Are Atheists using Intellectually Dishonest Arguments?

[RoadRunner79]

...Are you not familiar with the version of Occam’s razor which states...

RoadRunner, for the most part you have been given the benefit of the doubt with regard to your understanding of how to apply logic and reasoning, but with this claim of yours that there is more that one version of Billy's razor! You are straining your credibility to the limit.
Please tell me you are not a standard issue off the shelf apologist. Help me by addressing this very simple postulate:

Where did the universe come from.

a) God made it.

b) We don't know.

Now apply the razor.

There are certainly different ways of saying what is known as Occams Razor.  If you look at the wiki on it, it even says that Occam stated in a number of different ways.  However I'm not saying that these are saying different things.  My personal preference is "Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity" (Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate) which is credited to John Punch (1639) and I think that sometimes with the talk of assumptions, that the foundation of the razor get's forgotten.

As to your postulate:    I wouldn't use Occam's Razor here.  In fact I suspect that it would be a misuse of it.  What would be the reasoning here, that "I don't know" has no assumptions and is to be preferred over anything with a slightest of assumptions.  I'm sure the solipsist would love that.  Or maybe we would use it subjectively to deny (and not listen to) that which differs from our world view.  After all, those things which don't fit into our worldview are going to seem like larger assumptions (subjectively anyway). 

In any case, Occam's Razor is a general guideline, so I don't think that it is very useful as an argument.  I would even go so far to say, that focusing to much on the word assumptions is straying away from the foundation of the "razor" (do not multiply beyond necessity).

Even if you slightly rephrase the argument, it's still a matter of making a case for ones position.  And I don't think that a overly simplified version of that discussion is appropriate to apply the razor to.   One might even say that type of thing could fall into the category 1 complaints in the article which the OP brought up.

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Are you not familiar with the version of Occam’s razor which states that “all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is often best”?  Do you think this means something different then the one with "parsimonious"?  How many razors do you think old Bill had?

Edit to add.... you may note, that I might ask a question to get you to articulate your objection clearly and logically.  You know; so we can examine the claim.

Why is it you take us for idiots, RR? Why did you argue against resorting to the simplest idea in response to Hammy when he actually used the word "parsimonious" instead? And there is a difference between the two terms. Not all explanations that are relatively simple are relatively parsimonious, but all explanations that are relatively parsimonious are relatively simple. Simplicity, in this context, is defined in terms of the number of assumptions made, and parsimony is only partly defined in terms of simplicity.

Or in other words:

parsimony = simplicity + sufficient correspondence to observed evidence

Actually the definition for "parsimony" means to be frugal or extreme economy. I'm not sure where you got your definition from. However in this context I didn't mean to imply anything different. As I mentioned, in reference to Occam's Razor, versions of the word "simple" are often seen, and I don't think there is any distinction being made with the word "parsimonious" when they are interchanged. I don't think that I have ever seen "parsimony" defined in quite the way you have, but nerveless I wasn't trying to convey anything different. Frankly I think it is the context with both words that conveys that particular meaning. In the end, the goal is that we not make things more complicated than need be.

You may also be interested to look up the Principle of Simplicity...