Big fan of Carl Sagan, he was like a father figure to me, I’m partially molded by him.
That said, something he used to say all the time really baffled me, still does:
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
He said this when talking about aliens.
However: Sagan was a famous non believer.
How does this aphorism reconcile with the existence or non existence of a god?
If “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” does that apply to a god as well?
Is there a god even though there is no evidence of him/her/it?
In: 95
There is also a big catch that a lot of people tend to miss on this topic.
It is going to get a bit philosofical, and i am not a native speaker, so please bear with me.
Science is the study of Nature phenomena, and their description to the best of our understanding.
Faith, be it Christian or different or even the absolute certainty of god’s non-existance, is the relation of the individual with what lays beyond our understanding.
Trying to describe, undestand or prove, godlyhood with scientific means il like trying to read a book with your tongue: the instrument is not fit for the measurement.
Believers don’t need proof, or dis-proof, they know deep down internally that something is true or not true. Should any god be proven or disproven, it would leave the realm of Faith and become Science, meaning a natural occurrence rather than a personal relation with the supernatural.
I give you an example of deep unscientific faith: i believe that my ex-gf never cheated on me. She went on a trip to spain and left me soon after. It could be reasonable to assume she cheated, but my gut tells me that it was not so.
Or similar: i really strongly believe that there are aliens out there. I know we will reasonably never have proof of their existance, but I have this sort of assuredness that they are out there.
Or even: i am sure there is no God. Not because of absence of proof, just because I don’t feel him. When i can tell you there is a god of the mountain on Itsukushima island, because when i hiked there… I just felt his touch.
On the other hand, any scientific knowledge I have (i am a nuclear engineer, so i have a decent bit) is never “unreasonable and set in stone”, it is an evolving description of measurable events, based on a shared language and framework of interpretation.
Every person that ever tried to explain god or absence of god miserably failed, and will keep on failing forever. The Sacred is by itself the Absurd, is a void that we feel, and that feeds us back in ways that each of us interprets based on our deeper identity. Any interpretation is by itself right, because it is your own connection with the un-understandable
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