Hypotheses and Rational Thinking

This morning, when I was deciding how to travel to work, I was presented with a number of hypotheses, several of which are listed below. This is not an exhaustive list but it is representative.

The hypotheses were:
1. Travel by car.
2. Travel by public transport.
3. Travel by dragon.

None of the above hypotheses are 100% correct: my car could break down, or there could be a public transport strike. However, these two hypotheses are still far more likely than the third. No rational individual would suggest that if I plan to travel to work by dragon, I will be able to. Why not? Many reasons: I do not know anyone who has ever seen a dragon, and those eyewitness accounts of dragons from antiquity contain many factual errors (aerodynamic problems, wing area vs musculature endemic to saurians etc). This leads me to believe that dragons do not exist. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and the existence of dragons cannot be 100% disproven. But it can be seen to be so improbable to be safely dismissed in rational calculations. It is extremely unlikely that I will arrive at work in my car to find everyone else laughing at me and asking "why did you waste all that petrol? Why didn't you just come by dragon?" It is so unlikely that in order to carry out my daily life I don't even need to consider it.

The purpose of this is to show that although alternate hypotheses exist for any given situation, not all need to be given equal weight of consideration. Some hypotheses are so incredible that to give them any weight beyond the lip service that they cannot be disproven is irrational. This is particularly illuminating in light of the question posed to me on Saturday night: that I cannot disprove the existence of god(s), so why act as though I can? Because the possibility of any god(s) existence is so slight that, in the same way that I don't seriously consider riding a dragon to work, I don't give it any credence. God(s) may exist as god(s) cannot be disproven, but the possibility of their existence is so remote that it need not enter into any calculation. As the French mathematician Laplace stated to Napoleon when asked why his book on the mechanics of gravitation contained no mention of the christian god: "I have no need of that hypothesis."