A story this time! First part is a famous piece written by others, but I made an extended version about the brick wall that I hit in conversations with many believers.
The Fire Breathing Dragon – a Short Story
“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage” Suppose 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.
You start to get a bit annoyed by my claims about the dragon. It is does not feel like a dragon at all, more like a slippery eel that you can’t get your hands on.
But then you find out that I believe that dragons hold back laser beams. So you setup yet another experiment: fill the garage walls completely with laser beams, just 5 centimeters apart.
“So are we going to see the dragon now?”
“We should not unleash the anger of the dragon by testing him”, I stummer, “but I have good faith that you will finally see the dragon reality now and your eyes will be opened”.
You switch on all the laser beams and what happens? They fill the whole garage, no dragon to be found.
I am silent for a minute. I place my hand on your shoulders and say: “You know what your problem is? You are using logic. You should not use logic with a dragon. You are putting yourself as the dragon of all dragons, judging whether this dragon exists or not. Just have faith. This dragon is way smarter than any of us combined. If I would use logic, I may not believe in dragons anymore. But that is not the way of the dragon. You don’t believe in the dragon, so don’t be surprised that you don’t get to see the dragon”.
You are dumbfounded. I just claimed to you that dragons hold back laser beams, but despite seeing the evidence that they don’t, I am questioning the use of evidence and logic itself.
In a final attempt you ask me: “So what is more important to you, truth or dragons?”
“Oh,”, I say, “that is simple. Dragons are the truth, so your question is unnecessary”.
You sigh, and walk out the door. There is nothing left to discuss. We are both a bit sad and frustrated. What a shame, because we used to be such good friends.
The Point
In the discussion I have, on this blog and in real life, I hope this story conveys some of the bewilderment from my side about the arguments thrown at me. I have used a lot of the same arguments – but it really breaks down at the logic. God can’t create a rock that He can’t lift Himself; because God can’t create nonsense. God – if He exists – necessarily has to be logical. Not on our level of logic, but at the end of the day there can only be one consistent reality. Either the dragon is there, or it isn’t. If the dragon says it can hold back laser beams, then the laser beam can be proof of the dragon’s existence.
I really don’t know what to say anymore when the very use of logic is being questioned. It has been, repeatedly now, by many different Christians I know and meet. Okay, God (if He is there at all) is a lot smarter than any of us. I get that. But how can we know anything at all about God, if we can’t even test the claims that others made about God? There have been thousands of religions, thousands of different dragon stories. But even when the contradictions stare us point blank in the face about my or your particular dragon story, then questioning the very use of logic itself is surely not the way forward, is it?
Losing Your BFF 
February 27, 2016 at 00:30
Oh but a guy I know has a sister who went overseas and my dragon was there and she saw it heal this lady of cancer.
So now you HAVE to believe, and if you don’t you clearly just want to sin.
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February 27, 2016 at 17:05
Here is a quote that someone directed to “God” that I included in my book:
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February 27, 2016 at 19:02
Great and poetic quote!
Indeed, when I started to ask the question “What is God REALLY like?”, and started to look critically at what is happening in the Bible, in the world, in nature, it dawned on me that I had it wrong all that time.
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February 27, 2016 at 19:33
Generally speaking I think it is fair to test the claims that believers make about the God they believe in. Even better for me would be to test the claims that God makes about himself in the book that applies to that religion. Because believers can be off-topic, whereas the book has the basics and cannot be wrong (theoretically speaking). If I can speak for the christian faith, the bible ofcourse makes a lot of claims about God. For example if Jesus says: Anyone who drinks from the water that I give him will never be thirsty again (maybe there are better examples) or if he says : whoever sees me, has the seen the Father who is in heaven.. The problem with testing these type of claims is that they do not come with science, reasoning, logic or whatsoever. It requires faith in the first place to be able to receive that “living water” for example. How to find faith? So now the method of using logic appears to be insufficient. Luckily there are alternatives. Maybe I can explain it by using the example of the dragon. What if our dragon is not that furious or dangerous as we generally believe about dragons, but this particular dragon is a bit shy (like we can see in some children stories I guess), and the dragon is hiding in the garage – sitting quiclky in the corner. What if the dragon likes people a lot and loves to chat and help people. Whenever you say a friendly word to the dragon or you expose your personal desire – probably it is cold outside and you are in need of some heat (well dragons can help in that right?). And the dragon is responding to as a friend and starts a trusting relationship with you. I am not saying that this how God works, but my question is: could there be other ways, tools, methods – apart from logic, to test the existence of something or somebody. For example, we do not only have our mind to think with, we also have a body or soul to feel it. So apart from logic, could there be other ways to gain knowledge?
