Occams Razor

Claim: high complexity is rather proof of a bad design, as a perfect designer aims to create a system as simplistic as possible. Because, the more complex a system is, the more susceptible it is to flaws.
Reply: Well, echoing Einstein, the answer is very easy: nothing is really simple if it does not work. Occam’s Razor is certainly not intended to promote false – thus, simplistic — theories in the name of their supposed “simplicity.” We should prefer a working explanation to one that does not, without arguing about “simplicity”. Such claims are really pointless, more philosophy than science. The only important scientific point is: what gives us an empirically well-supported, “best explanation”?


The aims of science, since at least Plato, is to find the minimal number of ultimate principles that are able to explain observable phenomena.

Darwinian evolution is a Vastly More “Simple” Argument than Intelligent Design
This argument usually goes with passionate invocations of Occam’s Razor. Well, echoing Einstein, the answer is very easy: nothing is really simple if it does not work.

Occam’s Razor is certainly not intended to promote false – thus, simplistic — theories in the name of their supposed “simplicity.” If Darwinian Evolution and ID both explained well what we know about complex biological information, then we could argue about which is the simplest theory. But that’s not the case. One of the most important results of ID theory is that it effectively falsifies Darwinian theory.

We should prefer a working theory to a falsified one, without arguing about “simplicity”.

Moreover, ID and Darwinian evolution are so different that it is really meaningless to compare their “simplicity.” According to Darwinists, ID is “not simple” because it postulates a designer. According to IDists, Darwinian Evolution is “not simple” because it tries and fails to explain complex biological information — which has all the key properties of known designed things — through complicated, ad hoc and artificial assumptions and question-begging rules, just to avoid the “simple” (and even, “natural’) explanation of a designer.

Such discussions are really pointless, more philosophy than science. The only important scientific point is: which theory gives the empirically well-supported, “best explanation”?

Science does not address the “Supernatural”
As a matter of brute fact, Science can address anything it pleases, and has already weighed in on several events that have been associated with the supernatural.

Physicists have speculated about the weight of the stone at the time of Christ’s resurrection and the likelihood that Roman guards could have lifted it. Medical doctors have aided the Catholic Church in its canonization process by determining whether or not a medical miracle can be attributed to the special intervention of a saint. Statisticians have calculated the improbability that 459 Old Testament prophecies about Jesus Christ would become realized as historical events as reported in the New Testament. More famously, chemists have calculated the possible age of the shroud of Turin. Indeed, some would say that astronomers “addressed” a supernatural creative event when they found evidence for the “big bang.

So, when Darwinist ideologues say that “science does not address the supernatural, what they really mean is that science should not be PERMITTED to address the supernatural, (or anything that could remotely be associated with it). This attitude of mind goes by the name of “methodological naturalism.” It is best expressed by Lewontin, who writes,

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just-so stories [in evolutionary biology] because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material causes, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door”

The lesson here should be clear. We should not put science into a politically-correct, materialistic straight-jacket.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/faq/#drwnsimp