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The Hindu Religion Is The Only Of The World's Great Faiths Dedicated To The Idea That The Cosmos Itself Undergoes An Immense, Indeed An Infinite, Number Of Deaths And Rebirths.

-Carl Sagan

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The Hindu Religion Is

Carl Sagan

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The Hindu Religion Is The Only Of The World's Great Faiths Dedicated To The Idea That The Cosmos Itself Undergoes An Immense, Indeed An Infinite, Number Of Deaths And Rebirths.

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I Worry That, Especially As The Millennium Edges Nearer, Pseudo-science And Superstition Will Seem Year By Year More Tempting, The Siren Song Of Unreason More Sonorous And Attractive.

The Fossil Record Implies Trial And Error, An Inability To Anticipate The Future, Features Inconsistent With An Efficient Great Designer (although Not With A Designer Of A More Remote And Indirect Temperament)

Trial And Error

Coal, Oil And Gas Are Called Fossil Fuels, Because They Are Mostly Made Of The Fossil Remains Of Beings From Long Ago. The Chemical Energy Within Them Is A Kind Of Stored Sunlight Originally Accumulated By Ancient Plants. Our Civilization Runs By Burning The Remains Of Humble Creatures Who Inhabited The Earth Hundreds Of Millions Of Years Before The First Humans Came On The Scene. Like Some Ghastly Cannibal Cult, We Subsist On The Dead Bodies Of Our Ancestors And Distant Relatives. - Dr. Carl Sagan

I Hold That Popularization Of Science Is Successful If, At First, It Does No More Than Spark The Sense Of Wonder.

Modern Science Has Been A Voyage Into The Unknown, With A Lesson In Humility Waiting At Every Stop. Many Passengers Would Rather Have Stayed Home.

There Are Huge Advertising Budgets Only When There's No Difference Between The Products. If The Products Really Were Different, People Would Buy The One That's Better. Advertising Teaches People Not To Trust Their Judgment. Advertising Teaches People To Be Stupid.

First Rule In Government Spending: Why Build One When You Can Have Two At Twice The Price?

Preserve And Cherish The Pale Blue Dot, The Only Home We've Ever Known.

I Would Love To Believe That When I Die I Will Live Again, That Some Thinking, Feeling, Remembering Part Of Me Will Continue. But As Much As I Want To Believe That, And Despite The Ancient And Worldwide Cultural Traditions That Assert An Afterlife, I Know Of Nothing To Suggest That It Is More Than Wishful Thinking.

Personally, I Would Be Delighted If There Were A Life After Death, Especially If It Permitted Me To Continue To Learn About This World And Others, If It Gave Me A Chance To Discover How History Turns Out.

National Boundaries Are Not Evident When We View The Earth From Space. Fanatical Ethnic Or Religious Or National Chauvinisms Are A Little Difficult To Maintain When We See Our Planet As A Fragile Blue Crescent Fading To Become An Inconspicuous Point Of Light Against The Bastion And Citadel Of The Stars.

We Are The Only Species On The Planet, So Far As We Know, To Have Invented A Communal Memory Stored Neither In Our Genes Nor In Our Brains. The Warehouse Of This Memory Is Called The Library

I Also Wish That The Pledge Of Allegiance Were Directed At The Constitution And The Bill Of Rights, As It Is When The President Takes His Oath Of Office, Rather Than To The Flag And The Nation

The Visions We Offer Our Children Shape The Future. It _matters_ What Those Visions Are. Often They Become Self-fulfilling Prophecies. Dreams Are Maps.

Nobody Listens To Mathematicians.

I Don?t Feel Rejected By The Sky. I?m A Part Of It- Tiny, To Be Sure, But Everything Is Tiny Compared To That Overwhelming Immensity.

Discussing The Possibilities Of Extraterrestrial Life: I Would Love It Even If They Were Short, Sullen, Grumpy And Sexually Obsessed. But There Just Isn't Any Good Evidence.

