Home › Forums › Open Discussion › Remember Carl Sagan? Anniversary of his death
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December 16, 2013 at 7:06 pm #609945
wakefloodParticipantHey, for those of you who have an appreciation for the man or what he stood for, here’s one of his last interviews and some words of wisdom about the world.
Hard to believe it’s been 17 yrs. already. I sure wish he’d stuck around. Inspired many young adults.
Oh, and his comments?…
…NAILED IT!
December 16, 2013 at 9:21 pm #801609
VBDParticipantThat’s an excellent interview. I remember it when it was new, and it’s just as compelling today. I attended a lecture of his during his “Pale Blue Dot” tour. He was heckled by a few religious folks, but answered them with a brilliant response while maintaining complete respect.
We need another Carl Sagan. Badly.
December 17, 2013 at 12:00 am #801610
PangolinPieParticipantNeil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye are trying hard to fill those very big shoes. I loved Sagan and his show, and his books…I wish he were still with us too.
December 17, 2013 at 2:16 am #801611
JayDeeParticipantHis refrain of “billions and billions” in Cosmos in 1980 reinforced my evolving “religious” beliefs–If Gawd had made us so special, why were we stuck on this nice but insignificant rock circling a Joe-Six Pack star in a big galaxy in a universe chock full of galaxies?
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His observations echoed with Mark Twain’s earlier observations that in the late Paleozoic, surely Oysters (and other bivalves) thought they were the pinnacle of evolution.
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Thanks for being with us Carl for your brief span on this pale blue dot.
December 17, 2013 at 2:15 pm #801612
anonymeParticipantI watched the interview on Upworthy several days ago. Carl Sagan has long been one of my heroes. He embodied the concepts of humanism, and defied the stereotypes so many use to demonize atheism – all with warmth, intelligence, and humility. He was a one-off.
December 17, 2013 at 2:32 pm #801613
wakefloodParticipantHere, here, anon.
And for me, his humility makes for an ironic contemplation. When I ponder what Jesus would have been like I think he would have been much more like the atheist Sagan than any of the self-engrandizing, TV evangelistas like Osteen or even Billy Graham.
December 17, 2013 at 2:53 pm #801614
JoBParticipantwakeflood..
i don’t think you have to believe in God
to revere the wonders of this earth
nor do i believe that belief and science are necessarily opposing concepts..
December 17, 2013 at 3:20 pm #801615
wakefloodParticipantI agree with you to a point, JoB. That point being whether or not you believe in an interventionist deity.
You don’t need faith to explain anything about the universe save whether you think somebody kicked off the whole thing. If at any point after that you choose to substitute a controlling entity for a scientific process, you’re choosing ignorance. (And I realize that term is harsh but I don’t know what else to call it.)
True, we don’t know all the details of the processes yet, but we knock a few things off the list every year and the need to stay dedicated to finding these answers. They most surely COULD and SHOULD help save us from our willfully ignorant selves. If we use and pay attention to them, that is. As Mr. Sagan alluded to…
December 17, 2013 at 3:28 pm #801616
JoBParticipantwakeflood
the only place that science and religious belief are incompatible is in the assessment of an atheist..
look up the bios of some of the greatest scientists of our time and you will find … believers.
it amazes me that a group of people who revere science take such an unscientific sample of religion and apply it unilaterally to belief in God.
In my opinion, your statement, “we don’t know all the details of the processes yet, but we knock a few things off the list every year”
applies equally to science and religious belief ;-)
December 17, 2013 at 3:44 pm #801617
wakefloodParticipantOK, so scientists are humans and some humans have a propensity for belief…in something, like many non-scientists.
Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell discusses the phenomenon in detail… :-)
December 17, 2013 at 4:12 pm #801618
VBDParticipantJoB, it seems you are confusing spiritualism with religion. Simply believing there is more to this existence than we immediately sense, and that there are great unknowns, conflicts with neither scientific nor spiritual views.
But religion adds stories meant to explain observed phenomena, such as how the earth came to be. These stories are what conflict with reality. The collection of stories, and their interpretation, is what defines a specific religion.
Since the religious stories are often inflexible and cannot be changed by the discovery of contrary evidence, they differ greatly from science.
December 17, 2013 at 4:15 pm #801619
PangolinPieParticipantAgree with Wakeflood and highly recommend this book to *anyone*:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469
December 17, 2013 at 5:16 pm #801620
VBDParticipantPangolin, I’ve read that one and agree it’s great.
Another person who has done great work for the skeptic community is James Randi. He’s not as eloquent as Sagan, but is still plugging along in spite of his age and failing health.
Randi is the one who started the million dollar prize for any psychic or paranormal purveyor to scientifically demonstrate their powers. The prize remains unclaimed.
