Proof vs. Evidence

Proof and evidence.  These are very important terms for any debate.  But what got me thinking about them recently was, not a debate, but an article I can't even actually remember.  It had something to do with astronomy, something educational... and it was presented in a Question-and-Answer format.  What I remember about it is one of the questions, "Are there intelligent aliens out there?"  The answer given was "There is no proof of aliens".

Something about that simple line just bugged me, and after a bit of turning it over in my head, I realized what it was: the misuse of the term "proof", when the term that should have been used was "evidence".  Thinking further about it, I realized that this was not just a problem from this particular article -- this is something that happens a LOT in debates, and religious ones in particular.

No, dear forgotten article from some-forgotten-where, the issue is not that there is no PROOF of alien life.  The issue is that there is no EVIDENCE of it.  It is entirely possible, of course; everything we know about chemistry and biology and astronomy means that some sort of life outside of Earth is entirely possible (I'd even say probable, particularly if we're talking about some sort of unicellular life or multicellular slime, as existed early on in our own planet's history).  But a mere technical possiblity is not "evidence", and it certain is not "proof".

On a related note, looking back at all the many religious debates I've seen over the years, I realize that I've seen a good number of atheists comment something along the lines of not believing because there is no proof of a god.  But actually, the real problem is that, forget proof, there's not even any evidence of a god.  And beyond even that issue, not only is there no evidence FOR a god, but every single piece of evidence we do have relevant to the issue of a god's existence points in the OPPOSITE direction.

• Is your god omnipresent?  Then we shouldn't even need to be searching for it -- it should be everywhere we look.  Every once in a while, I see theists (particularly Christians) argue that atheists can't say their god isn't out there somewhere, since they haven't explored the entire universe.  I mean, okay, fair argument, maybe your god is cowering under a rock on a nondescript planet orbiting a random star in the Andromeda galaxy... but that sorta gets rid of your claim that he's omnipresent, doesn't it?
• Is your god nonphysical, just a blob of radiant energy, a mind without a physical body?  Yeah, everything we know about physics says that's false.  Entropy, anyone?  Energy dissipates.
• And then of course there's just plain common sense.  There's the problem of evil that the monotheistic religions (who claim their deity is the impossibly contradictory combination of omniscient and omnibenevolent and omnipotent) have failed to resolve since their inception.  There's also the thousands of different religions, which is exactly what you'd expect to see if everyone is just making stuff up.  I mean, you don't see thousands of different gangs of astronomers arguing about whether there is or is not a planet between Earth and Mars, and if so, what its most basic properties are.

I could go on and on with these examples, of course, but the point of all this is: be careful when you speak of proof.  I suspect that in the vast majority of cases, what you mean is evidence.

⚞  SnapDragon ⚟