Dragons and Isaiah – Awesome

Everything is better with dragons!





The Book

August 2, 1979 was a great day in American history. On that day a speculative natural history titled “The Flight of Dragons” was published. It was written by Peter Dickinson and fully illustrated by Wayne Anderson. It argued that flying dragons really existed and were responsible for the widespread tales of dragons throughout the cultures of the world. They were super modified dinosaurs that used hydrochloric acid to dissolve rapidly growing bone to produce hydrogen. They filled up like balloons and floated around. This ability to fly developed as a survival mechanism. They breathed fire by expelling the highly flammable hydrogen through their mouths as a necessity because they produced it quite rapidly. There are no remains of any dragon because the chemical reaction to produce the hydrogen had highly corrosive byproducts and a dragon’s body would simply dissolve after death.



The Film

 In 1982 the information from the book and the plot from the 1976 book “The Dragon and the George” were combined into an animated feature with the title “The Flight of Dragons.” The film focused strongly on the loss of magic from the world as it was replaced by logic and science. In the final showdown between the protagonist Peter Dickinson (played by John Ritter) and the evil wizard Ommadon (played by James Earl Jones), Peter used a discussion of logic and science to completely destroy Ommadon. As of 21 May 2013 you can watch this scene on youtube.

Now pay attention! This is the part where the bible starts to come in.


Ommadon: “I can do anything. Test me. Do you want me to reach up and pluck down the Sun?”

Peter: “You can’t do that.”

Ommadon: “Why? Why, you insect? Why?”

Peter: “Seven heads and each one a simpleton. Don’t you know what you reach for isn’t in that position anymore?”

Ommadon: “The Sun is the Sun. I can see where it is.”

Peter: “Where it was pipsqueak. Any schoolboy knows that light travels at 186,300 miles per second. What you see is the Sun’s position eight and a half minutes ago.”

Ommadon: “No magic but mine can move the Sun. I command it.”

Peter: “Not magic gas-head, mathematics.”



The Inspiration for the Plot

The book of Isaiah tells us that once upon a time, King Hezekiah was really sick and was about to die. He was smart though, and prayed to Yahweh for a return to health. Yahweh sent Isaiah to tell Hezekiah that he wasn’t going to die from his sickness. Yahweh was going to add 15 years to his life and as an added bonus Yahweh would keep the Assyrians from conquering Jerusalem. To prove to Hezekiah that he was telling the truth, Yahweh made the Sun move back 10 degrees in the sky.

You see, no magic but Yahweh’s can move the Sun. Of course because we now know that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than the Sun revolving around the Earth, so Jahweh wasn’t really moving the Sun anyway. He quickly reversed the Earth’s rotation, and then let it return to normal.

This is how cool Yahweh is: The Earth turns at 1,070 miles per hour. Its velocity was reversed instantaneously for a total velocity change of 2,140 miles per hour and nobody on the planet felt it. Then it spun backward for 700 miles and reversed velocity again. Yahweh is so good at damping momentum that the only way anyone could tell Yahweh was jacking with the Earth was by watching a sundial. Awesome!

Moral: no magic but Yahweh’s can move the sun.

Ref: Isaiah 38: 1-8