Which Aspects Of Our Nature Will Prevail Is Uncertain, Particularly When Our Visions And Prospects Are Bound To One Small Part Of The Small Planet Earth. But Up There In The Cosmos An Inescapable Perspective Awaits.

Arguments From Authority Carry Little Weight – Authorities Have Made Mistakes In The Past. They Will Do So Again In The Future. Perhaps A Better Way To Say It Is That In Science There Are No Authorities; At Most, There Are Experts.

The Neurochemistry Of The Brain Is Astonishingly Busy, The Circuitry Of A Machine More Wonderful Than Any Devised By Humans. But There Is No Evidence That Its Functioning Is Due To Anything More Than The 10(14) Neural Connections That Build An Elegant Architecture Of Consciousness.

Goddard Represented A Unique Combination Of Visionary Dedication And Technological Brilliance. He Studied Physics Because He Needed Physics To Get To Mars. In Reading The Notebooks Of Robert Goddard, I Am Struck By How Powerful His Exploratory And Scientific Motivations Were - And How Influental Speculative Ideas, Even Erroneous Ones, Can Be On The Shaping Of The Future.

We Are The First Species To Have Taken Our Evolution Into Our Own Hands.

If Chimpanzees Have Consciousness, If They Are Capable Of Abstractions, Do They Not Have What Until Now Has Been Described As 'human Rights'? How Smart Does A Chimp Have To Be Before Killing Him Constitutes Murder?

Whenever Our Ethnic Or National Prejudices Are Aroused, In Times Of Scarcity, During Challenges To National Self Esteem Or Nerve, When We Agonize About Our Diminished Cosmic Place And Purpose, Or When Fanaticism Is Bubbling Up Around Us - Then, Habits Of Thought Familiar From Ages Past Reach For The Controls.

In Our Time, We Have Sifted The Sands Of Mars, We Have Established A Presence There, We Have Fulfilled A Century Of Dreams!

War Is Murder Writ Large.

Those Afraid Of The Universe As It Really Is, Those Who Pretend To Nonexistent Knowledge And Envision A Cosmos Centered On Human Beings Will Prefer The Fleeting Comforts Of Superstition. They Avoid Rather Than Confront The World. But Those With The Courage To Explore The Weave And Structure Of The Cosmos, Even Where It Differs Profoundly From Their Wishes And Prejudices, Will Penetrate Its Deepest Mysteries.

The Dumbing Down Of American Is Most Evident In The Slow Decay Of Substantive Content In The Enormously Influential Media, The 30 Second Sound Bites (now Down To 10 Seconds Or Less), Lowest Common Denominator Programming, Credulous Presentations On Pseudoscience And Superstition, But Especially A Kind Of Celebration Of Ignorance.

Demon Mean Knowledge In Greek, Especially About The Material World. Science Means Knowledge In Latin. A Jurisdictional Dispute Is Exposed, Even If We Look No Further

If We Are To Survive, Our Loyalties Must Be Broadened Further, To Include The Whole Human Community, The Entire Planet Earth.

Science Is An Attempt, Largely Successful, To Understand The World, To Get A Grip On Things, To Get Hold Of Ourselves, To Steer A Safe Course. Microbiology And Meteorology Now Explain What Only A Few Centuries Ago Was Considered Sufficient Cause To Burn Women To Death.

The Method Of Science Is Tried And True. It Is Not Perfect, It's Just The Best We Have. And To Abandon It, With Its Skeptical Protocols, Is The Pathway To A Dark Age.

There Are More Potential Combinations Of Dna [physical Forms] Than There Are Atoms In The Universe.

The Cosmos Is Full Beyond Measure Of Elegant Truths; Of Exquisite Interrelationships; Of The Awesome Machinery Of Nature.

We Are The Children Equally Of The Sky And The Earth.

All Civilizations Become Either Spacefaring Or Extinct.

Advances In Medicine And Agriculture Have Saved Vastly More Lives Than Have Been Lost In All The Wars In History.

