Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
--
quoted in Oliver, Bernard M.; Billingham, John (1971), "Life in the Universe", Project Cyclops: A Design Study of a System for Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life, NASA, NASA-CR-114445, retrieved on 2010-10-23 
--
quoted by Berendzen, Richard (20 November 1972), Life Beyond Earth & The Mind of Man (symposium), NASA, LCC QB54.L475, retrieved on 2010-10-23 
--
frequently misattributed to Carl Sagan

 

Martin Rees

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Even if the absence of evidence for a given god were not evidence of its absence, it would still be evidence that the belief in that god is unreasonable. That's the only proposition that any atheist of any kind has to demonstrate in order to win the argument. Because anything beyond that... is just having fun.

 

Scott Clifton

 

Appeal to ignorance — the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g. There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist — and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 

Carl Sagan

 

When I came back to Dublin, I was courtmartialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

 

Brendan Behan

 

The mountains of evidence are already there. The problem is that evidence is itself inherently hermeneutical, influenced by cognitive predispositions to interpret certain types of data as supporting/confirming certain types of conclusions. If one wears materialistic blinders, there can be no evidence for ID hence the constant refrain by people like Barbara Forrest and Eugenie Scott that there is no evidence for ID. There is none for them because they have shut their eyes to it.

 

William A. Dembski