In this essay I examine the plausibility of theism and naturalism. I will do this by applying the principle of simplicity as a criterion for measuring the probability of these two worldviews. Theism is the view that God exist as a transcendent being and that the ultimate reality is personal. Naturalism on the other side opposes theism and postulate that only the natural world exist and that the ultimate reality is impersonal. The principle of simplicity measures which of competing theories is simpler and one aspect of simplicity is that if a theory F is simpler than a competing theory H, then F postulates none or fewer ad hoc hypotheses than H. Another aspect of simplicity is that if H means postulating an explanation that goes beyond necessity and F does not, then F is simpler than H. It is easy to think that theism, because it postulate a supernatural being, is more complex than naturalism. It is tempting to make the fast conclusion that theism is more ad hoc than naturalism, and because we can understand nature by using the naturalistic method that assumes that God does not intervene in nature, has the conclusion that theism is unnecessary. One of the reasons for making the above conclusion is because theism does not correspond well with background knowledge i.e. facts we know by experience to be true. Some philosophers assumes that we can use background knowledge to measure whether F is simpler than H. They assume that simpler metaphysical theories are those with more background assumptions into the body of the metaphysical theory. A crucial task in this essay will be to evaluate that assumption. I propose that it is problematic to apply background knowledge when assessing the simplicity of metaphysical theories because assuming that one can measure metaphysical simplicity with background knowledge is to assume that all that exist is relatively symmetrical. Also, I suggest that naturalism is more ad hoc than theism when it comes to explain diverse phenomena in the world.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-374479 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Vasquez, Fernando |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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