Quote: Not sure why this is so hard for people to understand.
Religitards have clung to Kenneth Kitchen's mantra since he said it.
I don't remember where I copied this from - page has probably long since disappeared from the web - I found it years ago and saved it as a document because it comes in handy from time to time.
Quote:Kenneth Kitchen is often heard to utter the tautological
dictum `absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'
in response to some of the archaeological anomalies
raised by New Chronologists. It has become a holy writ
- his catch-all get-out clause to avoid confronting an-g
which does not agree with his own chronological model.
So let us analyse what this sacred mantra actually means.
According to Kitchen, just because there is no ar-
chaeological evidence of something it should not be
assumed that that something did not happen. Let me
give you an example. Just because there is not a shred of
evidence that Martians built the Great Pyramid does not
mean that Martians were not responsible for building
the earth's most famous monument. By Kitchen's phil-
osophy, enshrined in his oft chanted mantra, he would
have to defend the Martian hypothesis and, in doing so,
stand shoulder to shoulder with Eric von Daniken!
The phrase `absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence' is just another way of saying `anything goes' in
our interpretation of the available archaeological evi-
dence. This is plainly an untenable position for an aca-
demic of Kitchen's standing to take and he needs to
seriously reconsider his position.
Indeed, any thinking scholar would readily admit that
an absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It is not
proofof absence - but it certainly amounts to evidence.
Moreover, what is an historian to do if he is not per-
mitted to construct histories or chronologies based on
the available evidence? Is it not perfectly reasonable to
develop an historical model based on what we currently
know about the past? Should we forever hold out on
publishing our theories because some new fact might
just turn up tomorrow, in a hundred years time or at
some infinite date in the future? This is the logical con-
sequence of Kitchen's ill considered mantra.
