Is A Materialist View Less Parsimonious?

Obviously I can appreciate that, "supernature" is assumed, and has to be taken by faith, as it is implied by the natural creation. I admit that by faith we believe in God.However the materialistic creation story of atheism, obviously doesn't need to assume a supernatural realm which might make it more parsimonious in that regard which I would concede. However, how many more assumptions/entities/variables, must be assumed in order to accept materialism?For example, if we believe that the specified complexity, contingency planning, correct materials, in organisms, and so forth, are designed by a designer as is usually the case, into an induction of hundreds of millions of examples and no examples of random design without a designer, then obviously we don't need to assume that millions of transitional species once existed as part of our argument.What am I saying? I am saying for one part of the materialistic explanation (life's diversity), we would have to invoke millions of transitionals but if an animal kind was created then as creationists we don't have to assume millions of ancestors, so there are far more assumptions to that one part of the story.But what about the rest of the story? Obviously within the universe there are separate explanations for different things, but nevertheless this is all part of the same story that the universe created itself and then created everything in itself.So then there are also many more assumptions for abiogenesis, such as a fictional primordial form of life, a common ancestor to all life, and abiogenesis itself must be assumed it seems, with a fictional primordial reduced atmosphere. But with creation, obviously all life is created by design, so again, less assumptions and we can just accept the real fact of an earth-planet without having to argue it used to not be like earth.Then we have to consider the planets and stars and galaxies. If creation is true, God made the galaxies according to their factual nature, which is a completed state, and the factual nature of the planets is a completed state, but a materialistic explanation means we have to believe that once the earth was a primordial blob, and we have to believe accretion, that the planets made themselves and the stars and galaxies made themselves even though they are all now completed, according to the facts, like animals are completed, without transitionals, according to the facts.So the picture I am painting is that the materialistic explanation seems to depend on two things;1. Many, many more assumptions and separate explanations for different things within the universe.
2. The belief that nature and the reality of the universe has drastically changed, but just happens to never show any point of change unless you again make yet another assumption that the present state is also a state of change. (begging-the-question)It seems that with a creation, all you have to do is go with the true facts of intelligibility and design in the universe, and accept the creation for what it clearly is. We don't need to pretend that a tornado in a junkyard can assemble a 747 jet, nor do we need to assume hundreds of thousands of transitional creatures, etc...we can explain the facts of design, by the simple and obvious truth that design is caused by a designer, which fits will all of the evidence. Each separate thing in the universe, being neatly explained by God's omniscient designer capabilities. This would certainly fit logically, given the field of biomimetics has us stealing those designs on a constant basis, because they are superior in their cleverness, than anything we can create.An example of that is the aggregate eyeball, the design MATCHES the physics, showing that a neat explanation is that the designer of the eyeball also designed physics. The designer needed to know and understand Abbe's sine's law, the laws of bifringement in crystals, etc... I am rusty on that but another example is the archer fish, the designer has to know that a jet of water leaving water would create a parabolic trajectory. Again God has to know His own laws of physics, and has to give the fish the software to compensate for the change of the angle, it also has to have the ability of the use of kinematic gathering, so the correct force of water hits it's prey, again in accordance with the laws of physics. It makes sense therefore, that the designer both knew and created both the physics, as well as the fish, given He made it to obey those physics, and the fish is riddled with specified complexity, etc..neatly explaining both the fish and the phishics, without depending on a separate explanation for each like with materialism.CONCLUSION: While we accept faith in God is not provable, the explanation that the universe is created by an intelligent agent, as an argument, seems much more parsimonious at the very least. I fail to see why anyone would pretend otherwise unless they simply didn't want to acknowledge that fact because they know it heavily favours theism.

Thread copied here from the Is A Materialist View Less Parsimonious? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Let's start with this claim

quote:

---

What am I saying? I am saying for one part of the materialistic explanation (life's diversity), we would have to invoke millions of transitionals but if an animal kind was created then as creationists we don't have to assume millions of ancestors, so there are far more assumptions to that one part of the story.

---

Let's apply similar reasoning to ordinary human descent over the last 6000 years or so to avoid any argument over how long humans have been around. If you trace back your ancestry then eventually you will run out of records. Is it really more parsimonious to assume that the oldest ancestors you can trace were miraculously created rather than having parents of their own who themselves have parents tracing back over the entire period we are considering ?I can't think so, nor do I think that the number of ancestors that have to be assumed makes much difference. Any number of ordinary human ancestors would - in the absence of evidence to the contrary - be more parsimonious than a single miraculous creation.