I Have A Foreboding Of An America In My Children's Or Grandchildren's Time - [...] When Awesome Technological Powers Are In The Hands Of A Very Few, And No One Representing The Public Interest Can Even Grasp The Issues; When The People Have Lost The Ability To Set Their Own Agendas Or Knowledgeably Question Those In Authority; When, Clutching Our Crystals And Nervously Consulting Our Horoscopes, Our Critical Faculties In Decline, Unable To Distinguish Between What Feels Good And What’s True, We Slide, Almost Without Noticing, Back Into Superstition And Darkness.

If You Want To Save Your Child From Polio, You Can Pray Or You Can Inoculate....try Science.

Accommodation To Change, The Thoughtful Pursuit Of Alternative Futures Are Keys To The Survival Of Civilization And Perhaps Of The Human Species.

(when Asked Merely If They Accept Evolution, 45 Percent Of Americans Say Yes. The Figure Is 70 Percent In China.) When The Movie Jurassic Park Was Shown In Israel, It Was Condemned By Some Orthodox Rabbis Because It Accepted Evolution And Because It Taught That Dinosaurs Lived A Hundred Million Years Ago-when, As Is Plainly Stated At Every Rosh Hashonhan And Every Jewish Wedding Ceremony, The Universe Is Less Than 6,000 Years Old.

The Usual Rejoinder To Someone Who Says 'they Laughed At Columbus, They Laughed At Galileo' Is To Say 'but They Also Laughed At Bozo The Clown'.

The Candle Flame Gutters. Its Little Pool Of Light Trembles. Darkness Gathers. The Demons Begin To Stir.

Somewhere, Something Incredible Is Waiting To Be Known.

The Passion To Explore Is At The Heart Of Being Human.

It's Perilous And Foolhardy For The Average Citizen To Remain Ignorant About Global Warming, Say, Or Ozone Depletion, Air Pollution, Toxic And Radioactive Wastes, Acid Rain, Topsoil Erosion, Tropical Deforestation, Exponential Population Growth. Jobs And Wages Depend On Science And Technology.

The Claim Is Also Sometimes Made That Science Is As Arbitrary Or Irrational As All Other Claims To Knowledge, Or That Reason Itself Is An Illusion. As Ethan Allen Said Those Who Invalidate Reason Ought Seriously To Consider Whether They Argue Against Reason With Or Without Reason; If With Reason, Then They Establish The Principle That They Are Labouring To Dethrone. If They Argue Without Reason, Which They Must Do, In Order To Be Consistent With Themselves, They Are Out Of Reach Of Rational Conviction, Nor Do They Deserve A Rational Argument.

I Believe That In Every Person Is A Kind Of Circuit Which Resonates To Intellectual Discovery-and The Idea Is To Make That Resonance Work

The Sacred Truth Of Science Is That There Are No Sacred Truths.

Human Beings Have A Demonstrated Talent For Self-deception When Their Emotions Are Stirred.

A General Problem With Much Of Western Theology In My View Is That The God Portrayed Is Too Small. It Is A God Of A Tiny World And Not A God Of A Galaxy Much Less Of A Universe.

A Googolplex Is Precisely As Far From Infinity As Is The Number 1... No Matter What Number You Have In Mind, Infinity Is Larger Still.

Thus The Recent Rapid Evolution Of Human Intelligence Is Not Only The Cause Of But Also The Only Conceivable Solution To The Many Serious Problems That Beset Us.

Extinction Is The Rule. Survival Is The Exception.

Mass Extinction

Exception To The Rule

Curiosity And The Urge To Solve Problems Are The Emotional Hallmarks Of Our Species.

Our Ancestors Worshipped The Sun, And They Were Not That Foolish. It Makes Sense To Revere The Sun And The Stars, For We Are Their Children.

It Is All A Matter Of Time Scale. An Event That Would Be Unthinkable In A Hundred Years May Be Inevitable In A Hundred Million.

Our Children Long For Realistic Maps Of The Future That They Can Be Proud Of. Where Are The Cartographers Of Human Purpose?

Has There Ever Been A Religion With The Prophetic Accuracy And Reliability Of Science? . . . No Other Human Institution Comes Close.

