In a recent conversation with a friend of mine, I was confronted about what looked like an unsubstantiated claim to him; something I'm so insistent on bringing out into the light wherever I find it in the worldviews of other people. As with other pages on this sight spurred on by his questioning of my worldview, I'm glad he brought this one up. 

Below, I've pasted in most of the relevant text from this particular part of our conversation. His comments are in this color and mine are the usual green. His name is Peter. So, his comments are preceded with P: and mine with S:.

P: "Something is "reasonable" if it is something that can be discussed. In other words, I could say, "I really believe that most people are good deep down inside...its just the way I feel." Well, that's fine for a person to believe that, and it may or may not be true, but it certainly is not "reasonable". I can' t discuss the issue with the person because its "just the way they feel" about the matter."

S: "indeed. The only thing I can say for sure about people with regard to whether they are "good" or "bad" is that these ideas are purely the concoction of individuals and every person has their own ideas about such things. The only place we find so-called "absolutes" on such things is when people get together and find they agree. 

Our ancestors may have even cast out certain people for behaving in ways they all agreed were "bad" and welcomed others based on behaviors they considered "good", but in light of the fact that there is still so much disagreement on what is good and bad, it is clear that they found a way to survive with each other even in the face of vast differences of opinion on acceptable behavior (perhaps in separate tribes far apart, but still on the same planet none the less). 

Either way, the person is neutral as far as the universe is concerned. Most tendencies they have, whether usually labeled "good or bad", can most likely be traced to something in our species past; something in the lives of our ancestors (and I no longer mean magical or legal issues like "original sin" or "original need" when I make references to our species past either); some part of dealing with the harsh realities of life on a living planet, sometimes just simply trying desperately to survive another day and doing whatever was necessary for their survival, even if it meant killing off the neighbors for food. Good? Bad? Who's to decide in such situations so many hundreds of thousands of years ago?" 

P: "I'm very curious to know where your sudden certainty comes from in this last [paragraph] ...In much of what you've written so far, you've been emphasizing the need for critical thinking and for not believing things that we can't verify. Now you make a statement, that certainly cannot be verified scientifically, and present it as a certitude. Are you saying that you have with all certainty concluded that there is not even a 1% chance that there exists a God external to creation who has propositionally communicated to his creation in history absolute truths concerning good and evil?" 

[And now for my comments in response to my friend in the form of this web page] 

A 1% Chance? 
First of all (and in most situations where intellectual integrity and scientific, statistical analysis are the guiding principles I would be able to stop here), there can only be a 1% chance that something is such-and-such in a situation in which there actually is real data with which to make such a calculation. 

It's not even that there's conflicting evidence that must be sorted through to come to a reasonable conclusion. There just isn't any evidence (outside of stories) that there is such a thing as a God of any sort. Of course, someone could say that the mere existence of the Story is all the evidence they need that points to the existence of the God spoken of in the Story. How reasonable is that though? 

A Circular Argument Based on Ancient Wisdom 
A Story in an ancient book written by people who didn't even know that Earth is round or that it goes around our star or that thinking, feeling, deciding, judging and planning are centered in the brain (and not the heart) and who didn't know a multitude of other obvious facts revealed to us by now through scientific discovery can't possibly be used as its own evidence to bolster its own internal claims. 

Every person concerned with intellectual integrity can see though how it is not logically sound or reasonable to make one's conclusion about a claim based on the claim it self. Basing an evaluative conclusion about a Story on an internal claim from within the Story is tantamount to being convinced that I am some reincarnated famous person come back to set everyone straight simply on the basis that I say so. 

Evidence? 
Of course some people claim to have such evidence, but where is it? For instance, the only so-called "evidence" that the so-called Creation-Scientists have ever been able to produce has either been shown to be misinterpreted, misrepresented or non-existent or has only been a matter of trying to "disprove" some scientific conclusion (such as evolution). Attempting to disprove another's conclusion does not show a genuine availability of evidence "in favor" of one's own conclusion. All it shows is that there is no real evidence available "for" their own. 

Thus, they are left with scratching around to find the weakest links in the other's conclusions. One way they do this is to showcase the divisions among true scientists as though they represent a disagreement about the fundamental principle being debated in the first place. They (so-called Creation-Scientists) do this with debates among evolutionary biologists such as the Darwinian natural selection -vs- punctuated equilibrium debate and the sexual-reproduction -vs- survival-of-the-fittest debate (debates in which most evolutionary biologists acknowledge a certain degree of scientific validity in both views regardless of which one they favor, and will most likely eventually agree that both are actually happening in conjunction with the other, not one instead of the other). Clearly the disagreements between the "evolutionary" biologists are not about whether or not evolution has happened though. The argument is about "how" it happens. 

the Burden of Proof
There's at least one point from the thought system of atheists (which I'm not) that I agree with and that I think is relevant here. It's the idea that the burden of proof is not on the one denying the existence of the unknowable thing, but on the one claiming it's there. They're whole basis for claiming that God, in fact, does not exist, is the idea that the only way we ever got the idea of God in the first place is through stories told by other people. 

I agree with them on this one point. In matters of claims about the nature of the world in which we live or the history of life upon it, the burden is not on the denial of an unsubstantiated claim, but on the assertion of it. Unless such evidence ever becomes available that could even begin to suggest the possibility of the claim being valid, it will be impossible to make a conclusion in favor of it, and doing so would certainly be most unreasonable. 

Absent Until Proven Present
In the court of law in the USA, a defendant is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty (regardless of whether it actually goes that way or not, that's the idea). In the court of public opinion about things like claims of supernatural existence, supernatural origin of and intervention into the details of the natural world, whichever proposition is favored is the one that will be believed. In the court of scientific research, things are considered absent until proven present. 

Conclusion 
As for my friend's question where he asks, "Are you saying that you have with all certainty concluded that there is not even a 1% chance that there exists a God external to creation who has propositionally communicated to his creation in history absolute truths concerning good and evil?"... 
No, I'm not saying that I have thus concluded. I still remain agnostic on the issue. All I'm saying is that with all data having been reported in and with the evidence at hand, there is no other logical, reasonable conclusion when studied according to the scientific method. 

If you want to talk about mathematical probabilities, that's not my area of expertise. However, I do know this, in light of the lack of any evidence what-so-ever, no suggestion of any sort of supernatural or metaphysical or magical person, place or thing can be any more probable than any other. 

So, in saying that, "The only thing I can say for sure about people with regard to whether they are "good" or "bad" is that these ideas are purely the concoction of individuals and every person has their own ideas about such things", all I have to say is, show me evidence to the contrary. All of the data available so far points to this conclusion. Thus, my statement is neither a matter of "sudden certainty", but something which has genuinely been thought about for a long time with an open mind; nor is it a statement that "...cannot be verified scientifically", but has in fact been established as a "certitude" through scientific study of all of the evidence that is actually available.