In my last post, I discussed a rather horrible response to Carl Sagan's dragon example. Now, in that response, the apologist was essentially addressing two questions at once — one about his god belief in regards to the example and a second about proof for this god. In my post, I indicated that Sagan's example isn't looking for the type of "proof" this author was suggesting. I must now admit that isn't fully true.
Sagan's examples are really a starting point for investigating the dragon. If someone had merely visually seen the dragon, that would not have been enough to say, "Yep, that's a dragon alright!" Maybe it's actually a robot made to look like a dragon. Maybe it's a holographic projection. What we do get, though, is a starting point where we can say, "Yes, there is certainly something here that we can investigate!" It would seem the apologist should agree that there is a starting point*; he has written a book that is supposed to "cover...the evidence for God from science."
So why not include some of these things? Well, for starters, the person the apologist is addressing is an atheist who has already expressed that they were not impressed by the apologist's work. But, also, the apologist may already suspect the atheist won't even agree on those starting points. If the apologist's arguments are anything like "DNA is a message!" then there likely won't be agreement. Better to dismiss the argument entirely than entertain an argument you know won't fly.
* This is the actual reason his "list...of things which certainly do not exist" is bollocks. We can, for the most part, agree that there are things there that can be investigated, even if such investigations are challenging.
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