Occams razor (or Ockham) is a principle in philosophy that suggests this: if you have two explanations for something, you should chose the one that is simpler.
Multiple times I have seen debates head in this direction. Which is simpler, atheism or theism, the universe or God?
I used to say that God, being a single object, was simpler than the uncountable individual particles in the universe. Unfortunately, the validity of this approach depends on the definition of simple. (By the way, philosophy is all about definitions).
Is simple about having fewer objects, less complex/detailed objects, something easier to understand, something that can be described with fewer words or concepts, having no excess concepts than are needed to solve the problem, some other measure, or some combination of measures?
I did some digging around and found a stanford article. It seems that people tend to use two measures of simplicity: the number of objects (elegance, syntactic simplicity) and the number of kinds of objects (ontological simplicity).
Even with these two measures it is a little difficult. Looking at the universe and considering its simplicity from a physics standpoint almost no one claims that the universe is only one object, but rather that it is made up of innumerable small ones. As for its ontological score, that is not yet known. My physics professor told me that, as far as they know, the electron and...the gluon?... have proven to be fundamental particles for a long time. Wikipedia mentions quite a few others. String theory, claiming that everything is fundamentally vibrating strings of energy, fails the physics-philosophy definition quite readily. For if it can vibrate relative to itself, it certainly has multiple parts.
The theist side is more confusing. In one sense, Christians claim only one original object - God - who then scores as high as can be expected on both measures. However, some may claim that God is not one object, pointing to the trinity. However, I postulate that the different persons of God are simply ways for us to start understanding a single God that is far more complex and on a higher level than we are.
So who wins, God or the universe? From a purely definition standpoint, it's God (unless you try to argue that God is more than one object). However, it can certainly be posed that God is infinitely complex, not a measure used for formal simplicity but certainly deserving of consideration.
So in the end it's up to you. What do you consider more simple? Or on another strain, do you prefer a single origin/starting point for all things or can you accept the assumption, the starting point, of all matter individually?
And lastly, we must remember that Occams razor is more of a philosophical preference rather than something that determines truth. No fundamental observation about the universe says that the simpler explanation MUST be true.
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