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Originally Posted by Martian
I did not read your link because I'm already familiar with the concept. If you like, I can rephrase the question. What assumption have I made that you're taking issue with? So far as I can see, all I've done is expanded upon the underlying reasoning for the principle in question.
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Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
You're begging the question, here. You think that parsimony is the inverse relationship of complexity and probability (if I understand your current use of this term) because you're assuming that parsimony is a statement on how likely an hypothesis will be true.
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The emphasis on both quotes are mine...
This is the best understanding I can make from your statements. We both agree that parsimony states that you should choose the simplest explanation but it doesn't say why. You claim that this statement is, "in essense," "a statement of probability." I can't see how this follows or is even related so my best guess at what you're thinking is that the motive behind parsimony is to choose the most probable explanation. My entire thesis, of course, is that this is not the case...
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Originally Posted by Martian
then, is the source of confusion. As I've stated above, during an investigation the principle of parsimony is properly applied at the hypothetical stage. We observe a phenomenon, we devise a possible explanation, then we use said principle to help us choose the best possible explanation to put to the test. Should the testing prove the hypothesis to be invalid we can go back and try again. As I've said all along, this is inapplicable to discussions of theology because we have nothing to test; we can use the principle of parsimony to inform a hypothetical bias, but cannot take it any further. Logically, no one unproven hypothesis is any more valid than another. If we have no proof we cannot logically conclude that your explanation is superior to mine or anyone else's. Therefore, the principle of parsimony, in the context of this discussion, is of no use to us.
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I disagree with your description of the scientific method.
We don't need parsimony to decide which hypothesis to test. Why not just test them all! Maybe you can use parsimony to prioritize which hypothesis to test first, especially if resources are scarce but, really, this is quite rare. The real interesting case is when you have more than one hypothesis pass the test! What do we do then? We may apply parsimony... although, in practice, even this is quite rare. Parsimony is generally just a rule of thumb; a strive to not needlessly complicate things.
In science, the testing of hypotheses and theories never stops. That's why scientific theories will always be theories regardless of how much evidence we have for them. As such, parsimony will always be applied...
Your claim that we cannot apply parsimony to theology is a little curious. Perhaps you feel that you don't want to apply it to theology but to claim that we can't? Suppose we have two theories that are both utterly unsupported. Wouldn't you still prefer the simpler one? If the Universe behaves exactly as one would expect if there were no god, the simplest explanation is that there is none.
If I may indulge a bit, we can make the hypothesis that there is a tea pot in orbit around Jupiter. There is no telescope powerful enough to confirm or deny this so we have no evidence, either way. Do you think it's inapplicable to apply parsimony and say that there simply isn't one?
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I think you underestimate the layman. The difference between a theory and a hypothesis is not so difficult to grasp; the problem is not one of capacity so much as it is one of education.
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I don't think it's so difficult, either, but I'm not the one making soundbites on TV about it so I don't have much of a choice on the matter. Scientific theories are just simply models of reality that may or may not be well supported...