[Lotus]

Originally Posted by RedskinRat

Although as Irving Copi stated:

In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence.

Like dragons, Sasquatch and any deity.

I'd rather go the route of Bertrand Russell's teapot.

Copi's statement here is taken out-of-context. He said that such only applies to well-defined and delimited contexts, such as with a claim like, "There is no sock under the couch." As a general principle, Copi stands with "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." See Copi's <Introduction to Logic>.