{"id":514,"date":"2023-06-17T14:30:30","date_gmt":"2023-06-17T14:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalpantheism.org\/?p=514"},"modified":"2023-06-17T14:30:31","modified_gmt":"2023-06-17T14:30:31","slug":"pantheism-and-ockhams-razor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalpantheism.org\/?p=514","title":{"rendered":"Pantheism and Ockham&#8217;s Razor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When viewed under the lens of Ockham&#8217;s Razor, pantheism appears to rise above its competitors. Ockham&#8217;s Razor favors the explanation that makes the least number of assumptions while accommodating all relevant data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a previous article we presented a logical summary for a proof of God:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Argument Summary<\/h6>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Humans are composed of elementary particles or fields of \u201cenergy\u201d.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Human mental states result from these field interactions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Every complex physical property results from the shaping of simpler forms of that property in a system\u2019s interacting subsystems.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It would involve special pleading to claim that mentality works dramatically differently from physicality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It is therefore irrational to assume that a property like mentality would magically arise from nowhere when fields interact.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Therefore fields have simple mentality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Field interactions shape this mental state making it more complex.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The more and sophisticated the interactions, the more complex the states.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Universe is composed only of interacting fields.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Therefore the Universe must have some kind of mental life.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ergo God.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Now this argument contains a couple of assumptions relating to panpsychism. 1) mental states don&#8217;t simply spring out of non-mental stuff; 2) mental properties arise the same way as physical properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These are all extremely reasonable assumptions. Physical phenomena don&#8217;t spring out of non-physical stuff so why would we entertain that mental phenomena could spring out of non-mental stuff? There is no justification whatsoever that we should treat mental phenomena completely differently than physical phenomena in that regard. In other words, we can&#8217;t plead that mentality is a special case with respect to physicality. We can&#8217;t engage in special pleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But pantheism&#8217;s chief competitor, materialism, does make two truly outlandish assumptions: 1) mental states spring out of non-mental stuff by some unknown unjustifiable process; 2) mental properties arise in a completely different way than physical properties. These are monumental assumptions. Since they require some as yet unknown mechanism, they are in fact supernatural assumptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Something is supernatural if it transcends the laws of nature. Materialism&#8217;s assumption that the mental strongly emerges from the physical seems to meet that definition. There is not a single solitary concrete example of the strong emergence of anything. So strong emergence goes against everything we know about the laws of nature. Strong emergence is in fact supernatural.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When viewed under the lens of Ockham&#8217;s Razor, pantheism appears to rise above its competitors. Ockham&#8217;s Razor favors the explanation that makes the least number of assumptions while accommodating all relevant data. In a previous article we presented a logical summary for a proof of God: Argument Summary Now this argument contains a couple of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/rationalpantheism.org\/?p=514\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Pantheism and Ockham&#8217;s Razor&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,12,25],"tags":[17,13,24,22],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emergence","category-panpsychism","category-philosophy","tag-emergence","tag-panpsychism","tag-special-pleading","tag-theism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Pantheism and Ockham&#039;s Razor - Rational Pantheism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/rationalpantheism.org\/?p=514\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pantheism and Ockham&#039;s Razor - Rational Pantheism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When viewed under the lens of Ockham&#8217;s Razor, pantheism appears to rise above its competitors. Ockham&#8217;s Razor favors the explanation that makes the least number of assumptions while accommodating all relevant data. 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