Omphalos, miracles, and Occam's razor

Abstract

Philip Gosse’s Omphalos (1857), which attempted to reconcile Genesis with science by proposing that the pre-Adamite stage of the world existed only as a Platonic idea, has usually been criticized as violating Occam’s razor and being unfalsifiable. It is argued here that this is faulty, because Gosse makes different assumptions about the data to be explained. The theory was rejected by Christians not because of logical problems but because of its theological meaninglessness. In this it differs from miracles, which also involve the introduction of extra data.