December 17, 2013 at 5:19 pm #801621
PangolinPieParticipantI adore James Randi and have been following him and the JREF for ages, VBD. He really is doing the good work.
December 17, 2013 at 5:34 pm #801622
JoBParticipantVBD..
it seems you are drawing a line between spiritualism and religion…
and filtering your understanding of all religion through fundamentalism .. the belief that the story of religion as interpreted by the fundamentalist is the absolute and only truth.
i would point out that atheism is just another belief system… one that excludes the existence of a god…
i would no more discount a scientist because of their lack of belief in a god than i would believe them because of their belief in a god.
the joy of science is the mystery of the unexplained… which is as easily applied to one’s belief system as it is to the universe around us.
December 17, 2013 at 5:43 pm #801623
VBDParticipantNope. Don’t agree that atheism is a “belief system”. Atheism is nothing more than a term to indicate the lack of belief in a deity. It does not establish a belief.
If I profess to not believe in unicorns, and thus am a-unicornist, that does not mean I have any “system” of belief. Just a lack of one.
December 17, 2013 at 6:03 pm #801624
PangolinPieParticipantI’ve always enjoyed the saying that if atheism is a religion, then NOT collecting stamps is a hobby. ;)
December 17, 2013 at 7:04 pm #801625
JoBParticipantVBD and Pangoli Pie..
LOL.. my husband would agree with you
but that is some high moral ground
i believe i don’t believe therefore i don’t believe..
hmmmmmmmm .. doesn’t pass the sniff test for me ;->
but then i get a big chuckle about people who don’t believe in religion and therefore have no faith telling people who believe that they don’t understand religion
that’s kind of like learning about swimming from books and never getting in the water but telling someone who is swimming that they don’t understand swimming.
the person who is swimming clearly has more practical experience with the challenges of swimming than the person who does not swim.
likewise..those of us who believe have far more practical experience with faith .. with or without accompanying organized religion.. than those who don’t.
wake…
Unless atheists want to be called stupid for “not getting it”
they should refrain from citing the lack of intelligence of people who do
just saying…
and yes.. i miss Carl Sagan
just not for all of the same reasons you do ;->
December 17, 2013 at 7:10 pm #801626
PangolinPieParticipantHmm…I don’t see anyone on this post saying anything about lack of intelligence (up ’til your comment, Jo).
December 17, 2013 at 7:21 pm #801627
JoBParticipant“You don’t need faith to explain anything about the universe save whether you think somebody kicked off the whole thing. If at any point after that you choose to substitute a controlling entity for a scientific process, you’re choosing ignorance.”
posted by wakeflood…
the underlying assumption that faith is incompatible with the scientific process is built on an either or dichotomy that is not supported by fact.
What is supported by fact is that a great many of the scientific minds of our time profess faith…
We are in agreement that science can not be evaluated using religious texts as evidence.
conversely, i believe that faith can not be evaluated using science as evidence.
December 17, 2013 at 7:29 pm #801628
wakefloodParticipantThen what am I to make of myself, JoB?? I was raised by generations of Catholics, some of whom were clergy/nuns who spent much time trying to describe why they believed in something I couldn’t.
That’s not to say I didn’t have important experiences that created a seemingly intense connectedness – for lack of a better word – to other people and the physical and potentially metaphysical world. Those experiences seemingly approximated what my relatives described about their religious enlightenments. Just that in me, it didn’t manifest in a desire to connect that experience to anything more than some very cool biochemical reactions in the higher mammalian brain.
Believe me…I’ve swum. ;-)
December 17, 2013 at 7:30 pm #801629
JoBParticipantpangoli..
i edited my post to make it clear that i was not accusing you or VBD of having labeled this person of faith stupid ;->
December 17, 2013 at 7:34 pm #801630
PangolinPieParticipantOk. :)
I do think you’re a good and kind-hearted person, Jo, whether or not we agree on certain topics. In the end all that matters (to me) is each individual’s actions, not their private beliefs.
December 17, 2013 at 7:40 pm #801631
datamuseParticipantIgnorance bespeaks lack of knowledge, not lack of intelligence.
And, hmm, is people who “have no faith telling people who believe that they don’t understand religion” anything at all like people who have faith telling people who don’t that they are actually adhering to a belief system, even though they claim they aren’t?
(I’m not sure what it means to “believe in” religion, either. Religions obviously exist. A major Christian denomination pays my salary. That’s pretty real.)
December 17, 2013 at 8:19 pm #801632
VBDParticipantJoB said “but then i get a big chuckle about people who don’t believe in religion and therefore have no faith telling people who believe that they don’t understand religion.”
Then I guess you’ll be really cracking up when you read this:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/28/nation/la-na-religion-survey-20100928
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