I Set Before You Two Ways: You Can Use Your Technology To Destroy Yourselves Or To Carry You To The Planets And The Stars. It's Up To You.

Knowing A Great Deal Is Not The Same As Being Smart; Intelligence Is Not Information Alone But Also Judgement, The Manner In Which Information Is Coordinated And Used.

The Fact Is That Far More Crime And Child Abuse Has Been Committed By Zealots In The Name Of God, Jesus And Mohammed Than Has Ever Been Committed In The Name Of Satan. Many People Don’t Like That Statement, But Few Can Argue With It.

That Kind Of Skeptical, Questioning, "don't Accept What Authority Tells You" Attitude Of Science - Is Also Nearly Identical To The Attitude Of Mind Necessary For A Functioning Democracy. Science And Democracy Have Very Consonant Values And Approaches, And I Don't Think You Can Have One Without The Other.

Democracies Have

Nevertheless, (jefferson) Believed That The Habit Of Skepticism Is An Essential Prerequisite For Responsible Citizenship. He Argued That The Cost Of Education Is Trivial Compared To The Cost Of Ignorance, Of Leaving Government To The Wolves. He Taught That The Country Is Safe Only When The People Rule.

Our Posturings, Our Imagined Self-importance , The Delusion That We Have Some Privileged Position In The Universe Are Challenged By This Point Of Pale Light.

Before We Invented Civilization Our Ancestors Lived Mainly In The Open Out Under The Sky. Before We Devised Artificial Lights And Atmospheric Pollution And Modern Forms Of Nocturnal Entertainment We Watched The Stars. There Were Practical Calendar Reasons Of Course But There Was More To It Than That. Even Today The Most Jaded City Dweller Can Be Unexpectedly Moved Upon Encountering A Clear Night Sky Studded With Thousands Of Twinkling Stars. When It Happens To Me After All These Years It Still Takes My Breath Away.

Science Is Much More Than A Body Of Knowledge. It Is A Way Of Thinking. This Is Central To Its Success. Science Invites Us To Let The Facts In, Even When They Don't Conform To Our Preconceptions. It Counsels Us To Carry Alternative Hypotheses In Our Heads And See Which Ones Best Match The Facts. It Urges On Us A Fine Balance Between No-holds-barred Openness To New Ideas, However Heretical, And The Most Rigorous Skeptical Scrutiny Of Everything - New Ideas And Established Wisdom.

Ask Courageous Questions. Do Not Be Satisfied With Superficial Answers. Be Open To Wonder And At The Same Time Subject All Claims To Knowledge, Without Exception, To Intense Skeptical Scrutiny. Be Aware Of Human Fallibility. Cherish Your Species And Your Planet.

Even Through Your Hardest Days, Remember We Are All Made Of Stardust.

I Think The Discomfort That Some People Feel In Going To The Monkey Cages At The Zoo Is A Warning Sign.

Science Is A Way To Call The Bluff Of Those Who Only Pretend To Knowledge. It Is A Bulwark Against Mysticism, Against Superstition, Against Religion Misapplied To Where It Has No Business Being.

Across The Sea Of Space, The Stars Are Other Suns.

Our Concern For The Future Can Be Tested By How Well We Support Our Libraries.

In The Long Run, The Aggressive Civilizations Destroy Themselves, Almost Always. It's Their Nature. They Can't Help It.

Your Religion Assumes That People Are Children And Need A Boogeyman So They'll Behave. You Want People To Believe In God So They'll Obey The Law. That's The Only Means That Occurs To You: A Strict Secular Police Force, And The Threat Of Punishment By An All-seeing God For Whatever The Police Overlook. You Sell Human Beings Short.

After The Earth Dies, Some 5 Billion Years From Now, After It's Burned To A Crisp, Or Even Swallowed By The Sun, There Will Be Other Worlds And Stars And Galaxies Coming Into Being - And They Will Know Nothing Of A Place Once Called Earth.

