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Ockham's Razor Argumentative Analysis

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Ockham's Razor was an argumentative strategy constructed during the Middle Ages, which empiricists have applied multiple times to use in order to support a counterargument in opposition to the rationalists' explanations for 'innate ideas.' Although shown to be useful for the former argument, is it an effective tool for analyzing the proofs of God? In this paper, it will be argued that when trying to analyze proofs of God, it is best to reply to questions with hypothetical answers that make the fewest presumptions. "The answer to the question "Why do so many people believe in gods?" is a very complicated one because it entangles us in a thicket of psychological, sociological, anthropological, and philosophical-not to mention purely religious-issues." (Palmer 155). The general concept of Ockham's Razor is that the simpler answer to a problem is usually the correct one. One debate in which the razor appeared to be used successfully was in the form of theory of planetary motion produced by Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), which was derived from the …show more content…

It would be unreasonable to explain the watch in terms of natural accidents and coincidences. But nature is even more marvelous in the intricacies of its workings than a watch is. The human heart pumps blood at exactly the right pressure to sustain human life; the planets move in their orbits with absolute mathematical precision; each plant is in nearly perfect harmony with its environment. In summary, the universe is such an intricate system of balanced mechanisms that it can be explained only in terms of the purposes and intentions of an intelligent creator, as in the case of the watch. In the case of the universe, that intelligent creator is God." (Palmer

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