The Simplest Answer is Usually the Correct One???

This statement, minus the question marks, comes out of an idea posted by 14th Century William of Ockham. He made the statement generically but it has had far-reaching implications in fields such as medicine, philosophy, and religion.

I read about Occam's razor again this morning in an article about the possibility of other worlds. The author was testing out one of the theories using Occam's razor. Sounds good, right? The simplest answer probably is that there is only Earth and nothing else. It's much more complicated than that.

Fortunately, my blog today is not about the possibility of there being other universes. It's about the world we live in today, which is multi-dimensional and otherworldly. Things happen that we don't understand and we search for ways to understand or reason through what we see and experience.

I think Occam's razor is too basic for explaining life. The simplest answer is not always the correct one, because many influences affect what happens to us and how we respond. At minimum, other people's beliefs and outlooks as well as experiences make them who they are and change how they respond to a certain stimulus. Then we have to consider our own bag o' tricks, what we come to the table with, our own experiences etc. as well as our tendencies.

Throw in the fact that we have a loving God who also influences our situation and it would seem that we would not go through heartache or disappointment. Sometimes, though, God allows for us to go through what we do to learn something, grow, develop, have a story that ministers to someone else, or slough off parts of us that are not godly.

Life is not so easy to explain as Occam's razor. The simplest answer is not always the most plausible, and many, many times in our walk it is not beneficial to even try to understand some of the things that happen to us. We won't understand them, many times, and we'll spend a lot of time trying to "figure stuff out." However, if God breathes a revelation into our situation, that is different, run with it!