Carl Sagan's Invisible Dragon

Carl Sagan is perhaps best remembered as the host of the PBS series, Cosmos, but another, enduring legacy he left us is his analogy, “The Dragon In My Garage.” I invite you to read it for yourself but here's a summary. Sagan claims to have a fire-breathing dragon in his garage and invites you to see it (he refers to the reader in the second person, “you”). However, when you enter the garage, you see nothing. Sagan then claims the dragon is invisible. So how do you know it's there? You think of a few possible ways to try to detect the dragon: flour on the floor to see if it leaves footprints, spray painting the dragon to make it visible, or an infrared sensor to detect the heat from its flames. However, Sagan has an excuse that shoots down each experiment: the dragon flies so it doesn't leave footprints, it's incorporeal so paint won't stick to it, and its flames don't produce heat.

The story is meant to be an analogy of how atheists see Christians' belief in God. It's clever in a couple of ways. First, Sagan predicts a few possible objections to his argument and attempts to address them in the story. This isn't necessarily novel since most apologists will try to consider possible objections to any point they make, but the fact that Sagan does it here shows that he thought through his analogy a little better than the ordinary critic.

The other clever thing that Sagan does in his story is refer to the reader as, “you.” By doing this, he attempts to put the reader in the shoes of the atheist, making him sympathetic to the atheist's plight. He's very complementary to the reader, making him feel very fair, open-minded, and inquisitive. The reader almost forgets that the skeptic in the story represents atheists! Sagan deftly paints atheists as being painfully open-minded and their skepticism as being healthy, ordinary, and rational. Also, since Sagan makes himself the keeper of the dragon, he is able to portray Christians as deranged or delusional without seeming to direct these insults toward them.

Consider these two quotes from the story:

Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold.

… the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

Do you see what I mean? “You” (reader) = atheist = enlightened thinker; Sagan = Christian = loon. It's clever to the point of being maniacal. I can almost hear Sagan laughing as he wrote it, “bwa ha ha!”

I disagree with his characterization of atheists. It's been my experience that atheists in general aren't merely withholding judgment about the existence of God until they see more evidence. Instead, they reject a priori any possibility of there being a God. Any evidence for God, like miracles, is rejected in favor of a natural explanation – even in those instances where no natural explanation exists. Dawkins, for example, would rather believe that life on earth was planted by aliens rather than believe God created life. Some atheists go even further. Rather than simply not believing in God themselves, Dawkins, Myers, and others of that ilk openly mock and ridicule the idea of believing in God. They aren't anything like the friendly skeptic in Sagan's story, optimistically looking for any evidence for the existence of the invisible dragon.

Regardless of how clever the analogy is, it fails on the grounds that it doesn't accurately represent the way Christians believe in God. In other words, it's a straw man. There are several subtle ways the story is wrong but the primary error is this: Christians don't ask people to believe in God while offering excuse after excuse why there is no evidence that He exists. To the contrary, Christians offer many reasons why people should believe in God and it's the atheist, the supposed “open-minded” skeptic in the story, who rejects them one by one.

First, God is revealed in His creation. The simple fact that the universe exists strongly suggests there is a cause behind it. To believe that God is the First Cause seems far more reasonable than believing that the universe just poofed into existence without a cause. Furthermore, the universe doesn't just exist, it's also sublime. The enormity, the beauty, and the complexity all suggest design. Design always suggests purpose, purpose always suggests intent, and intent always suggests a designer. To believe that “uncaused” matter randomly, purposelessly arranged itself into the complex cosmos is far less credible than believing it was intended to be so by the design of an intelligent Creator. The existence of the universe and the design of the universe is evidence for God whether or not the skeptic wants to accept it.

But the greatest evidence for God is the Bible. While the universe might reveal there is a God, the Bible tells us Who He is. The Bible is a written record, the testimony of people who were first hand witnesses to God. These are the people who have heard His voice and seen His miracles. He is Jehovah of the Old Testament, the One Who spoke the universe into existence; He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He is the One who delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt and made them a great nation. He is also Jesus of the New Testament, the I AM Who was before Abraham; He walked on water, calmed the storm, healed the sick, and raised the dead; He shed His blood on the cross as the payment for our sins and, three days later, rose from the dead; He now sits at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us.

