THE DRAGON IN MY GARAGE

Carl Sagan no seu livro "THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD" publicou um raciocínio análogo ao do bule. Para os ateus é uma leitura obrigatória. Para os religiosos parem de perder tempo rezando e ganhem tempo lendo.
"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, except 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."
(Carl Sagan, THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD, Chapter 10 THE DRAGON IN MY GARAGE)

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