Posted by Jason on: 01.19.2009 /
I had no need of that hypothesis. (”Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là”, as a reply to Napoleon, who had asked why he hadn’t mentioned God in his book on astronomy.)
- Pierre-Simon Laplace
Leading on from last week where I tried to provide an explanation for a lack of belief due to a lack of compelling evidence, this week it is a lack of necessity.
I’m sure that anyone who has kicked around religious debates for more than a few months will be familiar with William of Occam and his eponymous razor. The principle of Occam’s Razor is to explain a phenomena with as few assumptions as possible and to remove those elements that make no difference to the explanation. “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” is one of his ideas.
So, when we examine a phenomena, we do not count God in the hypothesis. not because God is not there or because God is there but because the presence or absence of God makes no difference to our examination. It has been said that you cannot put God in a test tube but the nature of an infinite being is that you cannot keep God out of a test tube either. By not counting God into hypotheses we are left to other devices to explain them. An atheist like me extends the idea and discounts God from all things as unnecessary.
Perhaps one day I will be confronted with a question that needs God to explain it. Science is such a satisfactory way of explaining things in the universe that has no need for God and I am happy to accept that sometimes I don’t have enough information to provide an answer. Yet, since we can explain so much with the tools of science then we don’t need to call on God to explain things.
Does this prove God doesn’t exist? Not at all. What it shows is that the assumption that God exists isn’t needed. If the assumption isn’t needed then why not abandon it?
William of Occam, a Franciscan monk, would not agree. The presumption of God was the very best way of explaining the universe in the 14th century. In the 21st century we have other tools at our disposal. Tools that make the God hypothesis unnecessary.
Comment by: Stephan
1In a word, “arrogance”.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
2Jason wrote:
Whenever you have more than one hypothesis, only one is necessary. You could always throw the others out on that basis as ‘unnecessary’. The question is, how do you decide which to throw out and which to keep?
Your post implies that you prefer to keep the ‘no God’ hypothesis because you think it involves fewer assumptions.
But a) fewer assumptions aren’t necessarily correct even though William of Occam preferred them and b) theists disagree that your assumptions that make God unnecessary are better/fewer/more tenable than their assumption of God which make your alternate assumptions and ‘no God hypothesis’ unnecessary.
With all due respect this seems like a step backwards from looking at evidence as objectively as possible. It seems entirely based on the presupposition that a hypothesis of no God is preferable. Rather than an exploration of which hypothesis fits the circumstances and evidence best
Exploring whether God ‘exists’ is necessary to explain my world was an important (and necessary I believe :)) part of my journey. But if I lean towards no God it’s not because I’ve decided the ‘God hypothesis’ is less preferable a priori and thrown it out as unnecessary. It’s because I think no God fits the evidence better (speaking from my perspective of course - I realize that some of you disagree).
Comment by: Jason
3When you switch your computer on to comment on this blog do you need to pray first? If you forgot would the electricity not flow? If you prayed to Ganesha last weekend instead of Jesus would your phone line stop working? Are the laws of physics suspended for believers for some reason that I’m not aware of?
If it is arrogance to expect the world to work according to well understood laws and to work consistently throughout the entire universe then I wear the label of arrogance proudly. Name calling doesn’t change the facts though.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
4I don’t see it as arrogance but I do see it as an insufficiently justified (in the post) bias against the God hypothesis that causes it to be the one rejected and the no-God hypothesis to be the one kept.
Comment by: Jason
5Helen, the “no God” hypothesis is certainly simpler and is one reason that some atheists choose to reject it. What I’m trying to do is list and explain the many common reasons for not believing. While it is true that I put some weight on all of them it isn’t that I have a single reason for unbelief as many people assume but a lot of reasons.
However to answer your question:
I’d have to answer that we examine the evidence, make hypotheses and use our reason to reject those hypotheses that don’t fit.
A priori ideas are deduced by logic and are as flawed as any other logic that has not been subject to testing. Certainly many a priori arguments will be correct but you can’t tell until you test them. In questions of logic and assumptions based on logic where we cannot test the assumption then we use techniques like Occam’s Razor to stop ourselves getting muddled with unnecessary arguments.
If we ask, for example, what makes us feel awe at the sight of a beautiful sunset do we use the assumption that it is God or do we use Occam’s Razor to strip away the entity to stop ourselves being muddled? For me, God is unnecessary to explain that feeling of awe just as God is unnecessary to explain why the phones work or the moon orbits the Earth.
That isn’t to say that someone might want to praise God for a lovely sunset, only that it would be a lovely sunset if Ra made it or if it were perfectly natural. As such the need to attribute a sunset’s beauty to God is unnecessary. As we don’t need it for a sunset, why do we need it at all?
Comment by: Jason
6Oh and I do agree that being unnecesssary is not sufficient reason to not believe as long as you take it alone. As a supporting argument it does add something though.
Comment by: Chris C
7Great post in response to Jason, Helen. Although, of course, as you anticipated, I disagree with your final conclusion.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
8Jason I appreciate you saying that ‘necessary’ doesn’t stand on its own, that you’d go to evidence as well.
Even so the more I think about ‘unnecessary’ the worse an argument it seems.
Yes I don’t have to pray before I turn on my computer but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that if I did pray something would go better about the experience. Just like I won’t keel over and die if I don’t take a daily iron supplement - so strictly speaking it’s not necessary - but further investigation with blood tests shows that if I don’t take one I gradually become anemic. So ‘necessary’ isn’t even a useful categorization in many situations in real life. It’s too all-or-nothing. I would say ‘Not necessary but beneficial/helpful/contributing in a good way’ is sufficient although not necessary.
Comment by: Jason
9Thanks Helen.
No, it doesn’t rule it out which is why we go back to looking at the evidence to see if prayer or belief actually changes anything for the better. If we remove God from examinations of evidence does it change the evidence in any way? Does it change our conclusions except in matters of theology? If not then why consider God in our lives at all?
Necessity isn’t an argument for unbelief. It is an argument for apatheism that I looked at a few of weeks ago. Some atheists (apatheists) don’t believe in God or gods because belief or the question of God makes no difference to their lives at all. It is unnecessary and can be discarded.
Now, while I do think that God belief is unnecessary, it isn’t a reason for my own unbelief. I want positive reasons and not simply rejection by default as apatheists do. It is enough for some though. Is it a weak reason? Well, yes, in your opinion and mine but for some it is sufficient.