A quick note: evidence merely supports a hypothesis or doesn’t. Absence of evidence, therefore, merely supports the hypothesis that a god doesn’t exist. It does not prove beyond a doubt that no gods exist, nor is that my claim whatsoever. Einstein himself said that no experiment could ever prove him right, but a single experiment could prove him wrong.
Now, to my main point. Religious people love to write off science and empirical knowledge when it isn’t sufficient to prove their god or gods exist. Suddenly, philosophy and abstract logic are the highest forms of truth.
Regardless of any of that, here’s the issue: if your god is claimed to have interacted with reality, currently interacts with reality, and will continue to do so, then they must be within the empirical domain. If they’re real, it must be provable beyond a doubt. If they currently interact with reality, it must be probable beyond a doubt. This doesn’t mean it must be right here right now, just that it’s possible.
Because of this, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. If you expect us atheists to believe that your god is currently affecting reality in a tangible way, you should be able to demonstrate it and make reliable predictions about it. There shouldn’t be any other reasonable or logical explanations for these things other than your specific deity. The truth of your claims should be testable.
But, magically, they aren’t. Miracles are not replicable or objectively verifiable. As of yet, there is no empirical evidence to indicate the existence of any specific god or gods. Thus, the most reasonable conclusion as of yet is that no gods exist in realty or affect reality. I, as with all atheists, would gladly believe in a god that has been proven to exist. So far, all we have are secondhand accounts of unverified and unreplicable miracles that defy everything we know about how the universe works. That’s just not good enough. If your god is real, better evidence is reasonable to expect.
So my friend (a recent convert) and I had a small argument on religion again, and this time he brought up a topic that leaves me kind of puzzled. He asked whether I believe aliens (extraterrestial intelligent lifeforms) to exist and I cant quite answer him, because to some extent I do believe that in a vast universe, somewhere will be habitable by certain lifeforms which can evolve into intelligent beings. However, this falls into my own trap of 'absence of evidence = evidence of absence' argument for God. I kind of conceded my point on "there has been no evidence of God so we should not think he exists" from there. What do you think?
Edit: A lot has pointed out that intelligent lifeforms do exist (us lol) and that it forms a basis for positing possible intelligent lifeforms to exist. I will talk to my friend about it when I have the chance. I will keep you guys updated!
....and that personal preference is an entirely logical perception, in the context of the absence of scientific proof of god.
I brought this up in a philosophy class recently as something I thought was true, or at least controversial. However, my professor said it’s completely false and not controversial at all. He said that to have evidence that something is false, you need to have evidence of s contrary claim, and that lack of evidence does not count. Could somebody please point me to an explanation of why this is the case? Is this really not controversial in philosophy?
The term 'Absence of Evidence is not evidence of absence' is something that's basically used very often, especially when an atheist dares to say that there is no God. However, you don't actually see people explaining what the phrase actually means, and what the actual implications of it. Most people have a general concept of it which is often seeing it as: 'There are many thing that we didn't have evidence for, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist'. It's not wrong. But there's a lot of things that needs to be explained in order to express what the phrase is really saying.
Firstly, we need to discuss the labels of true or false. Most people tend to have a binary thing were propositions can either go into one of two categories, true or false. However, there are many other ways to arrange propositions that aren't just heavy on 'either it's true' or 'either it's false'. But keeping things in context. Let's make it trinary. So, we have true, false and not concluded/untested.
The third category, the untested is the default of all logically consistent propositions that hasn't yet been addressed. Essentially, if you have a claim, but you haven't actually tried to prove it yet, it belongs in this third category. This is important, because the phrase, 'absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence' is functionally equivalent to 'absence of evidence isn't evidence of existence'. In both cases, that's because the relative proposition being addressed is in that third category, the untested category. It hasn't been tested or put under any empirical experiment yet so there's literally no way we can conclude if it's true or false yet.
However, it's important to note that the third category is a temporary one. At some point the given proposition must be put to the test in order to be labeled 'true or false', especially if you wish to have people to accept your proposition and use it. It is important to note that the phrase is only really true, given that it hasn't been put under any experimentation. If a proposition has been tested in some way or another, and in that case the results came back negative then I'm sorry. The lack of data found when searching is evidence it doesn't exist. Literally, if every way that one can test to legitimacy of something comes up empty, then the conclusion must inevitably be that it's wrong.
Going back to the topic of God. If there has been no attempt to actually prove God's existence yet then he remains as an untested nul
... keep reading on reddit ➡And, if the headline isn't compelling enough, science doesn't support that ballistics can be used to match bullets to exact firearms... btw, Roland Johnson's .22 is one of the most commonly sold .22's in the US. IIRC, I think 6 Marlin's were recovered from the searches the collective homes of Averys.
"On ballistics and toolmark analysis, Giannelli notes that in 2005, two federal courts pointed out in the cases of U.S. v. Green and U.S. vs. Montero that these fields are entirely subjective. There are no error rates or consistent standards or criteria for determining that only a certain gun could have fired a certain bullet or that only one particular screwdriver could have made the pry marks on a door. He writes that one of the courts . . .
