Here's something I wanted to talk about from the Drees article, but we didn't get to it.  End of section 3.1.2, then again near the end of 4.1:
    Drees mentions the principle called "Occam's Razor," which he says "demands that one should not introduce additional entities or principles without good reason."  (From William of Ockham, ca. 1285-1348.  It is sometimes formulated as, "Do not multiply entities beyond necessity," and it is sometimes called the "principle of parsimony.")
    The Razor is important because it may make the difference as between agnosticism and atheism.  Suppose you are not convinced by any of the arguments or other evidence in favor of the existence of God; so, in your view, there is no positive reason for believing in God.  Suppose that you are also not convinced by any direct argument against the existence of God (arguments from evil, Martin's teleological arguments, etc.).  Then what?
    If there's no good reason to believe and no good reason to disbelieve, then seemingly you should (in the words of W.K. Clifford, whom we shall read week after next) proportion your belief to the evidence, and be agnostic.  But not if you accept Occam's Razor.  If there is no positive need to posit God in order to explain any phenomena we have encountered, then according to the Razor we should positively disbelieve in God, and be atheists.  The Razor here supplies an indirect argument against the existence of God.
    The Razor is a principle of simplicity, an appeal to one of the explanatory virtues ("Other things being equal, prefer theory T1 to theory T2 if T1 posits fewer entities that are doing no explanatory work").  So those who, like Rachel, reject or are skeptical of the explanatory virtues will have no truck with the Razor.  Why, indeed, should the bare fact that T1 posits fewer entities be a reason to think T1 is more likely to be true?  To repeat that we have no explanatory reason to believe in the extra entities is no answer, because that is entirely consistent with agnosticism rather than rejection of T2 in favor of T1.
    Yet scientists overwhelmingly accept Occam's Razor, or at least behave methodologically as though they do.  They positively disbelieve in phlogiston, elan vital, the ether and other relicts of discredited explanatory theories.  (But we already knew that scientists respect and must respect the explanatory virtues, even if some of us think that it is irrational to do so.)
    If you are in the unconvinced condition aforementioned, and if the difference between agnosticism and atheism matters to you, you'll need to think about the Razor.