standard of evidence

[bennyboy]

That's not what you said in post #103. Make up your mind.

I said:

as I've said absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. if theism lacks substantiating evidence, all that shows is that the proposition hasn't been established to be true.

how is that inconsistent with what I just said?

I think an absence of evidence IS absence of evidence, depending on context. For example, if it is decided that certain experiments should show the existence of the Higgs Boson, then running the experiment and finding no Higgs Boson would be evidence that it doesn't exist. If you state that God is an old man watching from the clouds, then many years of people flying through clouds and finding a conspicuous lack of old men there is in fact great evidence.

The reason that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence of God is that the God idea is so poorly defined that one cannot produce evidence, or even know what would constitute it. But I don't think this is a particularly good argument in favor of God, either.