisms to reproduce true to their type. We observe that organisms reproduce only after their type and we now know the genetic basis for that.

According to Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation or the one with the fewest assumptions that explains the facts is to be preferred. Creation makes one assumption—that God is who He says He is in the Bible—because if this is so, then He must have done all that He said He did. This adequately answers all the problems of origins posed above.

Evolution has many assumptions and none of them provides an answer to anything.

According to Occam’s Razor creation wins.

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

KimberlyAA: As Skywriting pointed out earlier, Occam's Razor cannot determine which theory is more likely. It doesn't take the evidence into account either.

Using Occam's Razor to justify creationism is taking his argument too far. We're basically saything that creationism is right because there is no evidence for it - but that makes no sense.

 

[Tomk80]

Not really. That was the opposite of what I was trying to argue. My criticism was that it's illogical say that we can only believe in God if we witness something supernatural - why should God only be able to prove He exists by violating the natural laws he created?

Occam was the one who argued we need to employ different standards. When we evalulate nature we use reason and logic, but to evalulate God we need divine revelation.

What claims? I haven't made any claims proving God's existance - especially ones which rely on miracles and the supernatural - so I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

I'm a theistic evolutionist, so as far as I'm concerned trying to disprove God using His own creation is absurd. Demanding that God break the natural laws He created to prove His existance is equally absurd. Even Jesus, when asked to perform a miracle to prove he was the son of God, refused to do so.

Sorry if I sound a bit snippy, but practically every thread I've come across which criticises the type of logic and arguments atheists often use almost always tries to shift the blame back onto Christians. It's as though they're saying "I don't have to justify the way I think - all I have to do is discredit the way you think!"

Because you are the ones making the claim that God exists. The only thing atheists are saying is that there is no objective evidence in favor of the existence of god(s). Therefore, we do not have a good reason to believe they exist and they probably don't. We (including theists) use this manner of evaluating claims for all other phenomena. Only for God you suddenly want us to use a different standard. This is what Occam was doing in his original use of Occam's Razor and is, as Loudmouth pointed out, special pleading.

Read your post again. You say:
"I'm a theistic evolutionist, so as far as I'm concerned trying to disprove God using His own creation is absurd."
Right there you are making the knowledge claim that God exists. You have added an entity into the equation. The logical question for us then becomes: "Do you have any evidence for said entity?" or "How can we evaluate the possible existence of said entity?"

Speaking in a more generalized way. The non-existence of something (including god(s)) is the null-hypothesis. We then use evidence to see whether the null-hypothesis should be rejected. If the evidence does not support the rejection of the null-hypothesis, we keep adhering to the null.

Now, the question then becomes how we could evaluate the existence of god(s). What kind of evidence would point us in the direction accepting the existence of such a miraculous being? And the answer again lies in the same way we evaluate all other phenomena. We look at the observations that might point in the direction of such an entity, and subsequently try to find possible known mechanisms that account for these observations. If known mechanisms cannot account for the observations, only then can we start to go in the direction of accepting the existence of this entity.

And by the way, how do we objectively verify miracles?

By first trying to rule out the possibility of natural mechanisms. Then by collecting more evidence of similar miracles, and ruling out natural mechanisms there is as well. The reason atheists often bring up the healing of amputees is a cogent one in that regard. Because in that case, there are know known natural mechanisms that would account for it. Other than other miracle healing, for example cancer where we know spontaneous remissions can occur. The reasoning atheists have for this example becomes clear as well. They basically ask the question "Why can God only heal people if they have a disease that can be healed in a way that has an existing explanation?"

You are correct if you say that this is not easy. If these miracles occar on a hapsnap basis, every once in 10 years, or if these miracles closely mimic phenomena with known natural mechanisms, it may well be impossible to conclusively state that a miracle occurred. In other words, epistomologically we may have done everything right, and still arrive at the wrong conclusion. In other words, by using the best methods we have, we may still be wrong. Problem is, what other method do we have that would be better and arrive at the right conclusion?

Which, after way too much text, leads me to my criticism of your position. You basically criticize atheists for using the best known tools to come to a certain conclusion. You basically assert that the best tools we have cannot lead us to the correct conclusion. And you may even be right in that assertion. But until you come up with better tools that lead us to the correct conclusion, we have no reason to accept your conclusion. In fact, it would be foolish of us to do so.

 

[Tomk80]

Evolution has many assumptions and none of them provides an answer to anything.

According to Occam’s Razor creation wins.

 

[Greg1234]

we've always found a natural explanation for it.

Actually, phenomena havent always been seen through the same instrument.

 

[KCfromNC]

‘Entities [of explanation] should not be multiplied beyond necessity’.

Neither should the content of other peoples web sites. Cite your sources next time - otherwise it looks like you're stealing their work.

 

[Karl - Liberal Backslider]

‘Entities [of explanation] should not be multiplied beyond necessity’.

Put a little more plainly this maxim says that with any problem: ‘All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.’ When applied to different theories about nature, for example, this does not mean that nature is not complex, but only that, when accounting for any observed phenomenon in nature, the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is most probably the correct one.

As well as being good philosophy, this method of reasoning is also sound science. For example, the main advantage of the Copernican Theory (that the earth revolves round the sun) over the Ptolemaic Theory (that the sun moves round the earth) was the reduction in the number of separate assumptions from 79 to 34. Later Isaac Newton was able to account for the movements of both the earth and the heavenly bodies by just one assumption—the Law of Gravitation.