The words and miracles recorded in the Bible bear witness that there is a God. Critics are welcome to suggest natural causes for the miracles. They're welcome to suggest the history of Bible is somehow not as trustworthy as other books of antiquity. However, they cannot credibly say the Bible cannot be considered by Christians to be evidence for God.

There are more things I could discuss as evidence for God but it really isn't necessary. The analogy fails. No matter how cleverly it was written, it doesn't accurately represent Christians, nor does it fairly depict how skeptics evaluate the evidence for God. It's a straw man. It has endured only because it is an amusing straw man.

If the only thing that would convince someone that God exists is that he saw Him with his own eyes, then perhaps he will be disappointed because that's not likely to happen.  Even so, I suspect that even if it did, it wouldn't convince some people anyway. Regardless, there is plenty of evidence for God available to anyone who truly seeks Him.

More About Koalas

A recent visitor commented anonymously on blog “Koalas on the Ark.” He took many exceptions to my arguments. Though he claims to be a creationist, his comments sound more like what I usually hear from atheists, evolutionists, and other critics. I started to write a reply but realized I had written enough to make a post so rather than reply in a comment, I thought I'd simply use his comments to make another post. It's actually longer than a typical post so I apologize in advance.  

The visitor's comments are in blue and are italicized.  He begins very abruptly.

HORRIBLY explained.

That's odd. Another commenter on the same article, “roylopez,” felt it was “well explained.” Of course, “horribly” is a somewhat subjective term and difficult to quantify. I'll put the “horribly” aside for now and see if any specific criticism has merit.

I stumbled onto your site while looking up pics of platypii.

People find my blog in all sorts of strange ways. I'm sure I don't have any pics of platypuses. But, hey, however the visitors get here, they're welcome.

By the way, there's some disagreement over the correct plural form of “platypus.” I lean toward “platypuses.” To me, it seems to follow the same form as “walruses.” No one would say, “walrusi.” Most words that use the “i” ending for their plural (like “alumni”) are Latin. “Platypus” is Greek.

I am open to lots of theories but this thing you've written has mistakes, dead ends, and huge leaps of logic to 'conclusions'.

Wow, how could I make so many mistakes in so few words? For some reason, I don't believe this poster is sincere when he says he's open to lots of theories. It sounds very much like he already has one interpretation of the fossil record and anything that doesn't comport with that is “wrong.” Let's look at a few of his criticisms.

You would lose miserably in an argument against an evolution scientist.

I guess we'll get to the criticisms in a moment.  Considering that I was a business major and am not a scientist, I don't think anyone would expect me to do well against a PhD biologist in a debate. However, I have engaged many scientists online for years (including those who comment on my blog) and I feel I've held my own. I appreciate his concern, though. If I ever have the opportunity to formally debate a biologist on evolution, I'll remember that I was warned!

I am a Creationist.

“Creationist” is a fairly broad term. I'm a young-earth creationist. From his comments, I suspect my visitor is not a YEC. I don't want to misrepresent him but if he's not a theistic evolutionist, I would guess he's a progressive creationist in the same vein as Hugh Ross.

But the Bible is not specific on everything.

Yet the Bible is specific on some things. We use the things we know to help us understand the things we don't know. We KNOW that all terrestrial mammals outside of the Ark died in the Flood. We KNOW the Ark landed in the middle east. Therefore, we must conclude that the ancestors of koalas were on the Ark, they landed in the middle east, and migrated to Australia after the Flood. There is no other possibility.

One point you make is that we don't know much about koala distribution before the flood. But we DO know where they Weren't hanging out. There are no fossils, no matter how old they might be, of any koalas anywhere but Australia.

Finally, a specific criticism!

