The null hypothesis has its place. But that implies there are places it does not apply as well.
Imagine I am tossing a fair coin (regular or doublesided is unknown to you). I tell you that one side is a heads. Each consecutive flip after that which does not reveal a heads side is evidence to you against the existence of a heads side. That is provided you would be able to distinguish between heads and tails on that coin.
Key:
Coin = Reality
Flips = Time/Events
Tails = No evidence of a God
Heads = Evidence of a God
You've missed the point so colossally that I'm about ready to give up. If someone flips a coin 100 times and each time it comes up tails, it's reasonable to assume that it's a double-sided coin (the chance that a fair coin will do that is 1/2^100, which is extremely unlikely). Of course, that all changes if on the 101st time you see heads (though it would still be reasonable to believe it was a weighted coin). Similarly, if I do see evidence for a god's existence, I will change my tune.
You repeated what I said in the underlined part. Imagine you could not tell the difference between heads and tails even if heads came up. If that were the case then the apparent lack of evidence would not be reasonable to use as evidence of lack.
You have permanently excluded the possibility of "a being with unlimited power that does not wish to reveal itself" from the beliefs you could possibly hold.
My question is: Whether this is reasonable, if so why is it reasonable and what are the limitations on those reasons? Is it reasonable for Dave (see my most recent post) to exclude the possibility of color existing?
You assert that it "can never be rational is to take a position without any supporting evidence". I agree when evidence necessarily exists. However I would be hard pressed to agree in cases where evidence necessarily does not exist. In cases where no evidence can exist for any position including the null position, I see no reason to take any position over another nor to avoid any position in favor of another.
It's completely reasonable. I can never perceive evidence of the existence of a being with unlimited power that does not wish to reveal itself. Rationality demands that my beliefs be supported by evidence (or else any belief would be equally valid...2+2=5, doorknobs explode, etc.). Therefore, it's rational to permanently exclude the possibility of "a being with unlimited power that does not wish to reveal itself" from the beliefs I could possibly hold. That's not to say that it's impossible -- it isn't -- but it's not rational, either. At least, it's just as rational as the belief that really, all of reality is an illusion and we're just the dream of a man in an insane asylum, or that everyone else is just a robot and I'm the only real person. Sure, these things are possible and I can't even evaluate whether they're true, but there's no reason I can think of to believe in any of them.
Dave is wrong to doubt color by making up a bizarre justification for the experiments that they showed him "Dave agrees that this shows a relation between the difference in the material and the difference in the absorption but remains unconvinced that the difference was color rather than a currently unknown factor like the chemical bond energies in the materials." This is nonsense.
In this section you do a good job expanding on a few reasons.
1) Rationality demands that my beliefs be supported by evidence or else any belief would be equally valid.
If no belief including the null is supported by evidence then all beliefs including the null are equally valid.
When evidence exists (especially evidence for the null) then rationality demands you follow the evidence.
When evidence cannot exist for the positive if the positive were true, where does the evidence to support the null come from?
2) Dave is wrong to reject one hypothesis that lacks evidence in favor of another vague explanation that also lacks evidence.
I had to leave this example remarkably bare for it to stay analogous and lacking evidence. Here Dave is refusing a positive with no evidence for another positive with no evidence. You and I both find this kind of bias objectionable.
PS: Dave happens to have guessed correctly. Color is a sense in our eyes/brain that observes the material absorbing and emitting of photons from chemical bonds.