There Are Many Other (besides Testosterone) Behaviour-eliciting Hormones Fundamental For Humen Well-being, Including Estrogen And Progesterone In Females. The Fact That Complex Behavioural Patterns Can Be Triggered By A Tiny Concentration Of Moleculas Coursing Through The Bloodstream, And That Different Animals Of The Same Species Generate Different Amounts Of These Hormones, Is Something Worth Thinking About When It's Time To Judge Such Matters As Free Will, Individual Responsibility, And Law And Order.

We Can Judge Our Progress By The Courage Of Our Questions And The Depth Of Our Answers, Our Willingness To Embrace What Is True Rather Than What Feels Good.

We Can't Help It. Life Looks For Life.

And You Are Made Of A Hundred Trillion Cells. We Are, Each Of Us, A Multitude.

The Big Bang Is Our Modern Scientific Creation Myth. It Comes From The Same Human Need To Solve The Cosmological Riddle [where Did The Universe Come From?]

Books Are Key To Understanding The World And Participating In A Democratic Society.

We Live On A Hunk Of Rock And Metal That Circles A Humdrum Star That Is One Of 400 Billion Other Stars That Make Up The Milky Way Galaxy Which Is One Of Billions Of Other Galaxies Which Make Up A Universe Which May Be One Of A Very Large Number, Perhaps An Infinite Number, Of Other Universes. That Is A Perspective On Human Life And Our Culture That Is Well Worth Pondering.

A New Consciousness Is Developing Which Sees The Earth As A Single Organism And Recognizes That An Organism At War With Itself Is Doomed. We Are One Planet. One Of The Great Revelations Of The Age Of Space Exploration Is The Image Of The Earth Finite And Lonely, Somehow Vulnerable, Bearing The Entire Human Species Through The Oceans Of Space And Time.

We Humans Look Rather Different From A Tree. Without A Doubt We Perceive The World Differently Than A Tree Does. But Down Deep, At The Molecular Heart Of Life, The Trees And We Are Essentially Identical.

A Proclivity For Science Is Embedded Deeply Within Us, In All Times, Places, And Cultures. It Has Been The Means For Our Survival. It Is Our Birthright. When, Through Indifference, Inattention, Incompetence, Or Fear Of Skepticism, We Discourage Children From Science, We Are Disenfranchisin G Them, Taking From Them The Tools Needed To Manage Their Future.

Much Of Human History Can, I Think, Be Described As A Gradual And Sometimes Painful Liberation From Provincialism, The Emerging Awareness That There Is More To The World Than Was Generally Believed By Our Ancestors.

I Don't Want To Believe. I Want To Know.

Clutching Our Crystals And Religiously Consulting Our Horoscopes, Our Critical Faculties In Steep Decline, Unable To Distinguish Between What's True And What Feels Good, We Slide, Almost Without Noticing, Into Superstition And Darkness.

My Deeply Held Belief Is That If A God Of Anything Like The Traditional Sort Exists, Our Curiosity And Intelligence Is Provided By Such A God. We Would Be Unappreciative Of That Gift If We Suppressed Our Passion To Explore The Universe And Ourselves.

A Stars Rich In Europium; Of Distant Galaxies Analyzed Through The Collective Light Of A Hundred Billion Constituent Stars. Astronomical Spectroscopy Is An Almost Magical Technique. It Amazes Me Still. Auguste Comte Picked A Particularly Unfortunate Example.

Those Who Seek Power At Any Price Detect A Societal Weakness, A Fear That They Can Ride Into Office.

We Are Made Of Star-stuff. Our Bodies Are Made Of Star-stuff. There Are Pieces Of Star Within Us All.

The Impediment To Scientific Thinking Is Not, I Think, The Difficulty Of The Subject. Complex Intellectual Feats Have Been Mainstays Even Of Oppressed Cultures. Shamans, Magicians And Theologians Are Highly Skilled In Their Intricate And Arcane Arts. No, The Impediment Is Political And Hierarchical.

Valid Criticism Does You A Favor.

This Oak Tree And Me, We're Made Of The Same Stuff.

