The comedian Dave Allen would tell this story. An atheist and the pope (why not) are having a heated discussion about the existence of God. The pope says “You are like a man who is totally blindfolded in a completely dark room looking for a black cat that is not there”.
The atheist reply is “We are similar. You are like a man who is totally blindfolded in a completely dark room looking for a black cat that is not there. The only difference is that you found it.”
This gets me thinking about Sagan’s Dragon from “The Demon-Haunted World”. Carl Sagan imagines a conversation with a man and Sagan claims he has a dragon in his garage. The man doesn’t believe it. Carl invites him over and takes him to the garage. “Here is the dragon”.
The man says “I don’t see any dragon”. Sagan says “Oh, I forgot to mention the dragon is invisible”.
The man says “Well I should be able to see footprints”. Sagan: “Oh no. The dragon has no mass so he doesn’t leave footprints.
The man says “I have an infrared camera. We can see the heat signature from the fire-breathing dragon.” “Nope, sorry, this flame is heatless”.
“I know”, says the man, “I’ll spray paint the dragon”. “That won’t work, the dragon is not corporeal. The paint won’t stick.”
You could continue along this line.
“Dragons must create methane. We can test for that.” “No, this dragon does not produce methane.”
“The dragon must generate some noise. Maybe snores when sleeping.” “No, this dragon is absolutely quiet and he uses a CPAP machine when asleep.”
“Let me guess, the CPAP machine is also invisible.” “Why, yes, how did you know?”
At some point, there is simply no difference between the invisible dragon and no dragon at all.