First, this is an argument from silence. He's saying that since we've not found koala fossils outside of Australia that it's evidence there were never any koalas outside of Australia. There is an oft quoted phrase that says, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Besides that, I refer my readers to my article, “They Weren't Polar Bears Before They Got There.” We have found marsupial fossils on every continent. Koalas are a species (Phascolarctos cinereus) and speciation occurs when “kinds” become adapted to their environments. The “Phascolarctidae-kind” (if I may invent a term), to which the koala species belongs, was on the Ark. There were no koalas on the Ark. They weren't koalas until they reached Australia and became adapted to that environment.

Fossils, even if they were created 12,000 yrs ago, of all Australian mammals are found there.

Ditto my last comment. They weren't “Australian mammals” until they reached Australia. Panda bears, too, for example, weren't panda bears until they reached Asia. The bears that reached the Arctic became polar bears. Get it?

Where ever the surface of Australia was located before the flood, that's where they lived.

You have got to be kidding me! This visitor is saying virtually the same thing as the atheist-evolutionist I was quoting in my article. His straw man argument of the Bible was that Koalas swam from Australia carrying eucalyptus leaves, lived on the Ark during the Flood, then swam back to Australia.

Actually, the visitor is probably a subscriber to a “local flood” interpretation of Genesis. In that case, he is using the shifting views of science to interpret the clear, immutable words of Scripture.

Marsupial fossils are found on every continent... but Australian mammal fossils are only found in Australia. [ellipsis in original]

That's really funny, when you think about it. “Australian fossils are only found in Australia.” What a riot! And American Indians were only found in America. Asians were only found in Asia. Australian aborigines were only found in Australia. Please excuse the sarcasm but I thank my visitor for stating the obvious.

[quoting RKBentley] "In the case of koalas, they ended up in what is now Australia." What do you mean by 'ended up'? This implies that they were traveling, and then they stopped there. Huh? How? And along with all the Australian-specific animals?

I mean exactly what I said. The ancestors of koalas were on the Ark. They landed in the middle east. They began to spread out over the globe. Their descendants ended up in what is now Australia. And every other animal that ended up in Australia could now be considered “Australian-specific.”

Did you know that ALL native mammals in Australia are marsupials? That's pretty significant to the evolutionists.

Technically, no animal is native to anywhere. Wherever their ancestors lived before the Flood, all animals arrived at their “native” habitat after the Flood. Marsupial mammals simply arrived in Australia first. Since marsupials generally don't compete well with placental mammals, perhaps it's only because there were no placental mammals there that allowed the marsupials to prosper in Australia.

Panda bears are different since they live, and are from, a huge continent, which is known to have been connected in the past to other continents, fairly recently in geologic terms. Not the case for koalas or any other Australian land animals.

It's comments like “fairly recently in geological terms” that make me suspect my visitor is a progressive creationist. Hugh Ross generally subscribes to evolutionary time lines but believes they roughly correlate to the Biblical days of creation. Ross believes that God specifically created the koala species in Australia and they've been there since. The Flood did not reach them since it was a local event, limited to the middle east.

It is late and I'm tired, sorry if I am coming off as being crabby... but there are a half dozen more points that even a garage scientist would laugh at...
I'm not saying I have all the answers, but this is def full of holes. But you're right, koalas can eat other stuff but eat mostly eucalyptus, because they taste the best.

Well, at least it was nice of him to acknowledge that I was right in saying koalas can eat other things besides eucalyptus leaves. Look, I'm used to being laughed at by evolutionists so that doesn't bother me. Laughter and ridicule hardly rebuts any argument I've made anyway. And if we strip away all the “you're so wrong” comments and look at this visitor's actual criticisms, I don't see any rebuttals either.

Remembering on Memorial Day

A Time Dilemma for Naturalists

I've been reading a little about time, lately. Time is an interesting phenomenon and even though we experience it all our lives, there's still a lot about it that we don't know or understand. Of course, there are many things we have discovered about time. For example, most of mainstream science sees time as a sort of “fourth dimension”. That is, any object in our universe occupies height, depth, and width, but it also must occupy time – the fourth dimension – in order to exist.

