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 is just a generalisation of the fact that it is usually very very hard to prove that no sollution exists at all to a given problem.
We can safely say that we dont have a sollution, but to say for certain that there is none is next to impossible usually.
This is just a generalisation of the fact that it is usually very very hard to prove that no sollution exists at all to a given problem.
We can safely say that we dont have a sollution, but to say for certain that there is none is next to impossible usually.
There is a huge problem for your argument as well when it comes to God and other religions. They stated the affirmative that their God or whatever exists. They did not provide any evidence and can be dismissed. Just like if I said Santa Claus lived down the street from me but didn’t even provide an address or picture. I stated something as a fact with no evidence. The burden is on the person stating it, I can’t just go you have no evidence Santa claus doesn’t live down the street from me.
There is a huge problem for your argument as well when it comes to God and other religions. They stated the affirmative that their God or whatever exists. They did not provide any evidence and can be dismissed. Just like if I said Santa Claus lived down the street from me but didn’t even provide an address or picture. I stated something as a fact with no evidence. The burden is on the person stating it, I can’t just go you have no evidence Santa claus doesn’t live down the street from me.
There is a huge problem for your argument as well when it comes to God and other religions. They stated the affirmative that their God or whatever exists. They did not provide any evidence and can be dismissed. Just like if I said Santa Claus lived down the street from me but didn’t even provide an address or picture. I stated something as a fact with no evidence. The burden is on the person stating it, I can’t just go you have no evidence Santa claus doesn’t live down the street from me.
You’ve said multiple times in this thread that Sagan was “adamant” that God didn’t exist, this is inaccurate. In fact, he applied the exact principle you describe when thinking about God: “To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.” He didn’t call himself an atheist, since an atheist is confident there is no God. Further, he said “But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying … it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”
Which is all to say that your confusion comes because you assume Sagan was an avowed anti-God Atheist, he was not. He viewed the lack of evidence that a God exists and the lack of evidence that one does not exist as equally unconvincing, and chose a third path.
You’ve said multiple times in this thread that Sagan was “adamant” that God didn’t exist, this is inaccurate. In fact, he applied the exact principle you describe when thinking about God: “To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.” He didn’t call himself an atheist, since an atheist is confident there is no God. Further, he said “But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying … it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”
Which is all to say that your confusion comes because you assume Sagan was an avowed anti-God Atheist, he was not. He viewed the lack of evidence that a God exists and the lack of evidence that one does not exist as equally unconvincing, and chose a third path.
You’ve said multiple times in this thread that Sagan was “adamant” that God didn’t exist, this is inaccurate. In fact, he applied the exact principle you describe when thinking about God: “To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.” He didn’t call himself an atheist, since an atheist is confident there is no God. Further, he said “But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying … it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”
Which is all to say that your confusion comes because you assume Sagan was an avowed anti-God Atheist, he was not. He viewed the lack of evidence that a God exists and the lack of evidence that one does not exist as equally unconvincing, and chose a third path.
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
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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