>>14
"..admitting that you have NO BASIS for such a belief since you didn't detect the entity in the first place."
Why yes, that was my entire point. You claim that if there is no evidence for something, then it doesn't exist period. I claim that if there is no evidence for something, there are two options:
1) It doesn't exist
2) We can't determine whether or not it exists
and which option we choose depends both on whether the "something" in question admits of verifiability, and whether the evidence it ought to leave is detectable at this time (e.g., subatomic particles existed even before we could detect them).
If we choose option two, we ignore the proposition as useless until such time as evidence presents itself- except that cases like the deist "watchmaker" God, who creates the universe and then leaves it alone, make no predictions and will never be useful for explaining anything- thus we can safely ignore such ideas forever. But that doesn't mean we can just assert that such things do not exist.