When does Absence of Evidence become Evidence of Absence?

Like you mentioned before, we develop these "placeholder" theories. Not necessarily absolute truth, but the closest we can come up with. Same goes with Sasquatch. Unfortunately, we are doomed to continue to argue back and forth. Religion has a similar path. There was a time when they were formed, and we could trace the origin, but so much time has passed that the original minds that held that information or texts that were freshly written are long gone and with so many different versions written it's highly implausible anyone will ever trace the origin of the creation of religion.


I like to think of a box. Just a box. And the room it's in, is dark. You reach into the box and go, "Oh, it's wet. And cold." And you write it down. Then you hand the box to someone else and they go, "It's clear and shiny." You have a shiny, cold and wet substance, you can safely assume it is a liquid but... ultimately, it can be a lot of things. To say it is water, is too bold. To say it is wet and shiny is not enough of an explanation, so we run other test of other shiny wet and cold things... I like to think this is the best way to navigate through the world of presenting evidence and supporting your claim.