In Mozambique, The Story Goes, Monkeys Do Not Talk, Because They Know If They Utter Even A Single Word Some Man Will Come And Put Them To Work.

In Exchange For Freedom Of Inquiry, Scientists Are Obliged To Explain Their Work.

The Earth Is A Very Small Stage In A Vast Cosmic Arena.

We Are A Way Of The Universe Knowing Itself.

Societies Will, Of Course, Wish To Exercise Prudence In Deciding Which Technologies That Is, Which Applications Of Science Are To Be Pursued And Which Not. But Without Funding Basic Research, Without Supporting The Acquisition Of Knowledge For Its Own Sake, Our Options Become Dangerously Limited.

The Universe Forces Those Who Live In It To Understand It.

Who Is More Humble? The Scientist Who Looks At The Universe With An Open Mind And Accepts Whatever The Universe Has To Teach Us, Or Somebody Who Says Everything In This Book Must Be Considered The Literal Truth And Never Mind The Fallibility Of All The Human Beings Involved?

I Went To The Librarian And Asked For A Book About Stars.... And The Answer Was Stunning. It Was That The Sun Was A Star But Really Close. The Stars Were Suns, But So Far Away They Were Just Little Points Of Light.... The Scale Of The Universe Suddenly Opened Up To Me. It Was A Kind Of Religious Experience. There Was A Magnificence To It, A Grandeur, A Scale Which Has Never Left Me. Never Ever Left Me.

Ours Is The First Generation That Has Grown Up With Science-fiction Ideas.

I Promise To Question Everything My Leaders Tell Me. I Promise To Use My Critical Faculties. I Promise To Develop My Independence Of Thought. I Promise To Educate Myself So I Can Make My Own Judgments.

It Is Of Interest To Note That While Some Dolphins Are Reported To Have Learned English - Up To Fifty Words Used In Correct Context - No Human Being Has Been Reported To Have Learned Dolphinese.

If You Are Only Skeptical, Then No New Ideas Make It Through To You. You Become A Crotchety Old Person Convinced That Nonsense Is Ruling The World. (there Is, Of Course, Much Data To Support You.) But Every Now And Then, A New Idea Turns Out To Be On The Mark, Valid And Wonderful. If You Are Too Much In The Habit Of Being Skeptical About Everything, You Are Going To Miss Or Resent It, And Either Way You Will Be Standing In The Way Of Understanding And Progress.

There Are Many Hypotheses In Science Which Are Wrong. That’s Perfectly All Right: It’s The Aperture To Finding Out What’s Right. Science Is A Self-correcting Process.

Anything Else You're Interested In Is Not Going To Happen If You Can't Breathe The Air And Drink The Water. Don't Sit This One Out. Do Something. You Are By Accident Of Fate Alive At An Absolutely Critical Moment In The History Of Our Planet.

Think Of How Many Religions Attempt To Validate Themselves With Prophecy. Think Of How Many People Rely On These Prophecies, However Vague, However Unfulfilled, To Support Or Prop Up Their Beliefs. Yet Has There Ever Been A Religion With The Prophetic Accuracy And Reliability Of Science? ... No Other Human Institution Comes Close.

Any Faith That Admires Truth, That Strives To Know God, Must Be Brave Enough To Accommodate The Universe.

We Are, Each Of Us, A Multitude. Within Us Is A Little Universe.

The Universe Is Not Required To Be In Perfect Harmony With Human Ambition.

The Open Road Still Softly Calls, Like A Nearly Forgotten Song Of Childhood

We Are All Star Stuff.

There Is Every Reason To Think That In The Coming Years Mars And Its Mysteries Will Become Increasingly Familiar To The Inhabitants Of The Planet Earth.

There Is A Lurking Fear That Some Things Are Not “meant" To Be Known, That Some Inquiries Are Too Dangerous For Human Beings To Make.

Keeping Secrets

Some Things Are Meant To Be

We All Have A Thirst For Wonder. It's A Deeply Human Quality. Science And Religion Are Both Bound Up With It. What I'm Saying Is, You Don't Have To Make Stories Up, You Don't Have To Exaggerate. There's Wonder And Awe Enough In The Real World. Nature's A Lot Better At Inventing Wonders Than We Are.

