[awb]

While true, it's also nonsensical to ask people to believe in something without providing evidence of it.

Carl Sagan has a good short story to this effect about a dragon in his garage: http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf

> Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.

[amalcon]

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

[yawboakye]

sagan makes a good point but he errs in so many ways that he can’t be assumed to be speaking philosophically, and so i don’t know how to respond. apart from this bogus strawman he constructs (himself) and proceeds to vigorously burn down successfully (because after all he’s the manufacturer) he seems to be in a hurry to dismiss whatever knowledge cannot be arrived at scientifically (and even worse with tools available during his time). the problem with ‘knowledge’ is well-known and unsolved.

[awb]

He recommends not rejecting the hypothesis outright, but putting judgement on hold in lieu of evidence. If evidence is presented then be prepared to re-evaluate. He talks about present day tools and measurements as well and the need to re-evaluate in the future should future data be obtained.

I think the problem he’s addressing is when people use beliefs in lieu of evidence. Believing the election was rigged is fine, but without evidence you haven’t given Sagan or other evidence-based evaluators reason to believe your claim.

[alkonaut]

You can almost think Sagan was taking a jab at religion there