How Occam's Razor And Hitchens' Razor Can Maintain A Debate's Decorum
By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
6 December 2025
We've heard about Occam's razor. Occam's Razor is a problem-solving principle stating that the simplest explanation with the fewest assumptions, among competing hypotheses, is generally the most likely to be correct; it involves "shaving away" unnecessary complexities to find the most straightforward, yet effective, solution or theory. Attributed to 14th-century philosopher William of Ockham, it's a guide for favouring parsimony in theories and models, often summarized as "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily".
Occam's razor works best with Hitchens' razor. Christopher Hitchens penned the phrase “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” in his 2007 book titled God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. As an atheistic philosopher, Hitches intended for this razor to discredit religion. However, it has grown beyond its original context and is now widely used to trim the fat off arguments and explanations for specific events. Like other philosophical razors, it is designed to save philosophers and logicians the trouble of addressing every possible explanation for a phenomenon. Without the guidance of razors like this, even absurd possibilities would have to be considered and addressed for every argument.
Irrational people, especially religious people make absurd claims and when a logical mind discards and dismisses them summarily without unnecessary arguments, debates and engagements, religious people shout and scream that how can one dismiss these claims without any evidence? But do the religious people have the necessary and sufficient proofs to substantiate their claims? When a religious person, claiming that Afterlife, Heaven, Hell, Adam and Eve and all that jazz do exist including God, can he offer incontrovertible evidence to prove his outlandish claims? He can't because faith and religious beliefs are always unfounded and eternally unproven. So, what should a logical and thinking person do? He should resort to Occam's razor and provide the minimum and simplest explanations with the fewest assumptions and ignore the illogical claims by applying Hitchens' razor. When people write long treatises, vague comments and misapply fallacies, it's proof that they're not sure of their own logic and claims. Too many words yield little outcome. Remember, if we are arguing to defeat rather than to understand the other person’s viewpoint, we will never have any productive discussions.
By taking the time to thoroughly explain what flaws we find in the other person’s logic, we will find that both ourselves and our opponents will gain far greater understanding from the debate. Instead of somebody “winning” the argument, we will find that we are able to come to a point of mutual understanding. And regardless of who needs to make concessions for that to happen, that is always the most preferable way for a debate to play out. But does this happen in any forum? People stoop to the lowest levels and start resorting to ad hominem comments and personal jibes to prove their point/s.
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/occam-hitchens-razor-debate-decorum/d/137912
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