WOTMQ: Evidence of Absence
When is an absence of evidence, evidence of absence?
There are certain things we should be able to expect, detect, and clearly see all around us given all the various and wonderful attributes attached to the Tribal War god of Abraham. And yet, there is literally nothing evident regarding God's supposed regard for us which does not strain the intellect and bruise the heart. When that's the case, I think it's clear — an absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
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Comments (4)
The sensible way to phrase it is, "Absence of evidence is no PROOF of absence."
It's the whole 'needless suffering' thing. An all powerful and all kind God wouldn't have created a universe where needless suffering existed. Now the Mormons might say that experiencing suffering here will prepare you to be a God where your own universe will have suffering. But then that begs the question "If you were all powerful and all loving, would YOU create a universe with needless suffering?" All that leaves is that Epicurus... where the all powerful God who doesn't end suffering is malevolent and the God who can't end suffering isn't all powerful. Neither of which are worthy of worship--by my humble standard, anyway.
And, well, Jesus had a "Get out of Hell Free!" card tucked into his loin cloth. No matter how things went, he knew he was going to be made whole within three three days, no? And what kind of dick sacrifices this own son? And what kind of dick thinks someone sacrificing one of their children is an admirable thing? No skin off of Yahweh's butt was at stake. Clearly nobody thought this story through before publishing it.
If the god is described as being truthful and says that its followers can drink any poison without ill effect, there is an obvious experiment you can perform involving a large pool of subjects and a crate of Drano. If the description of the god is true, then a bunch of healthy subjects is REQUIRED as the result of the experiment. That evidence CANNOT be absent if the description of the god is true. If, however, the result of the experiment is "tragic", then that is clearly "evidence of absence" of the particular god described. Granted another different god with a different description may still exist, but the one tested is falsified. One down...