Monster House Presents

It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.

A giant hairy creature, part ape, part mad.

In Larkness, a 24-mile long bottomless lake in the highlands of Scotland.

It's a creature known as the Loch Ness Monster.

It's a creature known as the science show about monsters. I'm Blake Smith. And I'm Karen Stolzner. In this two-part interview with Dr. Philip Center, we will be looking at the

evolution of dragons and how dragons are being used to battle against the concept of evolution

and natural selection.

In part one, we're going to be focusing on dragons and how they evolved from ancient Greek and Roman mythicized serpents

into the quadrupedal fire breathing monsters that populate fantasy and legend.

And then next week, in part two, we're going to dive in on to how creation is to arguing that the legends of dragons are rooted in real-world human experience, coexisting with dinosaurs.

There's an assumption I usually make about our listenership that you're here because you love monsters and science, and many people rely on their religions as a source of morality and spiritual guidance, but the narratives of religion often provide

creation stories and explanations for how the world works and why. And as humans have developed

science as a method for inquiry and discovery, a huge pile of logical inferences and material

evidence that contradicts mythic narratives have emerged, and a lot of science directly refutes

the literal interpretation of sacred documents

and narratives. And when one is faced with this conflict, one has to ask oneself if it is possible

to accept that the world we live in is one we can understand through these findings, or do we need to

reject the evidence and rely on the stories of ancient myth as the only truth. I know many

scientists who reconcile this, but taking these stories as instructive metaphors, which allows

them to be beloved and meaningful, but doesn't require them to reject the evidence that suggests

we live in a natural world subject to natural laws, which can, through rigorous inquiry,

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