"I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!" In Carl Sagan's book chapter "The Dragon in My Garage," he argues that various claims about the existence of supernatural beings and how just because people cannot see it does not mean the reality of it being true does not exist. On the other hand, in Michael Shermer's reading of "How Thinking Goes Wrong," he discusses several skeptical reasons of beliefs and disbeliefs. Shermer and Sagan both address similar ways our thinking can go wrong, but they both use different rhetorical strategies. Shermer has some good arguments in his readings, but Sagan provides you with more relatable and effective theories. In Sagan's…show more content… He was the "token skeptic" and he went through this process and saw things that did not make sense, so "he recalled the experience under hypnosis and it was a case of false memory either by the hypnotist or fantasized by the man" (44). Shermer continues to move onto several different examples of "weird things happening" organized into different category titles and different types of skeptic beliefs and disbeliefs. The shorts paragraphs in Shermer's readings are over supernatural creatures, things, ideas and amongst other things. Shermer gave a lot of examples about all the attributes to how easy it is to not believe in…show more content… He uses an example such as a dragon because it just works or because a dragon is just the most fairy tale-like creature to imagine having in your garage. For instance, if someone were to tell a skeptic that a bunny-rabbit has been living in a shoe box, in their room without food or water for years would you believe it? That is hard to believe, so they keep asking questions and they keep providing them with realistic ways to make it seem like their claim is true, such as the bunny having "super powers." It is hard for them to disprove their accusation because they always have reasons to why it is true, so they just go with it. It does not matter what they say because most people are skeptical about any and everything, so it wouldn't matter if Carl Sagan had used an example of a ghost, alien, or even heavenly voices it is just a validity of claims. People should treat all claims equally because it is no different from their beliefs in certain religion or anything that they swear by, it is just controversy amongst a variety of people. Believe what they want to