When some people think of the Big Bang, they picture something like all of the matter in the universe pressed together into a single point suspended in space somewhere for countless eons – then BANG, it exploded and all the matter became the stars and planets. That's a false impression since, according to the theory, even space did not exist prior to the Big Bang. What's more, neither did time exist prior to the Big Bang! It's a misnomer to even say “prior” in regards to the Big Bang; that would be like saying something could be “north” of the North Pole.

Here's a wrinkle I see in the Big Bang: It's one thing to say that all matter and space once existed in a single, infinitesimally small point.  It's quite another thing to say that time did not exist before the Big Bang.  If time is truly a fourth dimension in our universe (so nothing could exist outside of time), and if time began at the Big Bang, then NOTHING in our universe could have existed before the Big Bang.  The Big Bang is not simply when a singularity of preexisting matter began to expand. The Big Bang would mark that moment when everything literally poofed into existence. There was nothing, then there was everything. It's poofism.

Some people are more than a little squeamish about the idea that everything literally poofed into existence and so they cling to an equally unscientific idea; namely, that matter is infinitely old. This might rebut the incredible notion of “poofery” but an infinitely old universe carries its own, philosophical difficulties.

There are a few people who think of infinity like it's just a very large number so when they think of an “infinitely” old universe, they simply stretch the billions of years into a number larger than they can imagine. That's completely wrong. If someone began counting, he would never “eventually” reach infinity. He could count forevermore and he would simply reach bigger and bigger numbers. He'll never get “half way” to infinity. In fact, no point in infinity is ever obtainable. No matter how long he counts, he'll not even have begun to take a step toward infinity. You can't count an infinite set of numbers, you can't travel across an infinite amount of space, and you can't cross an infinite amount of time. Get it? It's important that this point be understood because I'm going somewhere with it.

Those people who believe matter is infinitely old have to believe that the Big Bang occurred “after” an infinite history. In other words, they have to believe the Big Bang happened at some point after an eternity had already passed! Logically speaking, that's absurd. It's even more absurd than believing in poofery. No matter how much time has passed, there hasn't been enough time for us to have reached this point if the universe is infinitely old!

I was looking for some quotes to use in this post and it seems I'm not the first person to notice this dilemma. Physicist and blogger, Dr. Dave Goldberg, made this comment in a post titled, What Happened Before the Big Bang:

… [W]e absolutely don't know what happened before the Big Bang. Regardless, logic dictates that we're left with one of two possibilities:

• The universe had some sort of beginning, in which case we're left with the very unsettling problem of what caused the universe in the first place.
• The universe has been around forever, in which case there's literally an infinite amount of history, both before and after us.

Wow! My thoughts exactly. Once I read his article, I feared people might suspect me of plagiarism. He even uses my “north of the North Pole” analogy (it's not my analogy, of course, but one that has been used many times before). Hopefully my readers know me better than to suspect me of plagiarism.

I'm sure the absurdities of their theory weigh heavily on the minds on many scientists. A good theory should explain all the facts but all natural theories about the origin of our universe leave way too many questions unanswered to satisfy the curious mind. There are so many facts still unexplained that no natural explanation of the ultimate origin of matter is deserving of the title, “theory.” Dr. Goldberg explores some very fanciful solutions. Each one is very technical sounding but none of them amount to anything more than story-telling.

Dr. Goldberg makes no effort to defend the second option. Perhaps he sees impossibility of an infinite past. What strikes me most about his quote is his use of the word, “unsettling.” The first option is only “unsettling” if you reject the very reasonable conclusion that the universe has a supernatural Creator: One who is, Himself, eternal and so is able to create a “beginning” at any moment He desires. One who is also able to create ex nihilo (out of nothing).

There is such a Creator. We call Him, Lord!

Happy Mother's Day!

Do not forsake the teachings of your mother!

Proverbs 6:20