Faith?

[Ryft]

First, if you will notice, Sagan does not address my question. Had an answer to my question existed, I would have confronted it. That is why I posed my question to you in the first place. "Tell me what evidence one should expect, given a dragon that is invisible, floating, and transcendent?"

None, since the Dragon has been defined out of science. That's the point.

Seriously? So if there is no empirical evidence to be had, one should not expect any evidence at all? Sounds like you are saying, "If it's not empirical, then it's not evidence"—a view which would harbor several horrific problems, but one you are nevertheless entitled to.

I do not think it unreasonable in the slightest to say something probably doesn't exist when ...

Me neither. However, that is not what you said, Eilonnwy. The switch you just pulled here is blatant. If I put it to the other members of this site, I'm sure they would be able to detect what the difference is between (i) "there really is not a dragon" and (ii) "there probably is not a dragon." The former is what you had said. The former is what commits the fallacy. The former is what Sagan neither does nor would support. To conclude ¬P ("there really is not a dragon") based on the lack of evidence for P ("there is a dragon") commits the ad ignorantiam fallacy. Q.E.D.

If you want to change your statement and substitute "really" with "probably" then please, by all means, do so. But be honest about it. All right? It is intellectually dishonest to not only change your statement without comment but also try and accuse me of "parsing words to stretch this into a fallacy."

Maybe the problem is you're stuck in your BS philosophical reasoning, and I'm talking about the real world here.

As the evidence seems to indicate, the bullshit is not coming from my philosophical reasoning.