Science Is Not Perfect. It's Often Misused; It's Only A Tool, But It's The Best Tool We Have. Self-correcting , Ever Changing, Applicable To Everything: With This Tool, We Vanquish The Impossible.

The Notion That Science And Spirituality Are Somehow Mutually Exclusive Does A Disservice To Both.

How Is It That Hardly Any Major Religion Has Looked At Science And Concluded, “this Is Better Than We Thought! The Universe Is Much Bigger Than Our Prophets Said, Grander, More Subtle, More Elegant?” Instead They Say, “no, No, No! My God Is A Little God, And I Want Him To Stay That Way.” A Religion, Old Or New, That Stressed The Magnificence Of The Universe As Revealed By Modern Science Might Be Able To Draw Forth Reserves Of Reverence And Awe Hardly Tapped By The Conventional Faiths.

The Way To Find Out About Our Place In The Universe Is By Examining The Universe And By Examining Ourselves - Without Preconceptions, With As Unbiased A Mind As We Can Muster.

My Deeply Held Belief Is That If A God Of Anything Like The Traditional Sort Exists, Our Curiosity And Intelligence Are Provided By Such A God. We Would Be Unappreciative Of Those Gifts (as Well As Unable To Take Such A Course Of Action) If We Suppressed Our Passion To Explore The Universe And Ourselves. On The Other Hand, If Such A Traditional God Does Not Exist, Our Curiosity And Our Intelligence Are The Essential Tools For Managing Our Survival. In Either Case, The Enterprise Of Knowledge Is Consistent With Both Science And Religion, And Is Essential For The Welfare Of The Human Species.

All Of Us Cherish Our Beliefs. They Are, To A Degree, Self-defining. When Someone Comes Along Who Challenges Our Belief System As Insufficiently Well-based - Or Who, Like Socrates, Merely Asks Embarrassing Questions That We Haven't Thought Of, Or Demonstrates That We've Swept Key Underlying Assumptions Under The Rug - It Becomes Much More Than A Search For Knowledge. It Feels Like A Personal Assault.

Embarrassing Questions

If The Constellations Had Been Named In The Twentieth Century, I Suppose We Would See Bicycles And Refrigerators In The Sky.

Scientists Make Mistakes. Accordingly, It Is The Job Of The Scientist To Recognize Our Weakness, To Examine The Widest Range Of Opinions, To Be Ruthlessly Self-critical. Science Is A Collective Enterprise With The Error-correction Machinery Often Running Smoothly.

If We Can't Think For Ourselves, If We're Unwilling To Question Authority, Then We're Just Putty In The Hands Of Those In Power.

Scientific Method

You're An Interesting Species, An Interesting Mix. You're Capable Of Such Beautiful Dreams And Such Horrible Nightmares. You Feel So Lost, So Cut Off, So Alone, Only You're Not. See, In All Our Searching, The Only Thing We've Found That Makes The Emptiness Bearable Is Each Other.

I'd Like The [cosmos] Series To Be So Visually Stimulating That Somebody Who Isn't Even Interested In The Concepts Will Just Watch For The Effects. And I'd Like People Who Are Prepared To Do Some Thinking To Be Really Stimulated.

Eratosthenes's Only Tools Were Sticks, Eyes, Feet, And Brains; Plus A Zest For Experiment. With Those Tools He Correctly Deduced The Circumference Of The Earth, To High Precision, With An Error Of Only A Few Percent. That's Pretty Good Figuring For 2200 Years Ago.

Modern Darwinism Makes It Abundantly Clear That Many Less Ruthless Traits, Some Not Always Admired By Robber Barons And Fuhrers - Altruism, General Intelligence, Compassion - May Be The Key To Survival.

There Is A Reward Structure In Science That Is Very Interesting: Our Highest Honors Go To Those Who Disprove The Findings Of The Most Revered Among Us. So Einstein Is Revered Not Just Because He Made So Many Fundamental Contributions To Science, But Because He Found An Imperfection In The Fundamental Contribution Of Isaac Newton.