None.Materialism doesn’t make assumptions. That’s the whole point of being a materialist you only deal with what is material what you can touch, see, sense what you can show to be real. The entire idea of materialism is to not make any assumptions.The rest of your post only includes assigning the word assumption to a materialist hypothesis which is then tested and has either been shown to be accurate (now a fact) or shown to be false (discarded).Your belief in God may only have one assumption. But one is more than none.

Well, the silly Mike the Wiz Story anyway. You and your fellow creation myth believers are the only ones who think the Universe created itself. You are the only one making up these assumptions/entities/variables. Believe accretion? Do you even know what accretion is? Who ever says that stars and galaxies made themselves, besides you?Even though they are now completed? What does that even mean? Stars evolve, galaxies evolve. We can look out into the Universe and see them at many different stages in their evolution. According to the facts gathered by observation.It's too bad you have never bothered to actually study astronomy or astrophysics. Well, that's good because only an idiot would pretend that or that anyone besides creationists believe that.Creationists DO believe that an imaginary being poofed everything into existence out of nothing. Interestingly, neither do we. We actually have hundreds of thousands and probably more, fossils of transitional organisms, so no assumptions needed. I am not familiar with the aggregate eyeball but I would expect vision to evolve to function to detect the physical parameters of light. The problem is: it is not an explanation at all. The Universe is complex and a simple fantasy about an imaginary entity does not explain anything.Science is a systematic technique to try and understand the Universe. It is the details that matter, based on observations of reality.

Isnt that the basic difference, though? One side claims one basic assumption: God Exists. The other side makes no such assumptions. It is true that believers assume. Scientists don't.

Nonsense. Matter cannot create matter. Even if we could share the belief that God exists as a fact rather than a fantasy, we still would have lots of questions. In fact I may need to call you...I have butterflies in my stomach! Edited by Phat, : added jabberwocky

But no one except Creationists think, say or believe such nonsense.Have you ever seen the formula E=mc²?If it was written as m=E/c² what would it mean?Do you understand equivalency?

First Mike, there is no such thing as the materialist creation story of atheism.Second, there are almost no assumptions in the conventional theories of Old Earth or Evolution.No really need to stop posting supposed refutations of claims no one makes; it just makes you look silly.

Well, we can find intermediate forms and we can observe the evolutionary processes of reproduction, variation, and selection. Adding a hypothetical God into the mix is not parsimonious, because that is adding one more thing which we don't need.Suppose we are on the African savanna. Our guide points out footprints in the dirt and says: "These are the footprints of a lion; these of a zebra; these of a wildebeest ...""Wait," you say, "wouldn't it be more parsimonious to suppose that they're all the footprints of one single animal with many kinds of feet that no-one has ever seen."No, it's not more parsimonious, because we already know that lions and zebras and wildebeest exist. You are conjecturing that we should add one more thing to our picture of the world in order to explain our observations --- one more hypothetical thing that we don't need, since we can explain things just fine in terms of known, non-hypothetical entities.So your conjecture is exactly the sort of thing that the principle of parsimony is meant to prevent people from doing.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

What is your point? I am pointing out to the wiz that no one but him is claiming the Universe created itself. He is erroneously implying that scientists think the Universe created itself. If they are orange ones, like Monarchs, you should induce vomiting immediately because they contain toxins.

Not really. I googled it and didn't find an answer that I could understand. Does it refer to courses taught at various universities having a set standard or consensus as to what is taught?

No. What it means is that energy and matter are interchangeable and so matter can be created from energy or energy from matter.Further, additional evidence seems to indicate that both are just inherent parts of space/time.

These kinds of statements are fairly commonly made by Creationists in these forum. But the form of the statement is ridiculous. Your inability to see something is very little argument that you are right.Secondly, I think most people can count and would acknowledge the count of entities. However, Occam's razor is not sufficient to identify the correct theory, so perhaps you are wrong about what people admit or acknowledge.Another issue is that there is an underlying assumption that science is in some way directed against religion because it generates different answers that theists propose. But is that really how scientists behave? Is there really any logical reason to assume so? Or is that simply further indication of forming an opinion without a true rational basis?As a final point, the attempt to apply Occam's razor here is as poorly an attempt as I have ever seen. Yes, when formulating an hypothesis, you should endeavor to minimize the number of entities involved, but you should not do that by removing entities for which there is evidence. Such technique would be foolish and might lead to things like assuming that your 85 inch TV set was whisked away by magic despite evidence that somebody kicked in your door to gain entrance to your house while leaving behind several pairs of muddy footprints and fingerprints. The fact that the multiple man break-in theory requires several entities does not make it less reasonable than the magic theory.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

so lets get hypothetical, rather than Biblical. In the beginning....there wasa) Matter
b)Energy
c)Nothing
d) EverythingOne wag said it succinctly: In the beginning there was either God or Dirt.What say you?