In the year 2018 the debate “What Best Explains Reality: Theism or Atheism? (Frank Turek vs. Michael Shermer)” took place. Frank presented his case for the existence of God as the best explanation for some facts about reality, such as the origin and fine-tuned of the universe and the objective moral values and duties. One of Shermer's arguments to demonstrate the deficiency of the hypothesis of God was to present the famous analogy of "The Dragon in The Garage", used for the first time by Carl Sagan in his book The Demon-Haunted World.







This is the original analogy:



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.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.



Shermer's version has some variants to ridicule Frank's stance on the existence of God as an explanation of the origin of the universe, the objective moral values, ​​and duties and the fine-tuning of the universe. The main objective of Shermer is to prove that the existence of God is impossible to refute in the same way that theists can't refute the existence of the dragon in the garage. But is this a good argument? Not really. Let me explain why.



The first thing that Shermer wants us to believe using Sagan's analogy is that the properties of God that the theists attribute to him are mere gratuitous affirmations without any evidence. Here Shermer has in mind the revealed theology, those attributes that we know that God possesses through his word revealed to us. But in the debate with Frank one does not affirm the attributes of God as in the case of the dragon in the garage. And although it is not necessary, let me compare the fire-breathing dragon and God with their respective attributes.



The case for the Fire-Breathing Dragon in The Garage



Invisibility. This attribute is granted without any evidence.



Floating in the air. Neither is inferred based on any evidence.



Cold Fire. Like the previous ones, there is no argument to attribute this property to the dragon; moreover, the property is self-contradictory.



Immateriality. Zero arguments, and like cold fire-breathing, this is a contradictory property of a dragon. For a dragon to be a dragon, it must have a body with certain essential properties of a dragon, it can't be incorporeal.



The case for God



Creator, metaphysically necessary, self-existent. These attributes are inferred through the argument of contingent beings and the ontological argument.



Transcendent, personal cause, beginningless, uncaused, timeless,