WORKS OF CARL SAGAN....

[toff]

...That first line in my quote...the metaphor or riddle about eyes, is what foolsparade left in his last message...I left a question for him with it....

I was referring to the works and wisdom of Carl Sagan in this quote from proverbs:

"As the heavens for height, and the earth for depth, so the mind of kings is unsearchable..."

...the qoute about the greeks has to do with scientific inquiry...so does the quote about "perception"....but perception is best when it is kept discreet....

Umm...great. Let me know if you post anything relevant, will you?

 

[Physics_guy]

How could an atheist put such empathy and pathos into a plot of a movie, without having some understanding and appreciation for God in hisown personal life?

This shows that you are a typically bigotted theist who doesn't have a clue about how atheists think. So far you have shown admiration for Thomas Paine, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Sagan in this thread all of whom are atheists (Paine may be classified as a Deist but he was certainly not a Christian) - maybe you should rethink your opinion of atheists in general?

 

[toff]

This shows that you are a typically bigotted theist who doesn't have a clue about how atheists think. So far you have shown admiration for Thomas Paine, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Sagan in this thread all of whom are atheists (Paine may be classified as a Deist but he was certainly not a Christian) - maybe you should rethink your opinion of atheists in general?

Physics_guy makes an excellent point here. Your ONLY reason for asserting that Sagan was a theist is because he possessed some attributes (eg., pathos, empathy) that you admire...so he must have been a theist. The implication is, of course, that atheists cannot be empathic, demonstrate pathos, etc...which is complete rubbish, and highly bigotted.

 

[freespirit2001]

The movie CONTACT has two leading characters in it: Ellie (represents SCIENCE, who speaks all though the movie about reasons why the world needs science...she represents the scientist part of Carl Sagan life ...Joss ( represents RELIGION the Divinity Student and later Reverend...suggesting to me Carl Sagan understood the conflict of religion and science...much as Freud suggest in his "FUTURE OF A ILLUSION"..." its the 'illusion' to believe we don't need science"...

...faith is the requirement we need to answer questions...

...there's a stumbling block in the religious texts...I Peter 2:7 ( many other passages about this stumbling block)...as well in the realm of science : THEORIES OF EVOLUTION....The stumbling block of the scientists is alot more recent according to the our history....within the past century is all the time that science has had this theory....It makes me feel Carl sagan had to go the long way around the authorities of science to say ...(as a message through his movie and books).."The Dragon's of Eden" in particular...'We have a divine ancestry...one from the stars'...the movie suggests this ( as a vision ) through the extraterrestrial life intelligence in his movie ( the vision of Ellie's also had proof)...Why didn't he do another sequel to The Planet of the Apes to support the science authorities of the time about evolution? ...He chose a vision of communication with higher intelligence instead....There are other parts of his work I would like to observe, I feel, that support this belief about our divine nature ( in God ) (that's why Carl Sagan started at Eden)...with hope for the future of human kind....and mankinds reasoning...

I'm not one to believe in all the social hysteria about the UFO thing that seems to me to suggest a social craze that is totally the opposite of the belief about being Evolved from Apes...Perhaps this social craze is a reaction to the authorities of the science world to demand everyone's belief in evolution...much as the inquisition of the church did to those who refused to believe in the way they did....Carl Sagan did much work
to encourage vision outside the hierarchy and the authorities of the time....and here comes the RELIGIOUS Authorities to say this guy was an atheist....

 

[Physics_guy]

BTW - you should read the book Contact - much better treatment of the battle between science and religion than the movie. In the book, Ellie does not go alone into space - she goes with 7 others luminaries from all over the world. They all have similar experience, so the "faith" aspect of the journey is less apparent. Also, Ellie in the book (and the movie, BTW) is a "weak" atheist - she basically says she has no evidence of God.

Also, the book is inherently theistic, but it is deistic. In the book, the aliens tell Ellie that there is a hidden structure in Pie (I forgot the ascii code for this) which hints at a created Universe. This book was in stark contrast to much of Sagan's other work where he openly stated he was an atheist. Further, any one of Sagan's friends or family will tell you that he considered himself an atheist. I know you have trouble with this because you have a bigoted belief that atheist are incapable of profound thought, but it is the truth.

BTW - as I said earlier Freud was also an atheist.

Think that you are going to rethink your prejudices against atheists yet?

 

[Physics_guy]

and here comes the RELIGIOUS Authorities to say this guy was an atheist....

What a crock - Sagan himself identified himself as an atheist. I am sorry if your bigotted prejudices against atheists conflict with your love affair with Sagan's writings, but that is the truth. In all his works, Contact is the only ambiguous one - and that work is a piece of fiction. BTW - did you notice that the bad guy in Contact is a religious extremist and that Ellie is persecuted (not chosen for the mission despite her credentials) because of her lack of belief in God? From what you have posted here, you would be one of the bad guys in Sagan's book - choosing the obsequious man who says that he believes in God over Ellie who see know evidence of God.

