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
This also speaks to the levels of evidence required to prove something. Life exists. We are it. This is “easy” to prove (regardless of how difficult it is to define life).
Whereas the supernatural, by definition, may not be present in the reality we experience, and is even MORE difficult to prove.
So something that SHOULD be there, but is missing, can’t be decisively ruled out. While something that ISN’T there can’t be ruled out, but nothing is the expected result.
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