Let us apply Occam’s Razor to the two theories of origins, namely evolution and creation, and in particular to the respective answers to several fundamental problems which either theory must be able to explain in order to be viable. We will consider the evolutionists’ dilemma first.

1. Where did matter and/or energy come from?

If one says matter/energy is eternal, then as a logical consequence, the universe must be eternal. But the universe is running down in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and sooner or later will reach heat death—when everything will be at the same temperature, a few degrees above absolute zero. If the universe was eternal, heat death would have happened a long, long time ago, but it hasn’t. Therefore the universe is not eternal; it had to have a beginning.

If one says that matter/energy is the result of the alleged big bang, where did the energy for the big bang come from? If one says it came from the ‘cosmic egg’, there is unleashed a flood of assumptions, or questions for which evolutionists do not have answers.

For example, where did the energy of the ‘cosmic egg’ come from? What caused it to be compressed into a single dimensionless point (a ‘singularity’, which is another way of saying nothing)? What triggered the expansion of nothing? If gravity was near infinite, i.e. the ‘single point’ was a black hole, how come anything expanded? How come this explosive expansion produced all the order in the universe? And so on.

2. Where did life come from?

The next time you eat a can of beans or stewed fruit you might like to reflect on why it is that you do not die of food poisoning. The reason is that cans of food, after sealing, are sterilized by heat to destroy all the bacteria within them. Once all life has been destroyed, new life is not generated.

This is the Law of Biogenesis: Life gives birth to life, but non-life does not. Another place where this law can be seen at work is in a hospital operating theatre. The principle of asepsis (sterilization), arising from the work of Pasteur, Lister and others, depends on the fact that once all life has been eliminated, non-life does not and cannot produce life.

Where, then did life come from? The usual evolutionist answer is that it arose from some chance combination of atoms and molecules in some primeval soup. (The view of Francis Crick, called Panspermia, that life came from some other part of the universe, merely pushes the problem of life’s origin into the obscurity of outer space.) But this involves multitudinous assumptions and is contrary to thoroughly-proven principles like the Law of Biogenesis, which we test every day, as outlined above.

3. Where did information come from?

Living things are replete with information, stored mainly on their DNA. This information specifies how to make and use all the components of the living organism, how to reproduce, etc. Humans have some 3,000 million ‘letters’ written on the DNA, which specify how to make over 100,000 proteins and much more, much of which is yet to be discovered (like how embryo development is orchestrated).

This sort of information specifies something. For example, the letter sequence ‘soad tm eihwras euoolben’ says or specifies nothing and there is little to indicate that anything other than a random process was responsible. If someone rearranged the same letters into ‘she owns a red automobile’, we immediately recognize information that an intelligence created.

Random processes, whether evolutionary or not (i.e., with natural selection), cannot produce the voluminous information needed by living things. It is a totally unwarranted assumption to suppose that they do.

4. How do things change?

If, as per evolutionary theory, an animal needs to develop a particular organ (for example, a dinosaur developing wings in order to escape from its predators), such an organ would have no survival value in its intermediate stages. An animal whose front legs have become part-legs and part-wings could no longer run as fast, and could not yet fly. It is therefore less fit to survive, and by definition (survival of the fittest) the intermediate forms would be eliminated. So how did such things form?

The answers to these questions must be within the parameters that each philosophy (evolution or creation) lays down.

The theory of evolution postulates mutation, a chance random process, and natural selection. However, chance random processes cannot account for and are unable to originate matter/energy, or life, or information.

What then of the theory of creation? What are the creationist answers to these fundamental problems? None of these presents any problem at all to a creationist because creationism postulates an eternal, self-existent God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and who exists everywhere at once. Thus for the Christian creationist:

1. The origin of matter and energy poses no problem—the omnipotent or all-powerful God created them in the beginning. Matter (nature) cannot be eternal, but God is.

2. The origin of life poses no problem—the eternal, self-existent, living God imparted life to plants, animals and the first human pair in His creation in the beginning.

3. The origin of information poses no problem—the omniscient or all-knowing God designed the order and complexity in the universe, and then gave man the intelligence to see and understand it and to use it. He spoke things into existence—speech involves information.

4. As to dinosaurs developing wings and turning into birds, how much simpler it is to think that God created dinosaurs to be dinosaurs and that He created birds to be birds. He created different kinds of organisms to reproduce true to their type. We observe that organisms reproduce only after their type and we now know the genetic basis for that.

According to Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation or the one with the fewest assumptions that explains the facts is to be preferred. Creation makes one assumption—that God is who He says He is in the Bible—because if this is so, then He must have done all that He said He did. This adequately answers all the problems of origins posed above.

Evolution has many assumptions and none of them provides an answer to anything.

According to Occam’s Razor creation wins.

You missed out the attribution - Occam’s Razor and creation/evolution

You didn't write that. You plagiarised it. You do this a lot. You are aware that it's generally considered a bad thing to pass off someone else's work as your own by failing to attribute it? Like you can be instantly expelled from any university for doing it?

 

[SkyWriting]

My original criticisms were against atheists who say "There is no evidence for the supernatural". I am saying that even if I did have evidence for the supernatural, atheists would not accept it because they structure their arguments in such a way that the supernatural cannot exist.

Not exactly. They structure reality in a way that only responds to natural input. Anything outside of the natural has no tools to examine it. No NATURAL tools that is.

It's really no harder to understand than watching one of those paranormal investigations shows where the guys invent devices to measure or spot ghosts. The only odd shapes we see are the puddles on the floor as they scare the pee out of each other in the dark.

Technology is not going to measure spirit.