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February 27, 2016 at 19:40
There are tons of ways to gain knowledge. We have our five senses, we have feelings, we have kindness, relations, psychology, biology, mathematics, our daily lives, etc. etc.
The point is, how do we judge in all these things what is true or not? What is reality, what is just our creative mind having an original idea about a dragon that does not relate to reality? I can’t think of any other way than using logic if you care about truth.
But why ask me, and not answer the question for yourself? What are your tools for discerning whether the dragon is real, besides the logic that seems to be failing? And how can that be convincing to other people who don’t share your assumptions about the dragon already?
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February 27, 2016 at 20:13
If relationship would be a valid means to check if the dragon is “true”, the dragon would exist for me if I would FEEL the relationship with the dragon. For other people with different basic assumptions, this would be complete unconvincing I guess. For others – for example Hindus that I know – this might already make bit more sense, as I know for them it is completely normal to expect there are Gods really existent. Now we do agree there are different ways to gather knowledge, then next question which method would most sense for which question or problem. Now from the bible I know that it is not human wisdom that can explain me that he really, as this can only understood spiritiually (1 cor. 2). So based on that I know that I need an external source to help me understand what is really true from what appears to be true. So I would ask the Holy Spirit to lead me in the truth. But I can imagine this answer is already too mcuh faith/bible oriented 🤔
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February 27, 2016 at 20:34
I have zero problems with the concept of ‘revelation’. We need revelation to know something about God, which is exactly what I have been looking for.
However, which revelation is real? Do you really think that your feelings in your heart are the truth? How can they be distinguished from those of Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or …? Or from Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostals? Or are you the only one with those guiding feelings?
In short: you will need logic to ascertain whether or not your feelings make sense. I sometimes feel like my body could fall to the sky if I lay with my back in the grass, but it is completely irrational. Yet the feeling is very strong. How can you be so sure your feelings are not betraying you, given the fact that you have every inclination to stay in your faith as it provides you with so many benefits and shapes your whole life?
And zooming out again, how is this helping the dragon to become real? As I said in my blog already: he is only real if you believe in him? That is not the picture that the Bible paints of God.
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March 1, 2016 at 21:56
When you me or you would walk on snow with our bare feets, we surely would feel VERY COLD. And if I would stand on top of a very high cliff, at least I could feel FEAR TO FALL. No one of use would in this case ever ‘doubt’ if what we feel is really the truth, right? So when it comes to feelings about the things we cannot see with our eyes, not hear with our hears, nor touch with our hands, why do we suddenly doubt our feelings? What is the reasoning behind that? Is it because we all have difficulty to believe there is a world that is unpossible for us to measure in terms of cold and hard facts? A world that does not fit in our rationale way of thinking? Anw why is that so difficult in the first place? Well you tell me. It is probably because of the way we were taught in the Western world on how to think, and gave highest value to the results of own thinking, shape by how our educations and studies were setup.
So I am not saying that every interpretation of a feeling is automatically is ‘the truth’ – since my feelings could also mislead me; no doubt in that, but I could train my ‘sense of feeling’ to receive truthfull information. Apart from that I myself a few years ago was questioning the whole idea of feelings, because it all sounded me way to emotional (for rational person like me; believe it or not ;-)). Than in a later stage I came to understand that when a person says “I am feeling this or that ” he does not necessarily talks about his emotions, but he is about to express something that has inspired him, and is finding words to bring it to ‘the understanding world’ (the rationale, the mind). So feeling have to do with my most inner being, which I believe is the spirit every person carries. That spirit can receive information (‘truth’ if you want) and pass to the sould where the mind, the emotions and the will stay. This spirit – our most inner being is telling us we want to be happy and that we want to be loved, and to love others etc.
Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostals – humans in general – can all experience truth this way I would expect.
So finding the dragon to be real, one way is to have a truthful experience. This can be very convincing.
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February 27, 2016 at 21:50
Féél the relationship with the dragon.. or is that another part of your emotion/brain/psychology that is tricking you? I feel that lots of ‘god-led’ feelings, insights, revelations, experiences where not god-led but part of an unconcious part of myself. I feel that my search on psychoanalysis did not do any good to my faith.
a really good book that helps me redifine identity is ‘sources of the self’ from charles Taylor.
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February 27, 2016 at 22:28
That sounds like a book which I should read. Thanks!
