The Dragon In My Garage

You are an UFO interested / researcher / fanatic / else?

NEVER forget this master piece by Carl Sagan.

Confront it with the phrase "Absence of Evidence Isn´t Evidence Of Absence".

Sorry for my english.

www.godlessgeeks.com...

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. 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. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, 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.

[edit on 9-1-2008 by Orion437]

Now this is something i like to see
the human mind evolving another step

OK.............
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Nice post.... but... doesnt it belong to a different forum?

linuxman2k3, the invisible dragon story is a direct prarallel to the UFO story. I find it interesting you didnt make the connection.

[edit on 10-1-2008 by yeti101]

Why is there a spate recently of people posting HUGE quotes from some random book that has nothign to do with UFO's or extraterrestrials. Just curious


Mod Edit :
Leave the Moderating to us.

Mod Note: One Line / Off Topic Post – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 10-1-2008 by elevatedone]

Originally posted by jainatorres
...that has nothign to do with UFO's or extraterrestrials.

Not only does it apply to UFOs...it applies to pretty much every forum on this site.

Great find OP. You get a star and a flag from me.


(edit for spelling)





[edit on 10-1-2008 by Essedarius]

then why not just say "there's a UFO in my garage" I dont see what dragons have to do with anything here. Last I heard UFO's are solid vehicles manned by grey extraterrestrials. Anything else is just bunk

Originally posted by jainatorres
Why is there a spate recently of people posting HUGE quotes from some random book that has nothign to do with UFO's or extraterrestrials. Just curious

It has everything to do with UFOs; let me put it in a UFO-centric context.*

You come to me and say you have proof aliens are visiting the Earth because you are an alien abductee.

I say show me the aliens, and you say they only come when there's no one else around. I say I'll stay with you until they show up, and you say they'll "turn me off" and get you while I'm sleeping. I'll tell you to wake me up then, and you'll say you can't because you'll be under their control. I say, we'll set up a video-camera to catch them, and you say they will come after it shuts off.

So, then I tell you there is no way to prove these aliens exist. You say you have physical evidence. You have wounds, like scoop marks, on your body you don't remember recieving. But, we know people get hurt all the time and not notice it immediately, without aliens being involved. You say you have an "implant," but we know that there are ways for foriegn objects to get inside the human body, without aliens being involved. If you're a female, you'll say you were pregnant but the aliens took your baby; but we know there are such things as false pregnancies and miscarriages without aliens being involved.

Can you see now how the dragon in the garage applies to UFOs and aliens?

*yes, this is an over-simplification of the alien abduction phenomena. I have neither time nor space to go into great detail. However, this simplification serves our purposes.

yeti101,Essedarius,SaviorComplex thanks a lot for the input.

I am an ufo fanatic from such a long time, but i guess that this text by Sagan keeps me rational when im bordering the irrational sometimes

reply to post by Orion437


Orion437,

Thanks for reminding me about that essay from Carl Sagan. I remembered reading this story several years ago, but I forgot who wrote it. I remember now that it was from Sagan's book 'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark'.

After reading your post, I went through my box of books in my closet and pulled this book out. I think I will read it one more time.

Carl Sagan was often very thought-provoking. Thanks again.