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
The inability to prove that something is true, does not make it inherently false and vice-versa.
In the case of aliens; Just because we haven’t found any evidence doesn’t mean that they do not exist.
To rephrase the quote…”just because there is no reason to believe something is true, that doesn’t mean it *isn’t* true.”
Atheism is commonly defined as the belief that no gods exist. A truer definition is the rejection of any claims that any gods *do* exist. These are distinct positions. It is similar to a jury in a trial: if a jury finds you “not guilty,” that doesn’t mean it finds you “innocent,” it just means they found the prosecution didn’t adequately make the case that you were guilty. This was generally Sagan’s position on the subject of gods, with the occasional variance.
Yes that applies to a god as well.
It doesn’t mean you have to believe in a god, science says there could be one, we just know a bunch if the things the bible claims are incompatible with reality so if there is a god it isn’t the god the christians picture.
Same applies to aliens. They could exist, but it’s extremely unlikely they look like what the alien conspiracy people believe.
Also from a plausibility perspective it’s different. There is zero evidence for any supernatural being. But we have evidence for life being able to exist on one planet, so why shouldn’t it happen on others as well?
To rephrase the quote…”just because there is no reason to believe something is true, that doesn’t mean it *isn’t* true.”
Atheism is commonly defined as the belief that no gods exist. A truer definition is the rejection of any claims that any gods *do* exist. These are distinct positions. It is similar to a jury in a trial: if a jury finds you “not guilty,” that doesn’t mean it finds you “innocent,” it just means they found the prosecution didn’t adequately make the case that you were guilty. This was generally Sagan’s position on the subject of gods, with the occasional variance.
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is part of the reason why it’s logically impossible to prove a negative. You can never prove that something *doesn’t*, or *isn’t*, or *wouldn’t*, etc. This means that instead of trying to prove a negative, you must instead prove a positive. In this case, the positive would be “supernatural deities *do* exist”.
Atheism is saying: “OK, go ahead. Prove that. I’ll wait.”
The inability to prove that something is true, does not make it inherently false and vice-versa.
In the case of aliens; Just because we haven’t found any evidence doesn’t mean that they do not exist.
Carl Sagan is being “philosophical” here in that he’s discussing topics that you would find in a Philosophy class and not a Physics class. I guess this branch of philosophy is called metaphysics so there is the link.
A lot of Cosmologists get philosophical quite a bit as they are seeking to understand the origins of the universe and the laws that govern it so they end up asking questions like “what is the universe” and “where did it all come from”. They especially get like this when they are narrating television documentaries aimed at a more popular audience.
The branches of metaphysics you want to look into are Ontology (the nature of being) and epistemology (the nature of knowledge). Philosophers for centuries debated how to know if God exists if there is no direct evidence.
So there is the concept of “proving a negative” and the “absence of evidence” which each have their own Wikipedia pages. You might be able to prove that a jug contains no milk because there is an absence of evidence that there is any milk in that jug. But you can’t prove that I have never committed a murder simply because there is no evidence of me doing such a thing. When is it OK and when is it not? You can spend years studying that in college.
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is part of the reason why it’s logically impossible to prove a negative. You can never prove that something *doesn’t*, or *isn’t*, or *wouldn’t*, etc. This means that instead of trying to prove a negative, you must instead prove a positive. In this case, the positive would be “supernatural deities *do* exist”.
Atheism is saying: “OK, go ahead. Prove that. I’ll wait.”
The inability to prove that something is true, does not make it inherently false and vice-versa.
In the case of aliens; Just because we haven’t found any evidence doesn’t mean that they do not exist.
Carl Sagan is being “philosophical” here in that he’s discussing topics that you would find in a Philosophy class and not a Physics class. I guess this branch of philosophy is called metaphysics so there is the link.
A lot of Cosmologists get philosophical quite a bit as they are seeking to understand the origins of the universe and the laws that govern it so they end up asking questions like “what is the universe” and “where did it all come from”. They especially get like this when they are narrating television documentaries aimed at a more popular audience.
The branches of metaphysics you want to look into are Ontology (the nature of being) and epistemology (the nature of knowledge). Philosophers for centuries debated how to know if God exists if there is no direct evidence.
So there is the concept of “proving a negative” and the “absence of evidence” which each have their own Wikipedia pages. You might be able to prove that a jug contains no milk because there is an absence of evidence that there is any milk in that jug. But you can’t prove that I have never committed a murder simply because there is no evidence of me doing such a thing. When is it OK and when is it not? You can spend years studying that in college.
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