I'm not one to believe in all the social hysteria about the UFO thing that seems to me to suggest a social craze that is totally the opposite of the belief about being Evolved from Apes

I have no idea what you mean here, but the Theory of Evolution does not say that extraterristial intelligence is impossible. In fact, it is because we believe that life evolved here that we believe it could have evolved elsewhere in the Universe.

 

[lucaspa]

I knew (somewhat) Carl Sagan personally. I always found him to be a decent guy BUT I often found his scientific work to be lacking in rigour.

Sometimes. I think Sagan's main failing was extrapolating beyond science and using science illegitimately to back his personal beliefs -- his atheism in this case. Sagan had a problem presenting atheism as tho it were a direct conclusion of science. See the book Science Held Hostage for a full critique of this. But simply Sagan's catchphrase will do: "The Cosmos [defined as the material universe] is all there is, all there was, and all there will be."

For the original poster, the problem will be to separate Sagan's faith statements from his legitimate science statements. I have found that professionals like you and I do this unconsciously. It doesn't even register that we are doing it. It's only when we consciously go back and look at things that we see Sagan's bias. Lewontin was making fun of Sagan in his review of Demon Haunted Woodland in what has become one of the most famous of creationist misquotes:

"What seems absurd depends on one’s prejudice. Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity “in deep trouble.” Two’s company, but three’s a crowd.
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen. "

 

[lucaspa]

The movie CONTACT has two leading characters in it: Ellie (represents SCIENCE, who speaks all though the movie about reasons why the world needs science...she represents the scientist part of Carl Sagan life ...Joss ( represents RELIGION the Divinity Student and later Reverend...suggesting to me Carl Sagan understood the conflict of religion and science...

If this were so, then the scientist would have been more competent and pointed out the chair ripped from its frame and flattened against the wall in radial gravitational force which would not have happened if the capsule had simply fallen as everyone thought. Also they would have pointed out more that 18 hours of empty tape for a drop that supposedly took only a few minutes!

IOW, Sagan ignored data that falsified the skeptical view of Ellie's experience.

Also, if Ellie had been more competent, she would have presented her views as the agnosticism that science really is.

I think Sagan was indeed looking at the major difference between science and religion -- the types of data admitted or not admitted. And here he was being uncharactistically kind to religion. Cosmos, OTOH, is pure atheist proselytizing.

 

[lucaspa]

He chose a vision of communication with higher intelligence instead.

But his "higher intelligence" was simply a mortal with advanced technology. Not supernatural. While the minister was more amenable to taking Ellie's personal experience as valid on trust (as religion does do), why did Sagan bury the intersubjective data that would support the story? We were not supposed to notice? Didn't he notice?

I feel, that support this belief about our divine nature ( in God ) (that's why Carl Sagan started at Eden)...with hope for the future of human kind....and mankinds reasoning...

Sagan never had any belief in our "divine" nature. No divine to have a nature of. Instead, Sagan substitutes the mysticism of coming from "starstuff" in the place of standard religion. He is trying to turn science into a religion.

I'm not one to believe in all the social hysteria about the UFO thing that seems to me to suggest a social craze that is totally the opposite of the belief about being Evolved from Apes.

Opposite? If life began here by chemistry and a sentient species evolved, then this could have happened on other planets. Sagan firmly believed this was so. Remember, SETI is Sagan's pet project.

Carl Sagan did much work to encourage vision outside the hierarchy and the authorities of the time....and here comes the RELIGIOUS Authorities to say this guy was an atheist....

Carl Sagan did much to make science answer all the needs and questions that religion does now. As a person who could explain science to a lay audience, Sagan was superb. He had a real gift of being able to both explain science and make it interesting. It's just too bad that he so often presented science as backing his personal beliefs.

 

[freespirit2001]

BTW - you should read the book Contact - much better treatment of the battle between science and religion than the movie. In the book, Ellie does not go alone into space - she goes with 7 others luminaries from all over the world. They all have similar experience, so the "faith" aspect of the journey is less apparent. Also, Ellie in the book (and the movie, BTW) is a "weak" atheist - she basically says she has no evidence of God.

Also, the book is inherently theistic, but it is deistic. In the book, the aliens tell Ellie that there is a hidden structure in Pie (I forgot the ascii code for this) which hints at a created Universe. This book was in stark contrast to much of Sagan's other work where he openly stated he was an atheist. Further, any one of Sagan's friends or family will tell you that he considered himself an atheist. I know you have trouble with this because you have a bigoted belief that atheist are incapable of profound thought, but it is the truth.

BTW - as I said earlier Freud was also an atheist.

