Occams Razor

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
T_Laurich

T_Laurich

Senior Member
Mar 24, 2013
3,356
122
63
32
The simplest answer is usually the best answer.
That is Occams Razor: it is a philosophical term.


Now, in terms of Conspiracy Theories the more probabilities you have the more improbable it becomes. When I was a child my mother would come home from a long days worth of work and find something broken or find someone with bruises. We would all tell our stories and my mom would decide who was right, and she was extremely good at picking out the liars.

What she did was see who had the most "far fetched" explanation and they were wrong by default. Yes she made one or two mistakes but for the other 99% she was dead on.



This is Occams Razor and we use it every day of our lives.
But when it comes to conspiracy theories we throw out our simple rule and believe blindly in these order creating solutions.




What a conspiracy theory does, is take a world that is Chaotic and orders it by saying "someone or group planned for this to happen". This takes out the Chaos and feeds our want but, it never fills our want.

The reason it never fills our want is: we as Christians know that God exists, and we know that nothing happens without His will... But we use a Conspiracy Theory to get around God's mind to try understand the world around us on a level that we want; because, God's mind is a mystery to everyone.

We say this group had a plan and orchestrated a near impossible feat and thus now I understand. Instead of going with Occams Razor and realizing that it is God's Will. And just as the destruction of Tyre, the journey with Moses, or David vs Goliath... There was no real plan, it was spontaneous on our part. But as for God, it was all His will from the beginning.



I am not saying that all conspiracy theories are all false by correlation! What I am saying, is that when we use Conspiracy Theories to make order around us instead of God. We are wrong :)
 
Last edited:
You bring to my mind many of my big discoveries and revelations of 50 years ago. Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I mean that in all seriousness. I wish I could relive the magic of those days.
 
Didn't CS Lewis use the Occam's Razor principle in his story, "The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe" where the two older siblings accused their youngest sister Lucy of not telling the truth when she said she found a secret wardrobe? The professor then helps them see how it isn't probable that Lucy lied about it or that she is mad.
 
AuntieAnt said:
Didn't CS Lewis use the Occam's Razor principle in his story, "The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe" where the two older siblings accused their youngest sister Lucy of not telling the truth when she said she found a secret wardrobe? The professor then helps them see how it isn't probable that Lucy lied about it or that she is mad.
Click to expand...

Very interesting... I have listened to the audio books and watched the movies but I can't recall his words... I have to re-read(listen) again now :p
 
And what about in CS Lewis' book, Mere Christianity, where he writes:

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Would that be the Occam's Razor principle as well?
 
AuntieAnt said:
And what about in CS Lewis' book, Mere Christianity, where he writes:

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Would that be the Occam's Razor principle as well?
Click to expand...

Yes because the three options given are the simplest, with him being God the one with the least uncertainties.
But that is an example of showing the Occam's Razor.

To make Him (just) "a great human teacher" you would have to apply many unknowns and uncertainties, and probabilities... This makes it the least likely.
 
well calling him a great teacher or a great prophet (as the muslims say) is contradicting the times he said he was more. it was the thing he was hunted for. a great teacher/prophet wouldn't get themselves killed for saying they are more than a great teacher/prophet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back