Inadvertent Wisdom

I was watching a show where they make commentary on people who still think there are WMD's to be worried about. The character meant to be the caricature says "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!" This was meant to make him sound trite and like a tool, but I realized in a different context that statement can actually mean a lot.

This all came up when I was thinking about a discussion Karthik and I had about agnosticism vs atheism, and how despite the critiques of others we still staunchly believe that we're not just timid atheists but truly are agnostic. Because the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.