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>> The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence > This is a common trope, but it's wrong in many cases. When you're dealing with something of low intell

>> The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence > This is a common trope, but it's wrong in many cases. When you're dealing with something of low intelligence or awareness, heuristically absence of evidence can be approximated as evidence of absence, if you've made so thorough a set of observations that the probability of absence can be estimated to be very high. However, that heuristic fails when you're dealing with something with intelligence and awareness, as that thing can choose to behave differently when you're observing it vs. when you're not. Doubly so when you're dealing with something that may not even be bound by the laws that bind your observations.

temac 8y ago
That's always a possibility and there are others. Many people found that whole class of possibilities not especially interesting, because they are falling on the irrefutable slope; if there is a "god" that absolutely can not be detected, it is as-if there is "no" god for all practical purposes. It's very similar to asking if we are in a simulation that we can't detect: well, yeah, maybe, but then so what? this would be our universe, nothing more, nothing less.
lisper 8y ago
You are confusing evidence with proof. Absence of evidence is not proof of absence, but it is evidence of absence even if the subject is intelligent. The absence of evidence for alien visitors to earth is in fact evidence of the absence of such visitors. Now, there are some adversarial situations where absence of evidence is only weak evidence of absence. Two examples of this are the game of hide-and-seek, and steganography. There is also the invisible pink unicorn. So you can't rule out a certain class of adversarial deity just as you cannot rule out a passive one. But again, the actual deities that are the generally the subject of dispute are not adversarial. (This, BTW, is one of the reasons that my favorite god is Loki.)

temac 8y ago

That's always a possibility and there are others. Many people found that whole class of possibilities not especially interesting, because they are falling on the irrefutable slope; if there is a "god" that absolutely can not be detected, it is as-if there is "no" god for all practical purposes. It's very similar to asking if we are in a simulation that we can't detect: well, yeah, maybe, but then so what? this would be our universe, nothing more, nothing less.

lisper 8y ago

You are confusing evidence with proof. Absence of evidence is not proof of absence, but it is evidence of absence even if the subject is intelligent. The absence of evidence for alien visitors to earth is in fact evidence of the absence of such visitors. Now, there are some adversarial situations where absence of evidence is only weak evidence of absence. Two examples of this are the game of hide-and-seek, and steganography. There is also the invisible pink unicorn. So you can't rule out a certain class of adversarial deity just as you cannot rule out a passive one. But again, the actual deities that are the generally the subject of dispute are not adversarial. (This, BTW, is one of the reasons that my favorite god is Loki.)