Why is it that atheists say Occam's Razor supports their position on how we all got here?

Question

Let's be consistent in our reasoning, OK?

Let's say I hand you an expensive Swiss watch. I then ask you which makes more sense:

1) That atoms just were and then they spontaneously came together to create molecules. The molecules just came together to create elements. The metal elements all fused together on their own to form the internal parts. Other elements came together to form plastics which came together precisely in this watch. That every part of this watch through chance just came together perfectly as you see it.

OR

2) A watchmaker made it.

Occam's Razor will necessitate an atheist choose choice #2.

Now the same atheist presented with the following choices.

1) Something came from nothing. Then atoms came togethr to form molecules and then elements and then some primordial goo. That then became alive. That then eventually crawled out of the sea and eventually stood on two legs as a man.

OR

2) A watchmaker made us.

Why would an atheist accept that Occam's Razor mandates believing in a watchmaker in the first situation and not in the second. The belief in a watchmaker is a much simpler explaination.

Answer 1

I think it's fine for them to use science and reason (much of which I agree with), but I do agree with you too that Occams razor supports a creatonist view more.

Answer 2

Occam or Ockham didn't use his razor enough, for he was a monk or something. Look at your "Watchmaker" stuff that is hardly original. All creationists use the same brain evidently, and it's not the best one. The Universe is not a watch. You'd say God created the watchmaker. To be consistent, you must also say that some higher god created your God. Applying Occam's razor in the fullest way that even Occam may not have understood, the simplest idea is to have a Universe that works by natural laws, rather than to concoct some being of greater complexity that is much harder to explain than the Universe that needs no creator. Interestingly enough, many of our best-known Founding Fathers were Deists, e.g. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Deism has been called the "Watchmaker Theory". It says the creator made the Universe like a watch that can run on its own without any more help from him, and so, he takes no more part in it. Your copied "Watchmaker Theory" is much more absurd than that one. Try thinking for yourself.

Answer 3

What would a watchmaker know about creating life?

Seriously though you should phrase your choices this way:

1) Something came from nothing. Then atoms came together to form molecules and then elements and then some primordial goo. That then became alive. That then eventually crawled out of the sea and eventually stood on two legs as a man.

OR

2) A being of immeasurable power who in omnipotent and omniscient, who is eternal, who has never been seen, and whom we can never fully understand used some form of ambiguous power to spontaneously create the universe including life on earth for some unknown reason.

Now which choice sounds more likely? People shouldn't just assume that God is the easy answer since its not really an answer at all.

Answer 4

Nice try, but this is an old argument.
The answer to your second "example" is rather simple:
There is considerable evidence, from every branch of science (biology, geology, paleontology, sociology, anthropology, and on and on) that confirms the first hypothesis (although we didn't come from "nothing" as you said). There is no evidence of any kind to support that a "watchmaker" made us. That's why the two are different.

Besides, the human body is no watch. A watch has a specific purpose, and only parts that serve that purpose (or purposes) are included in it. It's well designed for the functions it is to perform, and performs those well. Humans, on the other hand, have leftover parts from dead-ends in evolution (tail bone, appendix, and more). We have parts that don't work very well for the functions they're supposed to perform, and that are easily subject to disease. Mistakes get made when humans are conceived, resulting in genetic deformities, early death, and other problems. Men have nipples. All of that bolsters the argument for evolution, and none of it favors a creator -- who, if he were as all-knowing and all-powerful as his believers claim, could easily have not made such mistakes, and could even now correct the problems that have cropped up. Since there are such leftovers and mistakes, and since the "maker" doesn't do anything to correct them, it's strong evidence that there is no maker.

Answer 5

The existence of the watchmaker would lead one to also conclude that someone made the watchmaker, and yet theists insist that god has always existed, and was never made by anything. Why is life existing from nothing any different than a god existing from nothing? Also, please don't generalize, as I am an atheist who has never actually supported my beliefs by Occam's Razor.

Answer 6

No matter what we believe, we're left w/ the fact that something - god, process, whatever - always existed. I'm atheistic but I'm baffled when friends and others don't realize that if we get rid of god, we're left with the same exact problem of the mystery of existence (a friend who is also atheistic had a convo w/ me and thought he had resolved the issues of existence by just referring to scientific cosmologies and evolution; he finally 'got it' when I showed him how the mystery is still unanswered). It gets even more difficult when we think about time and space as just two other things that exist only when the universe itself comes into being. When this universe collapses, time and space ends. Of course, then 'what' is the universe expanding into? And what is meant by 'infinite'?

Answer 7

The entire fallacy of the watch argument (first published by William Paley) has been exposed in great detail by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Blind Watchmaker".

Answer 8

Occam's Razor is not proof.

When issues are as contentsoius as God and religion, you can't just pull some vague principal like Occam's out of the air and state that it proves your point.

Besides you need to wiegh all the facts and evidence forst. The bible doesn't ecen count as either, so I'm sure many people wouldn't be willing to weight things in a resonable way.

I just go on flushing holy books. http://flushaholybook.com

Answer 9

pretend premise. Occam's Razor does no longer state the superior answer is the suited one, it states that extremely regularly it really is the case. then you fairly bypass on to be better deluded in meanings. also, your theory of a "simplest answer" is effortless minded.

Answer 10

the "complexity - watchmaker" argument can only be used to "prove" polytheism, not monotheism. Following the argument, then the complexity which demands a creator would require that the creator, as a complex being, himself had a creator, and so on. Realistically, though, natural complexity does not require a "creator" as such, so the initial argumant is flawed.