Atheism 101: The Null Hypothesis

[Esquilax]

absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence.

Sometimes we just haven't looked hard enough.

I always feel like I have to be super-strict with my definitions around this point though, because if you give a theist apologist an inch here, they'll take a yard. And then treat that yard as self evident. Forever...

With things that exist, there is always evidence, even if we haven't found it yet. The evidence isn't absent, it's just presently unseen. And one without evidence for something isn't justified in believing it to exist, either.

I know you're deploying this phrase in its intellectually honest form, but when theists do it in a debate, they're just attempting to justify the belief without evidence they already have. So, generally speaking I do take absence of evidence to equal evidence of absence, at least in a soft, agnostic kind of way.

As for god, the god hypothesis hasn't been raised for many years, we have no reason to think that such a thing even exists. Just like no one will fund a research project that seeks to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, because why would you even think it exists?

The better question with magical claims is, how could you test it at all? When you look at so-called christian scientists, they never seem to be conducting tests for their god, just ones to disprove those aspects of accepted science that pose problems for their chosen dogma. That's the problem one runs into when one spends half their time trying to define their god away from investigation, and the rest in a lab coat trying to give that same god an air of legitimacy. Suddenly, you find yourself with nowhere to go.