Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Occam's Razor

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I trust you are well.  I am writing about Occam’s Razor.

I remember watching Jupiter once during a high school football game.  It shone brightly in the sky before kickoff.  By the 4^th quarter, it appeared to be moving backwards. 

When I was a kid, I used to race my younger brother.  We’d draw up a finish line.  I’d give him a head start.  I would pass him a few yards before the end.  While I was passing him, he appeared to be going backwards. 

To ancients who believed the earth was the fixed, immovable center of the universe, the appearance of a planet moving backwards must have contributed to the belief that planets were heavenly beings watching them.

Jupiter appears to be moving backwards because our planet rotates, but Jupiter also recedes from the sky.  It can vanish for weeks.  

An ancient Greek named Ptolemy attempted to explain such celestial oddities with epi-cycles.  He proposed that planets moved in circles as they moved across the sky.

This earth centered theory, what we call the geocentric theory, was the prevailing theory of ancient people for millennia.  It underlies all Biblical thinking about the cosmos.

It was a complicated system of planetary motion that would eventually be replaced with a sun centered theory, the heliocentric theory we know to be true today.  This theory has only been around for a few hundred years, not nearly as long as Ptolemy’s theory. 

The heliocentric theory, first proposed by Nicholas Copernicus, in the 16h Century, changed everything:  philosophy, politics, religion, and it put Poland on the intellectual map.

Too bad the earth centered theory was the explanation of the universe when the Bible was written.  Copernicus was no dummy.  He knew he would be burned at the stake for suggesting the earth moved when the Bible clearly said it did now. 

Copernicus arranged for his book Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs to be published after he died.  His theory set the sun in the middle of the universe and proposed that all planets, including Earth, orbited the sun. 

His theory satisfied the requirement of Occam’s Razor.  It did not need a bunch of epicycles to explain planetary motion in the universe.  Once the sun was in the center of a solar system, the motions of all the planets became the simplest explanation.  Just because it was the simplest did not mean it was believed. 

Look up Galileo’s trial if you want to see how humanity, upon pain of death, resisted the idea of an earth centered universe.

By the way, when I say universe, I mean the whole shebang.  Ancient people thought the skies and earth were all there was and there weren’t no more.  They could not conceive of a solar system let alone billions of suns, billions of galaxies, and a universe that appears to be infinite. 

Heck the microbial world, including the germ theory, would take even longer to conceive and then believe.

But I would argue that science in general, and Occam’s Razor in particular, are true friends of religion.

Indeed, when it comes to religion, I apply Occam’s Razor.  It wards off superstition and idolatry.  The Bible thereby inspires faith that is strong and sensible rather than insipid and silly. 

If what we know to be true conflicts with our faith, then we need to take a long hard look at what we believe about how to believe.  In the case of the Bible, the problem is not God or the Bible.  The problem is how we are interpreting the Bible.

I have on my car a Jesus fish and a Darwin fish.  Mine was the first and second car to stick them together.  I put them on my Corolla in 1995. 

I reckon I hoped to start a trend.  A decade passed, and my indomitable Corolla died underneath an overpass on Interstate 75.  A few days later I bought a new Fusion. 

I stuck a new Darwin fish and a new Jesus fish on that car too, and thus became the second person in Chattanooga to post them on his car.  I suppose it takes two to begin a trend.

One day, I was walking out of Best Buy in Chattanooga, when I saw three teenagers standing behind my car.  One of them pointed to my car and asked me to explain my fish.

I said, “They belong together don’t you think?”

One boy replied, “I don’t see how.”

I asked, “Have you ever read Origin of Species?”

“Nope.”

“How about the Bible?”

“Some of it. ”

“Well—I,”

Alas, these young men were teens.  They sensed a long explanation coming…and they were probably right…so they dashed off before I could get started. 

I relished the opportunity to explain to them how I read The Origin of Species.  I sensed how it, like Copernicus’ book, changed everything.  Yet, I was never leaving God.

Thanks for visiting.  I hope to see you here again tomorrow.  Blessings…