Because God Is An Invisible Dragon

Last updated on: November 21, 2011 at 3:06 pm by Marc

Because God Is An Invisible Dragon 2011-11-21T15:06:33-05:00 Marc

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Thank you everyone, for the taking the time to answer that pressing question, Why Aren’t You Catholic? So far, answers have been most excellent, respectful, and thought-provoking – traits I can only reward by offering up the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, as administered by a Catholic priest, for you heathens, on this blessed feast day. If you aren’t Catholic, let us know why! I would like, first and foremost, to share with you Abemore’s reasons for not being Catholic, which were exemplified by Carl Sagan’s comparison of the idea of God to an invisible dragon. If there is no evidence, says Sagan, then what is the difference between there being no invisible dragon, and in comparison, no God? The dragon cannot be proven to exist by any manner of tests, and so:

…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.

haters gonna hate

And this is true. There is no flour we can throw on the floor to show the footprints of God, no paint to spray that would reveal his form, and so the Christian weeps and the atheist rejoices. But here’s where the metaphor fails to satisfy, intellectually. If there were an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon, he would have been created by God. He would be a ‘natural’ being. “What, natural? An invisible dragon?” Yes, moron, not in the sense of being normal but in the sense of being a part of the universe, and thus obeying it’s laws. After all, Sagan placed him in a garage, creating the absolutely sensible expectation that this dragon should obey the same laws that everything else in the garage obeys, the car, the tool-box, the whiskey your teenager has been hiding for 5 years, etc.

But the theist’s claim has never been that there is God in their garage, and you can’t see him because he’s a very special thing that has all sorts of really cool qualities that make him hard to see, but OK believe him, HAHA K?!! cuz hes aaawesome, OMG, K?!?!? OMG LOL!!! Alright, maybe some Christians do argue like that, and for them Catholics have been redfacedly apologizing for a quite a while. No, God is supernatural.

I understand this word makes many atheist’s jaws clench, bringing to mind ghost-hunting reality T.V shows, so let me remind everyone that all supernatural means is ‘outside of nature’. The universe, good science has shown, is finite. We believe God is outside of this finite universe, which encompasses the laws of nature. So to submit God to the experiments that test if He follows the laws of nature, and thus exists, seems a little stupid. If Sagan had been told that this dragon’s nature was outside of the universe, and thus outside of the laws of the universe, would he really have been pissed to find his tests based on the laws of the universe – like mass, visibility etc. – failed?

But before you claim that I am copping-out, saying, “OMG!!! HES TOTES OUTSIDE! OF THE UNIVERS! LOL! SO YOU CANT PROVE HE DOSENT EXIST SO HE TOTES EXISTS! DUH! JK! LMAO OMG, IM SO COOL!?!! LOL!!”, understand that the above was not me giving evidence for God existing. I’m merely begging atheists of intelligence to change their tact. It wins all sorts of visual points to say God is just like Santa Claus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster or an invisible dragon, but these comparisons are false and misleading, as I’ve shown. Agreed?

So what are we to do? If the claim is that God’s very nature is supernatural, how can we possibly know anything about him? Sure, it means that Sagan’s dragon is stupid, but doesn’t it leave Christians with even less evidence, and the atheist with all the more reason to say, you cannot provide evidence of your God? The answer would be yes, if not for a few more characteristics of God, and one characteristic of man.

First is the claim that God is the creator of the universe. Say for instance, that Sagan had been told. “Listen, Carl, your garage was created by an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.” This is a claim that could be investigated by Carl’s previously failed tests. Knowing something about the idea of fire-breathing dragons, he could look for scorch marks, for melted metal and walls built with the desire to keep out knights. He might observe the princess- holding cage and say, “Yes, the evidence would suggest that my garage is dragon-made.” Or conversely, his garage might be far too small for a dragon, far too neat, with no princess-holding cage, to which our Mr. Sagan would straighten up and – with all the authority of science – declare, “My garage was not made by a dragon. I will make a YouTube video explaining how stupid you are for suggesting that.” The claim humanity has made of our Creator is threefold; that he is intelligent, creative, and that we are the most important of his individual creations. Science has certainly validated that our universe, our massive garage, reflects these three characteristics. The claim we make of man is that he is created in the image and likeness of God. The fact that we can comprehend the universe around us; that we can delve deep into the atom, the cell, the origin of the universe, the speed of light and all it’s implications – all this goes to show that, were there a Creator, he and we are of like mind. There’s the evidence you wanted. Here ya go.

jk Abemore. Have a great day.

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