Hey, Dustin.
I was trying to figure out your name on my inbox.
Okay, now I know who you are.

Seriously, not to offend u brother, but if you can't read/understand the summary found in Standford's online Encylopedia, I doubt it very much that you would pass the first chapter of any book by Duns Scotus or William of Ockham. I am dead serious about this. I am a Grad student at a Christian university and the Philosophy program at my school is one of the best non-Ph.D. granting schools in the country and Phil majors won't get near either of them. On top of that, I have --and I'm technically not a philo major, I am a theology major(philosophical theology is pushing it).

But I commend you for your desire to learn:
any translation of Scotus' "Sentences" is best because it is a commentary on Aristotle's work and Ockham, his pupil, wrote his own commentaries on Aristotle "Categories, On Interpretations". This should give you an idea, hopefully, how each one approached Aristotle's categories of ideas and also why Ockham ultimately disagrees with his professor.

If I sounded sensitive, I apologize. There are a lot of assumptions about philosophy I enter in and maybe I should begin at a base level for those that don't understand formally where philosophy is going and why presumbly I am asking an irrevelant question.

My intention at proposing this question is to get people to utilize analytical and logical skills to defend their beliefs. The best way to develop critical thinking skills for philosophers is to understand the logic of other writers through their writings, critique them if they disagree or think they jumped "off track" on their logic, and second, to propose questions to students to get them to work on their own thinking. This means me too! I'm looking for a philosophical dual.

What better way to illicit the skills of logic and critical thinking than by proposing controversial issues like the existence of God?

Whether or not I have a bias is not the issue. As a matter of fact, people who disagree in philosophy often engage in academic debate in their professional journals and public debates. It actually helps each side sharpen their thinking and writing skills with the express desire to ultimately reach the truth or answer to the question.

So what would be my answer? I'll put it up later this week.

From the implicit order of nature. The idea that such order could arise out of chaos and chance is absurd.

To clarify the "loaded" response, "faith" has many definitions. The simplified definition for Ockham is that faith is not based upon evidence utilized by logic. But that definition says what faith is NOT, not what faith IS. This negative definition does not entail "blind faith" that is common among southern baptists, e.g. For Duns Scotus, we can know God through abstraction by the intellect from our senses. David Hume and William of Ockham defeated this view (IMO). Nowhere do we find the marks of God; i.e., the marks of deity--immateriality, spirituality, perfection (which has many definitions). (This leads immediately to the teleological argument.)

I have a koine Greek & ancient Hebrew both tomorrow.
But I will say this.
From my readings, Scotus believed that God was knowable in an abstract sense. That is, he accepted many of Aquinas' arguments for the exsistence of God, etc, logical arguments that are hard to disprove (IMO). However, Ockham did not agree but asserted that God can only be known by faith?

I agree with both. I believe Scotus was writing about coming to a rational conclusion that a necessary metaphysical being exists by logically thinking back far enough about existence. However, Ockham had a deeper meaning or criteria for what it means to "know" God. In my opinion, I believe that Ockham was arguing about whether divine revelation could be arrived at with natural knowledge. And in this regard I agree with Ockham. It is impossible for anybody to personally experience an infinite being simply by thinking about it, unless you believe that Jesus Christ is God, and that is divine revelation, not natural knowledge. This is Ockham's position.