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
Imagine a person in Europe in the year 1000 AD. They had no evidence that kangaroos existed, no European would visit Australia until 1606 after all. But kangaroos still existed.
They also had no evidence that Bigfoot existed in 1000 AD, but that doesn’t mean Bigfoot does exist.
Sagan is talking about what we can prove, and that’s it. Lack of proof something is real is NOT proof it doesn’t exist. It’s also not proof it does. Lack of proof is simply that, lack of proof.
Beyond proof which is what you can demonstrate with evidence, you have belief, belief is what you think to be true or not true based on your own best judgement. Evidence can help inform your beliefs but it’s almost always incomplete at best.
Imagine my neighbor is a 7 foot tall man. I know my neighbor is tall. I can prove it just by looking at him. If he let me I could even measure him to prove exactly how tall he is. I believe my neighbor is a good person. I base this on my interactions with and observations of him. But what if he’s secretly a serial killer? He could be! It seems unlikely so I believe he’s not, but you never know….
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