eli5: Carl Sagan’s absence of evidence

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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?

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147 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Carl Sagan was agnostic, but many people try to redefine atheist as anybody that does not believe in god when an atheist is anybody that believes there is no god. So often he gets lumped in w/ atheist.

Here’s an actual quote from Sagan explaining his views.

>I am not an atheist. An atheist is someone who has compelling evidence that there is no Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. I am not that wise, but neither do I consider there to be anything approaching adequate evidence for such a god. Why are you in such a hurry to make up your mind? Why not simply wait until there is compelling evidence?

I couldn’t find it but I know he’s also talked about how if you define the laws of physics as being “god” then he believes in god, but he says something along the lines of it not being spiritually satisfying.

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