Think that you are going to rethink your prejudices against atheists yet?

Physics_guy

I appreciate the fact you read the book, Contact as well...I hadn't read it or realized the plot was changed when seven others were allowed to go up into space...that's is a poignant and ironic to me....The Challenger and the Columbia missions both lost 7 members of their crew in those disasters....It makes me wonder why space missions have used 7 members in their crews....or with Ellie does it make 8 crew members going up in the book?

I'm sorry, there are many kinds of authorities on knowledge about religion and science....I'm curious about where you read that Carl Sagan admitted he was an atheist...and if you could give me a quote from him that he absolutely denied the existence of God...or he openly admited he was an atheist...

Have you read The Dragons of Eden? I love all his footnotes and look forward to reading The Demon Haunted World....Why are you so hard on his credibility as a person and scientist, because he didn't appear to conform to the social standards of the religion of our time? He left Bible quotes in his work...and wonderful metaphors...why use Bible quotes if your a scientist who doesn't believe in God? Why read the Bible at all? In fact why even name a book after Eden and leave a foot note about cherubim...In the Chapter, "Eden as a Metaphor" his footnote is: "Cherubim is plural; Genesis 3:24 specifies one flaming sword. Presumably flaming swords were in short supply."

I think the key to this book..as it was referred to in the Bible...." God places cherubim with a flaming sword east of Eden to guard the Tree of Life....FROM THE AMBITIONS OF MAN." The whole point about Carl Sagan using metaphors of dragons.. the dragons were the personification of the religious and science hierarchy ( or power or authority) of the times....the Hierarchies ARE the Dragons AND THE AMBITIONS OF MAN.... these Hierarchies( THE POWERS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION) are all a marketplace of dragons....



Why discount him for not following the way your religion tells you live...Only God can judge whether he had faith or not...And his work...is an inspiration and does go on to deeper meaning in time...I value all the comments and opinions about his works...

 

[revolutio]

I don't think anyone doubts that Sagan was a rather spiritual person. He is hardly the first nontheist to read the Bible and relate to it. It was afterall one of the most influential books in history, philosophy, theology, and (for a while) science.

He also probably knew that it would make his primarily Christian audience more easily relate to his work. The concept of Eden is found throughout the world in all variety of cultures and religions. Eden is simply the name an English speaker is most likely to know Paradise by.

 

[freespirit2001]

Carl Sagan did much to make science answer all the needs and questions that religion does now. As a person who could explain science to a lay audience, Sagan was superb. He had a real gift of being able to both explain science and make it interesting. It's just too bad that he so often presented science as backing his personal beliefs.

This is a good quote....but I differ with your point..."too bad that he so often presented science as backing his own personal beliefs...."

I feel in his series Cosmos...he made science and knowledge of the stars so wonderful and exciting too...

Why be so judgemenatal about judging Carl Sagan by your standards of religion ?..or judging a man because he is a scientist or great spokesperson by the standards of the religion of your times...It seems more of an ego problem to me than accurate insight of true spiritual or scientific nature....

He encouraged us all to ask more questions in life and to use better intelligence with our reasoning abilities, including those about our own faith in God. Would I be an atheist if I said he also inspired my dreams? and my artwork as well?

 

[LorentzHA]

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Contact is one of my favorite movies if not my favorite...ok, well actually Basic Instinct, but that is not scientific

I own the DVD of contact and have watched in 4 or 5 times. I cry everytime Ellie sees her "dad" on the beach. Corny, huh?

I got a much deeper meaning out of the movie also. I felt there was a religious undertone of belief vs. non belief. I felt that Ellie awaked to her own spirituality and that because she experienced something she could not prove it made her appreciated Palmer's beliefs a little bit more. (My 2 cents)

 

[freespirit2001]

"For every reason make evey effort to suppliment your faith with virtue, your virtue with knowledge, your knowledge with self control, your self-control with steadfastness, your steadfastness with godliness, your godliness with brotherly affection, and your brotherly affection with love." II Peter 1:5-7
-------


Knowledge is information to me and information to me is power...Carl Sagan wanted us to use our minds and inquire into things...

With knowledge comes responsibility....

Credibilty and being validated for knowledge doesn't make one an expert...Being able to discern an emotional opinion or judgemental outlook from one based on reason and accurate information is what Carl Sagan was suggesting to me in his work....

" The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires." William James

" Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth---more than ruin, even more than death." Bertrand Russell

 

[Physics_guy]

Why are you so hard on his credibility as a person and scientist, because he didn't appear to conform to the social standards of the religion of our time?

You don't get it - he self-identified as an atheist - I am not being hard on him in any way (though I as many other physicists will tell you that he left physics for the more glamorous life of a science populized and philosopher before accomplishing much in his professional career as a physicist - I don't blame him for this, I'm just pointing it out).

