Expert: Austin Cline - 4/30/2010

Question
hello


Let's imagine it's etablished that the Bible is supernatural in origin. This would be a solid proof of God according to some.

But in this case, God isn't the only supernatural entity we can conceive of:
one may suggest the assumption that some devils or spirits could have been the authors of the Bible.

Don't forget that the Bible claims to be authored by God,
so the 'devils/spirits' hypothesis assumes that the authors deceieved their readers by claiming to be God.

So we have:  hypothesis 1: God.
            hypothesis 2: spirits (or other supernatural agents).

My question is :
would the 2nd hypothesis (which assumes a deception)
be less probable than the first one, according to Ockham's razor?


sincerely

Answer
I don't think that Ockham's Razor would apply here because "spirit" doesn't appear to be a simpler explanation that "God".

However: if the spirits are all just as capable of writing the Bible and as likely to have written the Bible, then there mere fact that there are more of them means that it's more likely a spirit wrote it. If we take into account the likelihood that the Bible had multiple authors, then Ockham's Razor would come into play because the spirits would be a simpler explanation for that evidence.

Moreover, how would it be possible to prove that even if God is the author, the spirits didn't influence or corrupt the text? It's still all supernatural.