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
An even simpler way to explain this principle, I think, is explaining “Onus Probandi” or “burden of truth” – this holds that any assertion is an argument for the truth of that assertion, and all assertions require proof. The “Onus probandi” or “Burden of Proof” is on the person making the assertion. This is considered true for *all* assertions in philosophical discourse.
So: “There are definitely aliens” requires a proof, but so does “There are definitely no aliens” just as “There is a deity” requires a proof, but so does: “There is definitely no deity”
As it stands, these two assertions are equally difficult to provide proof for, since “I cant find a way to measure a thing” isn’t any proof that the thing isn’t present.
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