Friday, October 29, 2010

GOD


The absence of evidence

is not evidence of absence.


2 comments:

Jeff Satterley said...

I hate to play the "village atheist," but I have to disagree with this one. The reason we don't believe in fairies, for example, is because there is no evidence for their existence. The state of the world (i.e., the evidence we have) is exactly as we expect it to be if fairies did not exist.

Compare that to something like atoms. We knew atoms exists long before atomic microscopy existed, because we could speculate on how the world would work if atoms existed, and we found through experiment it really did work that way.

If something exists in the world, we expect it to have some kind of effect on it. It may be the case that we haven't learned about the effect of something just yet (such as a god), but we don't start believing in something until we have some evidence for it. The fact that we have never found any evidence which suggests fairies exist is good evidence that they probably don't, particularly because we can come up with evidence we would expect to find if they did exist.

The saying would be better if it were: "Absence of evidence is not PROOF of absence." It's near impossible to prove something does not exist inductively. Then again, no one demands this type of proof for anything other than a god. Almost no one demands deductive proof that fairies don't exist.

Dr. Crew said...

I understand your point. I feel that one's belief in God cannot be studied and tested. One either believes or one does not. Love cannot be studied nor identify yet we know it exists. One can even argue that it does not exist for this same reason.
Thanks for the comment, Jeff. You are such a fine person whom I am priviledged to know.