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.
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.
Just because I don’t see apples growing on this tree doesn’t mean it is not an apple tree.
The absence of evidence(apples) is not the evidence of absence (no apples)
Just because I don’t see apples growing on this tree doesn’t mean it is not an apple tree.
The absence of evidence(apples) is not the evidence of absence (no apples)
Just because I don’t see apples growing on this tree doesn’t mean it is not an apple tree.
The absence of evidence(apples) is not the evidence of absence (no apples)
That’s no invention of Sagan’s, it’s a classical logical fallacy, the so-called argumentum ad ignorantiam.
You can think of it this way: We only recently were able to measure gravitational waves – they had been postulated long before, however. But we lacked the technological means to measure them. The absence of evidence for something may have many reasons – we didn’t look in the right place, we didn’t look in the right way, our methods aren’t sensitive enough etc.
Regarding the existence of God, the issue is rather plain: all our detection methods are depending on physics, time and space. As such, an entity supposedly existing outside time and space is fundamentally untestable. As a consequence, many scientists simply say that it’s no concern of theirs whether “God” exists or not. It’s a question that is not only currently untestable, but fundamentally beyond testing. As such, it’s not a scientific question.
That’s no invention of Sagan’s, it’s a classical logical fallacy, the so-called argumentum ad ignorantiam.
You can think of it this way: We only recently were able to measure gravitational waves – they had been postulated long before, however. But we lacked the technological means to measure them. The absence of evidence for something may have many reasons – we didn’t look in the right place, we didn’t look in the right way, our methods aren’t sensitive enough etc.
Regarding the existence of God, the issue is rather plain: all our detection methods are depending on physics, time and space. As such, an entity supposedly existing outside time and space is fundamentally untestable. As a consequence, many scientists simply say that it’s no concern of theirs whether “God” exists or not. It’s a question that is not only currently untestable, but fundamentally beyond testing. As such, it’s not a scientific question.
That’s no invention of Sagan’s, it’s a classical logical fallacy, the so-called argumentum ad ignorantiam.
You can think of it this way: We only recently were able to measure gravitational waves – they had been postulated long before, however. But we lacked the technological means to measure them. The absence of evidence for something may have many reasons – we didn’t look in the right place, we didn’t look in the right way, our methods aren’t sensitive enough etc.
Regarding the existence of God, the issue is rather plain: all our detection methods are depending on physics, time and space. As such, an entity supposedly existing outside time and space is fundamentally untestable. As a consequence, many scientists simply say that it’s no concern of theirs whether “God” exists or not. It’s a question that is not only currently untestable, but fundamentally beyond testing. As such, it’s not a scientific question.
The burden of proof lies on the one with the extraordinary claim. It’s nearly impossible to prove a negative, so if someone has a claim to existence, they need to prove the existence.
Sagan’s claim is simply the other side of that coin. Just because we haven’t found evidence doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Einstein predicted gravity bending light, black holes, and gravitational waves with general relativity in 1916 with no evidence of them happening in the real world. Those were all observed for the first time in 1919, 1971, and 2015 respectively. If we had dismissed general relativity just because we had not seen any of these phenomenon, we would be a century behind in our understanding of physics.
The burden of proof lies on the one with the extraordinary claim. It’s nearly impossible to prove a negative, so if someone has a claim to existence, they need to prove the existence.
Sagan’s claim is simply the other side of that coin. Just because we haven’t found evidence doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Einstein predicted gravity bending light, black holes, and gravitational waves with general relativity in 1916 with no evidence of them happening in the real world. Those were all observed for the first time in 1919, 1971, and 2015 respectively. If we had dismissed general relativity just because we had not seen any of these phenomenon, we would be a century behind in our understanding of physics.
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