Expert: Vincent M. Wales - 6/24/2010

Question
Dear expert,

Let's imagine that it's certain the Universe is designed by something intelligent and divine,
let's suppose we'll have 2 possible hypothesises:

(1) An unique deity, who knows absolutely everything about the Universe, is the Designer.
(2) Several deities (each of them has its own domain of competence: a god for designing humans, an other god for designing planets, and so on...) worked toghether to design the Universe.


Some theists claims that since the 2nd proposition makes more assumptions than the first one,
one should, according to Ockham's Razor, choose the simpler explanation: which is the first hypothesis.
In other words, polytheism is less probable than any form of monotheism because of Okcham's razor.

What do you think of this?


                                    thank you

Answer
I think the theists who propose this question are, unsurprisingly, not understanding what they're even saying.

Ockham's Razor would, in fact, indicate exactly the opposite.  And here's how you can demonstrate this to them.

To make a computer, you need a whole buttload of different things... from monitors to CPUs to hard drives.  Each one of these, in turn, is a very complicated item.

The computer I'm typing on at the moment says "Dell" on it.

So... should I believe that a person named Dell created the whole computer... or should I assume that Mr. Dell, in fact, is but one person out of perhaps a thousand specialized experts who, working together, produced this awesome machine?

Somehow, I don't think anyone believes any one person is masterful enough to make all the parts necessary for a computer.  Sure... lots of people can put one together, if they have the parts.  But I don't personally know anyone who can create a monitor, a hard drive, a CPU, RAM, a circuit board, etc. all from scratch.

In other words:  to assume one person (or deity) is capable of creating an entire computer (or universe) is a MUCH bigger assumption than assuming it's the work of many.