I understand the intended spirit of this thread and have no wish for the discussion to be derailed into another God or no God argument. My point is that the curt "there is no
evidence either way" is a disingenuous and dishonest way of misrepresenting a position in a debate in which evidence is not possible, in this particular case made impossible by the nature of the initial proposition set up by believers. It is not a neutral position to take because it serves to protect believers from attack from people who would rather rely on rationality and reason. Suppose you claim that dandelions must grow on top of Mount Etna. We look at all the literature and check with the local botanists and find that dandelions have never been noted on top of Mount Etna. Well, we can then assemble a posse of plant hunters to go and do a thorough search. When we find no dandelions up there (which we won't by the way; I'm a botanist and I've been up and seen for myself), we then have evidence. Not incontrovertible evidence, as we may have missed a few nooks and crannies, but enough to show that the claim was almost certainly false. To start with, there was no evidence either way, though reason told us that the claim was probably false in view of the inhospitable conditions up there. That was at least an honest representation. It is not honest when evidence is impossible. In fact, it's actually rather a silly thing to say when you think about it.