The Hypothesis of Theism and the Principle of Simplicity

This paper is a reflection on Richard Swinburne's view on the hypothesis of theism, a view that claims to be the most probable explanation of the universe and tries to prove this claim by appealing to the principle of simplicity; The principle which states that the simpler hypothesis will be more probable to be true. Hence, he argues that since the subject of the hypothesis is a single and infinite God, and the notion of infinity is simpler than the notion of finite and also the hypothesis which contains fewer components will be simpler, therefore, this hypothesis will be simpler than any explanatory hypothesis (personal and scientific). Because the subjects of the other rival hypotheses are either finite or contain more than one component, then this hypothesis (the hypothesis of theism) can be regarded as the most probable explanation of the universe. In the following, we will try to demonstrate that if we take this claim epistemologically, the hypothesis of theism will be considered as the most complicated hypothesis. But the infinite can be considered simpler than the finite only ontologically.