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JonBanes  ·  4063 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Lil's Book of Questions: What Should I Believe? (Part 4)

This is the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" reply essentially, correct me if I'm wrong. The problem with this is that statement is not complete, what is should read is "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence unless we would expect there to be evidence".

For instance, if I say that a nuclear bomb went off in downtown Denver and you look at downtown Denver and see absolutely zero radiation or destruction, that is an absence of evidence. This does not mean that a nuclear bomb did in fact go off there. We would expect there to be evidence in such an event, and the complete lack of evidence for such a thing is clear evidence that it did not in fact happen.

Supernatural claims are, by necessity, claims about the world. If there is evidence that we would expect to see from those claims that is absent then that is, in fact, evidence pointing toward them not existing.

It is not really the coin flip you present it as.