"Absence of evidence..."

Just watching one of my absolute most favoritest channels, getting ready to go to "tentmaking" to make some $$$ to pay off the publica-- er, that is, the lawyers handling baby Masen's case...

...anyway, the show The Universe was on, a re-run, actually... and I heard a dude who was being interviewed about E.T. say, in response to the apparently insurmountable problem posed by the Fermi Paradox RE: the quest to find other intelligent life "out there". Basically, astronomers have long postulated that the statistical probability of intellilgent civilizations having arisen on worlds orbiting other suns is high enough to be a near-certainty, yet we haven't seen a single shred of evidence of E.T.'s existence - which is troubling to Fox Mulder and others like him.

Anyway, this is, as I'd said, a re-run; I'd seen this episode before. And I'd heard the last time, this one quote that really sparked some thought:

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
- Tom Spilker, JPL

I find that absolutely fascinating... because it really illustrates, I think, the maxim, "he who does not believe in God, it does not mean he will not believe anything - it means instead he will believe... anything."

The same dudes who make statements like the "absence of evidence" regarding E.T. usually nod in rapt agreement with Ricky Dawkins when he makes the converse statement regarding theism.

Lay aside the fact, for the moment, that the evidence for God's existence is truly overwhelming - so much so that it's almost nonsensical to even type that statement out, it's so self-evident. Why does the axiom, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" work for the search for Starman, but not in discussing the subject of God, I wonder...?