PS I have also send you an email, unfortunately my emails sometimes end up in peoples spam boxes… just saying 🙂
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February 28, 2016 at 09:08
Hoi, ik kan je mail nergens terugvinden, wil je hem nogmaals sturen? Groetjes van MirandA
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March 1, 2016 at 22:05
It would be sad to believe that everything that can be “explaned” by psychologist would no longer be ‘true’ neither ‘God’ but all ‘mind fuck’. Then we would just be stupid human beings fooling ourselves constantly – can you believe that? The science of psychology to me it researching and describing the behavior of humans and trying to explain that in terms of causes and consequences and ‘how the brain thinks’. If God would exist, psychology can probably still be true in their description. God is working through and in human beings; the world of ‘God’ and ‘psychology’ might perfectly fit and not exclude each other.
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March 6, 2016 at 20:55
RotsVast,
Talking about psychology: the nice thing about a secular worldview is the realisation that it’s just neurons firing in your brain that are talking. And if you have studied neural networks: they get stuff wrong – a lot. It is a process of trial and error to get to the right result. We are wired to survive dangerous animals – not to figure out the metaphysical reality.
The realisation that we are all full of nonsense is actually quite liberating. It explains why people believe in UFOs, conspiracy theories, thousands of different religions, etcetera. It is only through a thorough, question-everything methodology that we can arrive at stuff that is relating to reality and can move us forward – science is proving to be that method. Religion on the other hand, and the belief in invisible dragons or other invisible things, can not be proven to be real, even more, can be shown to be part of this ‘mind fuck’ as you call it.
After all, Jesus is invisible and left a book full of errors, unlogical things, wild stories (take the Exodus) and a church that is divided to the core on what the actual Christian teaching is. Jesus is behaving awfully similar to a Jesus that is not around at all – just like the invisible dragon.
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February 28, 2016 at 12:01
hoi, ik heb de mail in geen enkele mailbox gevonden, wil je hem nogmaals sturen? groet!
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February 29, 2016 at 09:34
Ik heb je mail gehad hoor, nu nog in een rustig moment beantwoorden…
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February 28, 2016 at 13:53
Interesting post!
I’ve been reading some Anthony Flew recently and there is a good resemblance between your post and his essay on theology and falsification where he talks about what he calls the death by a thousand qualifications.
I do agree with RotsVast that logic won’t help with proving the existence of God, but I can’t really buy into the story of feeling something based on what the Bible says. In order to do that you need to have a foundation that enables you to accept the Bible as the truth and everything else as a lie. What is the foundation?
Magicians are able to let you think and feel a lot, but in the end they’re playing games with you.
I rather enjoy the show than trying to understand it all.
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March 1, 2016 at 22:12
Accepting the bible can be based on historical bible research; how it all became together and was preserved for the future, and how lives were touched by this great work. Accepting the bible, would everything outside the bible necessarily be lie or could other works also contain value and truth? I see more room there.
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March 2, 2016 at 19:53
Thanks for sharing your views!
To be honest: i think it’s a slippery slope…
None of “the requirements” you mentioned make the bible a unique or divine book.
And even the criteria for things like “how lives were touched” sound quite tricky. How is that defined and should one balance it with all the harm done as a result of the book also?
Another point would indeed be that there are quite a few more books out there that didn’t make it to “the” canon. They were preserved but the “powerful people” deciding on the canon just didn’t pick them. So in the end it might even be all based on human power & flawed insights & bias… which for me doesn’t make sense for Gods book?
So yeah, I respect your views, but do want to mention that I don’t think they are that compelling to make a case for a holy or divine book that can guide us make the right decisions.
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March 3, 2016 at 07:07
From the book: ‘leaving the fold’: ‘All scripture is inspired by God. (2 Timothy 3:16)
Fundamentalist Christianity rests on circular reasoning and pat answers. The belief system is brilliantly constructed to provide its own support—if you don’t look too closely at the logic. It is a closed system, satisfied with its own internal evidence of truth. It is closed in that any information or argument from outside is rejected a priori because, as discussed above, it is a “lie,” not of the “truth.”
All questions are answered within the belief system itself, usually with circular reasoning, for example:
Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:6)
The tautology in this passage is absurd when you think about it, but deceptive and powerful for the person fearing for salvation. In essence, it says “We’re right and the world is wrong because we say so, and the proof of being of God is whether someone listens to us, while the proof of being wrong is listening to them.”
There is no question for which there is not some kind of answer, and these answers are not disprovable, using the internal terminology and assumptions of the system and therefore appearing convincing to the person wanting very much to believe. This seeming defeat of all criticism constitutes a masterful manipulation. The new convert is often enormously impressed with the seasoned believer who can repeat all of the canned responses, most of which either “answer” simply by denying the validity of the question or by evoking the perfection of God and the ‘sinfulness of mankind, as some examples show:
Q: I have accepted Jesus as my Savior, but I don’t feel any different.
