[Lord Chane]

Originally posted by Ran-Taro:

In the absence of any evidence of something existing, it is a logical presumption that it probably doesn't exist.

Your statement probably needs some clarification. I'm not sure what you consider as "evidence of something existing". And when you say "presumption" I don't know if you mean it's human nature not to believe in things we cannot prove or something else. Without those clarifications though, taking what you said as it's written, then I'd have to disagree. In the absence of any evidence of something existing, I'd say the logical presumption is that there is not enough data to support a conclusion. Let's see if I can give an example that supports my statement. A thousand years ago there was no evidence that the planet Pluto existed. Actually the evidence was there, but humanity did not have the ability to see it. So for them there was effectively no evidence. Using your statement then, in the absence of any evidence of the planet Pluto, it is a logical presumption that it probably doesn't exist. Yet it does exist, as we later discovered when we learned to see the evidence of it's existance. Therefore, we can see that the lack of evidence does not in fact support the presumption that it probably does not exist. As far as the existance of an after-life goes, I am not aware of any evidence to support the existence of such a thing. But at the same time I am not aware of any evidence that there is not one. The fact that we cannot prove the issue one way or the other does not in fact support any conclusion other than there is no evidence one way or the other. If we accept that as true, then a belief either way becomes a matter of faith and not a logically supportable conclusion. However, to quote Dennis Miller, "But then again I could be wrong." Perhaps you'd like to explain your statement a bit further and give some sort of example to bear out your thought.