William Occam (Ockham – c. 1285-1347) was a Franciscan who, having condemned Pope John XXll as “no true pope”, had to flee his order and spent many years writing on church-state relations.
He dismissed Platonism and proffered himself as the one true interpreter of Aristotle. However, his most popularly regarded gift to posterity was his razor, a philosophical principle profound in its simplicity.
As was the scholastic custom of his day, Occam expressed his notion in Latin: Entia non sunt multiplicanda – entities are not to be multiplied. Indeed, his “razor” was to be employed shaving away all extraneous detail to arrive at the essential nub.
This is often expressed as, the simplest explanation is the one to be considered correct. Adding complications and complex arguments merely obscures the truth.
For Deists Occam’s razor is a most useful tool. Arguing for the existence of God from observation and experience of nature the formulation is straightforward: creation requires a creator.
Atheists ultimately have to propound a quite unbelievable conjuring trick: before creation (big bang) there was nothing. In fact, there wasn’t even nothing, as that is a concept and is, therefore, something. But, from or into this absence emerged everything for no reason or purpose at all.
Not only did this occur, this random act develops and behaves according to laws and through meaningless natural selection eventually spawns not only life, but life capable of reason and purpose.
Antipathy towards God is understandable if the divine posited is essentially a super-human, all the traits of Man, just on a grander scale. This is the God of theism of which atheism is the antithesis.
Deism transcends both positions. It makes no claims to defining what is meant by God or ascribing what the divine purpose of creation might be. Deists merely say that the most reasonable explanation for there being a universe lies with an originator.
And as creation is dynamic and on going the originator’s presence is still observable if ineffable: it is surely supreme arrogance to presume human understanding of the universe is so comprehensive as to exclude purpose and reason way beyond our ken.
Whether that originator/creator is called God or not is irrelevant; the word could be scrubbed from the lexicon and replaced by another unburdened by its associations and cultural accretions. Some Deists resort to the Latin Deus for this reason.
Ironically, Judaism, which eventually produced Christianity and Islam, originally avowed the divine could not be named. Of course, it then went on to variously name and attribute all manner of characteristics to God.
However, in principle there does seem to be a fundamental recognition that the divine is beyond comprehension and, therefore, beyond taxonomy. The problem is humans want to discuss these matters and so require language, a word to use.
So God, Deus or some other formulation will undoubtedly find continuing usage. It may require a word that is not just a noun but a verb and adjective concurrently.
Does this apparent complexity contradict Occam? Linguistically, probably, yet as an expression of a basic notion, not at all: Occam himself ventured propositions supportive of the Deist position, such as:
• Being cannot come from non-being.
• Whatever is produced by something is really conserved by something as long as it exists.
• Everything that is in motion is moved by something.
The latter is a forerunner of Thomas Paine’s argument against atheism: if someone can demonstrate perpetual motion, then the case for atheism can be proved. Otherwise there stands the case for the Prime Mover.
Deism can make good use of Occam’s razor to resist any temptation towards becoming overly complex. In simplicity is the profound beauty of its appreciation of nature and Nature’s God.
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