Posted: Dec 25, 2011 7:26 am
Regina wrote:jlowder wrote:
2. Classical theism has a higher prior probability than other supernatural alternatives such as deism, Santa Claus, leprechauns, pastafarianism (flying spaghetti monster), invisible pink unicorns, etc., based on scope and simplicity.
Classical theism? What do you refer to here? The Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Celtic pantheon? Hinduism? Or just the Abrahamic religions?
Why has "classical" theism a higher probability than deism?
If you just refer to Abrahamic religions you should say so.
By classical theism, I am not necessarily referring to the God of Abraham, though the properties of the god posited by classical theism are no doubt identical to, or a subset of, the properties of the God of Abraham.
Rather, by classical theism (hereafter, "theism"), I mean the belief that there exists a disembodied mind who is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, and the creator of all things. I shall call such a being "God."
The theistic hypothesis has a higher intrinsic probability than rival supernatural hypotheses based primarily on its simplicity, i.e., it attributes more objective uniformity to the world than its rivals. Let us define "deism" as the belief that there exists a disembodied mind who is omnipotent, omniscient, the creator of all things, but that mind is not morally perfect and does not intervene at all in its creation. It seems to me that the hypothesis that God created the universe and intervenes from time to time is simpler than the hypothesis that God created the universe and then never intervened in the world; the former attributes more objective uniformity to reality than the latter. To put the point another way, it seems to me that deism is more specific than theism, since the former specifies the number of times the creator of the world has intervened in the world, whereas the latter doesn't and is compatible with a wide range of number of interventions.
For similar reasons, I am inclined to believe that the hypothesis of a morally perfect being is simpler than an amoral, indifferent, or mostly good but slightly evil being.