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Absence of Evidence Evidence of Absence.

5/27/2011

2 Comments

 
As I understand the argument, the real crux of the matter is that the absence of evidence for God is evidence of God’s absence. Michael Scriven has said that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence when two conditions are met:

1) We have looked in all the right places for evidence of the thing under scrutiny.
2) Assuming the existence of the thing under investigation, we should expect to see more evidence of that thing then we in fact do.

For example, we have looked in the right places for Santa Claus, and assuming Santa Claus exists, we don’t have as much evidence as we would expect if Santa Claus really did exist. Therefore, in the case of Santa Claus, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Apply this now to the case of God. Have we looked in all the right places? Maybe, but it has only been fairly recently that we have found the kinds of evidence being used today in arguments for the existence of God. Let that pass, assume we have looked in all the right places, I do not think condition two above can be met by the atheist. Assuming god exists, should we expect to have more evidence of His existence than a contingent universe, the origin of the universe out of nothing a finite time ago, the fine-tuning of the constants in the laws of physics, the apprehension of a realm of objective moral values and duties, the radical claims and historical evidence pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus, and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit?! Clearly not. Notice that this point stands even if as you say, these arguments only convince a small number of people, or that they are convoluted because that still means there isn’t enough absence of evidence to constitute evidence of God’s absence. So, we would be left with agnosticism, which as you know (thanks to Plantinga) is compatible with Christianity being true. Before we look at an objection that naturally arises considering my response so far, let me say that I think you are right to point out that these arguments are difficult and the like. So, since not everyone has had access to them, the ability to understand them, and the like, God (the Christian one) has given people an inner witness (or properly basic belief) that has been accessible to all people, at all times, and in all circumstances that is sufficient for producing saving knowledge. God has made it easy so to speak to believe in Him in a non-evidential, and non-propositional manner which you I think would say is necessary, but of course, the Divine Hiddenness argument is asking God for evidential reasons to believe in Him, but maybe that might not be necessary for producing knowledge of God if such a belief is properly basic. However, I am taking the Divine Hiddenness argument on its own terms. So, I don’t think the Divine Hiddenness argument is a good one given what I have said thus far. However, like the bump in the rug, I think the atheist should ask okay well couldn’t God have given us “better” or “clearer” evidence of His existence, rather than all this fine-tuning stuff?
2 Comments
Nightvid Cole
11/18/2011 12:43:21 am

You are straw-manning the atheist position. It's not that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but that by Occam's Razor the presumption is non-existence of a thing.

You are re-using the same five flawed arguments of William Lane Craig also. First of all, ex nihilo cosmic origins is an assumption based on classical general relativity, which fails to take quantum gravity into account. The "fine tuning" argument assumes that constants could have different values from what they do, but if they could, they wouldn't be constants. The moral argument is not evidence for a god because you have failed to demonstrate that nothing else could explain morality, and all WLC's arguments are appeals to ignorance and thus fallacious ("How else do you explain..." or "I can't think of a good reason, given atheism, that..." is not an argument, and is certainly not evidence of a god, only evidence of your lack of imagination.) Finally, the argument from religious text miracle claims and the argument from personal religious experience commit a form of special pleading by assuming they can't be used equally well by the other religions (which have contradictory truth claims.)

This is why atheism is the rational position, not theism.

Reply
Kevin V
2/1/2012 09:40:41 am

Hello,

I apologize for just now approving and responding to your comment. I am fairly new at blogging and I just figured out that you had posted a comment some 2.5 months ago. Okay, now down to the nitty gritty.

First, the phrase 'absence of evidence as evidence of absence' is occuring in my section called defeaters of divine hiddenness, and I essentially got that phrase from the foremost defender of the divine hiddenness argument, J.L. Schellenberg, "The weakness of evidence for theism, I maintain, is itself evidence against it (pg. 2 Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason)." So, there is no straw men representation here with respect to the divine hiddenness argument.

Second, if I am being charitable, what you are trying to claim is that my response to the divine hiddenness argument won't work for another argument which you unwittingly are making called the presumption of atheism. However, the irony here is that it is precisely because of the kind of repsonse I have made here against the divine hiddenness argument that "the debate among contemporary philosophers has therefore moved on from the facile presumption of atheism to a discussion of the so-called 'Hiddenness of God...'" (Craig, Theistic Critiques of Atheism). Moreover, notice that this refutation still holds even if you don't find any of the arguments for God's existence convincing as you seem to believe. Ockham's razor doesn't have any application to the divine hiddenness argument, and to try to use it, not only without giving an argument for why atheism is simpler than theism, but also before demonstrating that atheism has at least the same degree of explanatory scope and power as theism, is an abuse of the criteria. Indeed, if we stick with your use of Ockham's razor, the solipsist can one up both us since her worldview is even simpler than theism or atheism since nothing but that individual exists!

Third, it has been argued by philosophers (Swinburne 2004: 150) that theism is actually simpler than atheism! If such is true (and it seems to me that it is), then would you think I was justified in presuming that theism was true over atheism simply on those grounds? Of course you wouldn't, but then by parity of reason, neither should you believe in atheism over theism simply because of Ockham's Razor for this reason and the others I have already mentioned.

Lastly, I am sorely tempted to respond to the tenuous objections you raise to the Craig's 'five flawed' arguments, but that is unnecessary given the context of this blog section.

I appreciate your time on this.

K

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