You are a very strange person, or at least simply a misguided and bigotted one. You think that because I am calling Sagan an atheist that I am some how insulting him, which couldn't be further from the truth.

Check out the site below:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/sagan.htm

He certainly does not sound much like a Christian or any sort of deistic believer. He is closer to a believer in scientism and an ardent proponent of philosophical naturalism.

 

[freespirit2001]

.....BINGO...!

Alot of great Carl Sagan and science quotes would have to be found on a POSITIVE ATHEIST website...They have to dress up the atheist word with "Positive"---Atheist...I still feel there are higher reasons for this, from an intelligent spiritual point of view that still favors faith through all my reasoning.....I'm not giving up that Carl Sagan had to have some kind of faith....and I'm hoping to keep objective reasoning and discerning insight about my views...


I have alot of information about FAITH as well...but I will continue my arguments on the line of Sagan's references to the themes of "Religion" and "Science" somehow being mysteriously intertwined....



You have to keep in mind the socio-emotional aspect of the times, when it comes to being more aware of the times we justed passed through, and where we are now....(ie. socially and individually---where are the norms and the principles, the values of reasoning and faith---when it comes to hierarchy issues: religion...science...social/cultural-middle-class pretenses...big business...politics).....but I think there is alot of transcendental elements in his knowledge, especially about time AND FAITH....

 

[Mechanical Bliss]

Why are you so hard on his credibility as a person and scientist, because he didn't appear to conform to the social standards of the religion of our time?

Why are you intent on equating us calling him an atheist (because he claimed to be an atheist) as insulting? It's getting ridiculous.

He left Bible quotes in his work...and wonderful metaphors...why use Bible quotes if your a scientist who doesn't believe in God? Why read the Bible at all?

Perhaps for similar reasons why he refers to other myths in his works and why other people do the same thing regardless of whether they believe the myths are true.

They have to dress up the atheist word with "Positive"---Atheist

Ironically, it's probably because there exist people like you who think the word "atheist" has negative connotations and should be taken as an insult.

 

[Nathan Poe]

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Contact is one of my favorite movies if not my favorite...ok, well actually Basic Instinct, but that is not scientific

Although one can learn quite a bit about anatomy from Sharon Stone...

 

[Nathan Poe]

.....BINGO...!

Alot of great Carl Sagan and science quotes would have to be found on a POSITIVE ATHEIST website...They have to dress up the atheist word with "Positive"---Atheist...I still feel there are higher reasons for this, from an intelligent spiritual point of view that still favors faith through all my reasoning.....I'm not giving up that Carl Sagan had to have some kind of faith....and I'm hoping to keep objective reasoning and discerning insight about my views...

Atheist is not a dirty word. Many theists have, throughout history, tried to portray Atheists as boogymen. Why fall for their trap?

I have alot of information about FAITH as well...but I will continue my arguments on the line of Sagan's references to the themes of "Religion" and "Science" somehow being mysteriously intertwined....

And I will contine to make references to The Illiad, The Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland, and accepting Iggy the Magic Elf as a personal lord and savior. Must I believe in these things in order to use them to prove a point?

...or do the words "metaphor," and "allegory" hold no particular meaning?

 

[toff]

.....BINGO...!

Alot of great Carl Sagan and science quotes would have to be found on a POSITIVE ATHEIST website...They have to dress up the atheist word with "Positive"---Atheist...I still feel there are higher reasons for this, from an intelligent spiritual point of view that still favors faith through all my reasoning.....I'm not giving up that Carl Sagan had to have some kind of faith....and I'm hoping to keep objective reasoning and discerning insight about my views...


I have alot of information about FAITH as well...but I will continue my arguments on the line of Sagan's references to the themes of "Religion" and "Science" somehow being mysteriously intertwined....



You have to keep in mind the socio-emotional aspect of the times, when it comes to being more aware of the times we justed passed through, and where we are now....(ie. socially and individually---where are the norms and the principles, the values of reasoning and faith---when it comes to hierarchy issues: religion...science...social/cultural-middle-class pretenses...big business...politics).....but I think there is alot of transcendental elements in his knowledge, especially about time AND FAITH....

This is getting ridiculous. Sagan was an atheist. He did not believe in any god. If you want to delude yourself that he DID believe in a god, despite all that he wrote on the subject, great. But don't waste anyone else's time with your absurdities.

And please, stop flaunting your ignorance about atheism. Atheists aren't bad or negative people. They can have just as many positive qualities - yes, gasp, even qualities you admire - as theists. I know you admire Sagan and so want to convince yourself - and everyone else - that he wasn't an atheist, but in your anxiety to do so, you're looking very foolish. He was an atheist - if anything, he was a 'scientist'. Learn to accept people for what they are, not to try to redefine them to be what you wish they were.