>. . . concluded that the theory on which the expert relied was “tautological.” The Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners (AFTE), the leading organization of examiners, proposed the theory. Under this theory, the examiner may declare an identification if (1) there is “sufficient agreement” of marks between the crime scene and test bullets and (2) there is “sufficient agreement” when the examiner says there is.
So did other courts follow suit? You probably know the answer. Most courts continued to allow this testimony into evidence. Some courts at least recognized the problem, but their solutions were largely meaningless. Again from Giannelli:
>Other courts took an important, but still limited, step of restricting examiner testimony by precluding the expert from making gross overstatements such as declaring a match to the exclusion, either practical or absolute, of all other weapons. Similarly, some courts forbade experts from testifying that they hold their opinions to a “reasonable degree of scientific certitude.” That term has long been required by courts in many jurisdictions for the admission of expert testimony. Incredibly, the phrase has no scientific meaning and the claim of certainty is unsupported by empirical research. Thus, it is grossly misleading. Indeed, the National Commission on Forensic Science rejected it. Still other courts went off on a quixotic tangent, substituting the phrase “reasonable degree of ballistic” certitude. Changing “scientific certainty” to “ballistic certainty” merely underscores the courts’ scientific incompetence.However, even these modest limitations were rejected by other courts.136 For example, in United States v. Casey, 137 the district court declined “to
... keep reading on reddit ➡##^(Advance apologies for the length and possibly the perceived tone of this post, for which I beg your indulgence. I tried to explain my position as clearly as I could, and in cases like that, my writing tends to take a decidedly formal swerve. I'm aware that this carefully formal style may make me sound smug, pompous, or whatever other adjectives of oblivious self-inflation may apply. If anything I write strikes you that way, I'm sorry. I only ask you to keep in mind that it probably stems from love of precision and perhaps poor judgment of tone, rather than from condescension.)
##Background
This topic is on my mind because it's apparently been raised again recently in an episode of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, and I just read in today's New York Times an article about the controversy that episode aroused. It seems the episode involved a credible, empathetic accuser and a "sketchy", offscreen accused, so that the viewer automatically tends to give her story credence. Even so, a journalist in the episode argues that it is unethical to publically accuse the man in front of a television audience, without any conviction or trial.
This seems to have aroused a huge backlash, with articles published on Jezebel and elsewhere accusing Aaron Sorkin of choosing to "victim-blame a woman who was raped"—despite the fact, that, as Sorkin points out in a later quotation in the article, he created this character to be a sympathetic alleged rape victim whose story has been neither corroborated nor disproved.
Another quotation from the NYT article:
>Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic for The New Yorker, wrote of the producer character: “He argues that the idealistic thing to do is not to believe her story.”
##Presentation of my views
It seems to me that in discussions of this sort, people persistently conflate "not believing one's story" with "disbelieving one's story", as if there were no option other than believing in one thing or the opposite—but this distorts the basic fact that in a world where perfect truth is unattainable, NOT believing in something is distinct from DISbelieving it. When two people dispute something, and I don't have a good reason to believe one or the other, my default position is not to presumptively believe either until the introduct
... keep reading on reddit ➡
I found myself thinking about James Randi and his offer of a large sum of money ($1,000,000, as I recall) to anyone who can provide evidence of a supernatural claim. To my knowledge, as of yet, he hasn't had to pay this out to anyone.
This comes as no surprise to the atheists of the world, but I wonder: how do believers in the supernatural square this away?
Wouldn't someone have done this by now? And if you say something like "it's not about money" or something like that, well, I'm sure God would be happy with someone who proved the supernatural to some skeptic(s) and then used the million bucks to feed starving children or some-such. Even if the person with supernatural abilities (or the ability to demonstrate supernatural phenomenon) took a vow of poverty (or some such) they should convince the skeptics and help the poor with their winnings.
So, for those of you who believe in witchcraft/supernatural phenomenon/palm-readers/mind-readers/miracles etc. how do you square the fact that there is a big fat prize waiting for anyone who can actually demonstrate such things, and that nobody has done so?
Do you argue that James Randi makes it impossible for people to win the prize? If so, how does he do that.
Thank you.
This phrase was in today's chapter. "The blind man nodded, idly tracing a circle of silver light in the air with a fingertip and inserting a scrying spell within. I looked on in interest for a moment, since that was definitely a new trick. I’d been under the impression there needed to be a physical anchor for scrying, but apparently Hierophant had figured out a cheat."
But this trick has already been used back in Book 3 Chapter 43, "Hierophant no longer needed his trinkets to scry, I saw. He drew a circle in the air that shimmered like water and heartbeats later one of the mages attached to Juniper’s headquarters appeared on the other side."
Headache + Memory loss = Absence confirmed?
'''
> they're holding her hostage: either she stays silent, or the junta reclaims power
how would that be different than her life when she was under house arrest? I'm not saying I can prove she's complicit, and clearly I don't have all the facts, but in the absence of surprising unknown evidence, this particular explanation just doesn't hold water.
'''
Author: /u/Farmer771122
Furthermore, absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of absence of evidence of the rest of this sentence