A: Being saved is not about feelings; it’s about obeying the Word of God.
Q: How is it fair for millions of people who have never heard of Christ to go to hell?
A: God is just and we must trust Him to make those judgments. Just because you don’t believe in hell doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Q: What if you’re the one that’s wrong about this? We can’t really know for sure, can we?
A: I’ll be okay either way, whereas you are taking a great risk. If you accept Jesus, there’s nothing to lose.
Q: I see a lot of Christians that are no better than anyone else.
A: Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven. You aren’t supposed to look at other people for examples. Jesus is our only role model.
Q: What about other religions that also claim to know God?
A: Humans will naturally seek relationship with God, and many false religions have grown up. It only proves that man needs God, not that they are true.’
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March 6, 2016 at 19:34
I would love to write a blog on the statement that the bible is trustworthy. I know people were involved in making up the canon, but there was a process of recognition before ‘the pastors decided’. But this would take a huge amount of time. Not for now. But thanks for respecting my views. I do recognize that from the christian faith also violence came, so yes this makes it more complex. Also I liked the story of the dragon as a picture for having this disussion. And I also want to recognize that not everything in the bible is very logic, and probably I should also not want to make all too logic.tx
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March 6, 2016 at 21:00
I would encourage you to do this, and also encourage you to read more than the ‘case for Christ’ or other Christian sources just meant to encourage the average church member.
Proper theology books (that the pastor in your church should have studied as well) will show you that the history of the Bible is very shaky at best. Most of the Old Testament was written 6 centuries or so B.C. just to get started. Lots of epistles in the Bible were not actually written by the claimed author. They were compiled later on for various reasons. This is all stuff well known to the average theologian but not to the average church goer.
When I learned all of this, at times it felt like this stuff was one big cover-up, because the details were nasty and nobody tells you this in small group meetings or sermons.
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March 6, 2016 at 19:38
@zoekengelovend. Is it really true that God says that people not hearded about him go hell? and is how is hell described in the bible?
I am sure about the answer, but not about the question…
Q: How is it fair for millions of people who have never heard of Christ to go to hell?
A: God is just and we must trust Him to make those judgments. Just because you don’t believe in hell doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
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March 8, 2016 at 06:11
Maybe it is not hell as people were thinking of in middle age centuries, with eternal fire. But the bible speaks quite clearly about ‘in’ and ‘out’, ‘saved’ and ‘lost’, condemnation, salvation, etc.
John 3:16; For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:18; He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
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March 7, 2016 at 21:06
Somewhere we need to stop this disussion as I do recognize there is lot to study about which I did only in part and you had these type of studies more complete. And at some point we should agree that we will disagree, but still be open for stuff. Although I still want to question (so hard for me to stop….;-)) if it is liberating to find out that every Godly thing (any religion) people believe in in todays world is completely nonsense and fiction. How can clever people (or even the cleverest) design technology on the highest level and some of them still find the courage to bend there knees and pray to an unproven God. Then people we really stupid??.. My subjective understanding is that at the bottom of every heart there is a deep long for more than we can see with our natural senses and it doesn’t sound ‘logical’ to me that this desire it there completely for nothing and completely erroneous. Because if so many people are in error in what they think, what is the root cause for that? Then a second remark that it is hard for me to agree on the basic assumption that something needs to be proven in the scientifical sense, before we can it trust to be true. This is were faith comes in. Faith is something spiritual that is beyond scientifical prove. Like people can BELIEVE the medicin can help, there is no need that the medicin itself will be helpfull, but the believe in the medicion already turns about to have a very positive affact. oke. let me stop here. Please share your final thoughts.
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March 7, 2016 at 21:13
Hi,
Nice to see your comments after you decided to stop commenting 🙂
Your question how people can believe in religion or the supernatural, while even being very intelligent is a good one. There are many books on that. Actually I know someone in your household (guess who) who has a book “Leaving th Fold” which describes the basic human dilemma and how religion provides answers. There are many more books and this may be an interesting topic for you to read on.
Also, faith itself is great (I know the feeling) but will in itself need to be examined critically. You and me both know that faith can also lead to very silly beliefs. It is just so that the human brain is wired to think that its own beliefs are always valid (myside reasoning), so this is a vicious cycle. I see no need for a supernatural reality to explain this at all, especially not since human beings are so divided on the supernatural reality anyway. If there was really one God, why wouldnt everybody develop the same kind of faith?
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March 8, 2016 at 08:19
I had an invisible dragon check out your house. Didn’t you feel it? 😉
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April 27, 2016 at 21:09
Just to lighten things up a bit, here’s a story about a dragon, also imaginary, by one of my countrymen:
(Kiwi humour)
Robert
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