Absence of evidence, god, and burden of proof

[written by chronomax who writes here]

There's a common saying: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". While yes, it sounds snappy and has the backwards thing going on, but science doesn't give a shit about proverbs and idioms.

I don't know why this isn't obvious, but absence of evidence is in fact evidence of absence. See, a lot of believers in a god say that we don't need to have physical evidence to know that a god exists- which is true. We don't have physical evidence of a black hole existing, but the theoretical evidence is so compelling that it's foolish to say that they don't exist. But we don't have any definite theoretical evidence for a god, and the whole concept of a personal god shows that there should be physical evidence.

If I claim that a terrapin in my backyard built your house and communicates with you, you would immediately call me crazy. We have an explanation for who built your house, you don't communicate with a turtle, and you've never seen me buy any food or items for said amphibian. Now you would say that since I am claiming all of these things, I need to give you evidence- "But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." That's nonsense. I can't claim things and say that I don't have evidence, but that doesn't matter. If you don't get it by the way, the terrapin is god, the builder of the house is the Big Bang, and you're a sane person. After all, I made a claim, I need to have the evidence.

This isn't always used for a god however, but is usually used with spiritual claims or "exotic" things: reincarnation, conspiracies, etc. But besides stating the obvious fact that burden of proof is on the man making the claim, I think I can prove this with the scientific method.

Question, research, hypothesis, experiment, analyze, conclude. 'Tis the thing that makes the world go 'round- well, that shows that the world rotates on an axis and orbits the sun. In a regular example, there is no problem with burden of proof and evidence. However, if I make an outrageous claim and don't provide evidence...

• Does a personal god, interested in the human race, exist?
• Personal things communicate with what they're personal with. An all powerful and omniscient being also would have the ability to communicate at any time. Said god also has communicated with the human race before.
• We should see signs of current, if not, past, events where a god communicated with humanity.
• ...
• A god exists.

Yeah... doesn't really work does it? Without an experiment to draw conclusions from and analyze, we reach an illogical conclusion. Nonetheless though, the burden of proof will always be on the person stating a positive claim so I didn't even need to make that model. I wouldn't ask you to give me arguments for why my terrapin doesn't exist, and you shouldn't take any bullshit from a creationist saying that atheist has to give evidence.