The Illegality Of Cannabis Is Outrageous.

In All Our Searching, The Only Thing We've Found That Makes The Emptiness Bearable Is Each Other.

I Never Said It. Honest. Oh, I Said There Are Maybe 100 Billion Galaxies And 10 Billion Trillion Stars. It's Hard To Talk About The Cosmos Without Using Big Numbers. I Said "billion" Many Times On The Cosmos Television Series, Which Was Seen By A Great Many People. But I Never Said "billions And Billions." For One Thing, It's Too Imprecise. How Many Billions Are "billions And Billions"? A Few Billion? Twenty Billion? A Hundred Billion? "billions And Billions" Is Pretty Vague. When We Reconfigured And Updated The Series, I Checked-and Sure Enough, I Never Said It.

These Are All Cases Of Proved Or Presumptive Baloney. A Deception Arises, Sometimes Innocently But Collaboratively, Sometimes With Cynical Premeditation. Usually The Victim Is Caught Up In A Powerful Emotion -- Wonder, Fear, Greed, Grief. Credulous Acceptance Of Baloney Can Cost You Money; That's What P. T. Barnum Meant When He Said, 'there's A Sucker Born Every Minute.' But It Can Be Much More Dangerous Than That, And When Governments And Societies Lose The Capacity For Critical Thinking, The Results Can Be Catastrophic -- However Sympathetic We May Be To Those Who Have Bought The Baloney.

We Live In A Society Exquisitely Dependent On Science And Technology And Yet Have Cleverly Arranged Things So That Almost No One Understands Science And Technology.

Information Society

.. Think Of The Rivers Of Blood Spilled By All Those Generals And Emperors So That In Glory And In Triumph They Could Become The 'momentary' Masters Of A 'fraction' Of A 'dot'

In College, In The Early 1950s, I Began To Learn A Little About How Science Works, The Secrets Of Its Great Success, How Rigorous The Standards Of Evidence Must Be If We Are Really To Know Something Is True, How Many False Starts And Dead Ends Have Plagued Human Thinking, How Our Biases Can Colour Our Interpretation Of Evidence, And How Often Belief Systems Widely Held And Supported By The Political, Religious And Academic Hierarchies Turn Out To Be Not Just Slightly In Error, But Grotesquely Wrong.

The Cosmos Is All That Is Or Was Or Ever Will Be. Our Feeblest Contemplations Of The Cosmos Stir Us -- There Is A Tingling In The Spine, A Catch In The Voice, A Faint Sensation, As If A Distant Memory, Of Falling From A Height. We Know We Are Approaching The Greatest Of Mysteries.

We Were Wanderers From The Beginning.

A Tiny Blue Dot Set In A Sunbeam. Here It Is. That's Where We Live. That's Home. We Humans Are One Species And This Is Our World. It Is Our Responsibility To Cherish It. Of All The Worlds In Our Solar System, The Only One So Far As We Know, Graced By Life.

After I Give Lectures-on Almost Any Subject-i Am Often Asked, "do You Believe In Ufos?" I'm Always Struck By How The Question Is Phrased, The Suggestion That This Is A Matter Of Belief And Not Evidence. I'm Almost Never Asked, "how Good Is The Evidence That Ufos Are Alien Spaceships?"

To Live In The Hearts Of Others Is To Never Die In Those We Leave Behind.

A Religion Old Or New, That Stressed The Magnificence Of The Universe As Revealed By Modern Science, Might Be Able To Draw Forth Reserves Of Reverence And Awe Hardly Tapped By The Conventional Faiths. Sooner Or Later Such A Religion Will Emerge.

Our Ancestors Lived Out Of Doors. They Were As Familiar With The Night Sky As Most Of Us Are With Our Favorite Television Programs.

We Are Made Of Starstuff.

If Our Long-term Survival Is At Stake, We Have A Basic Responsibility To Our Species To Venture To Other Worlds. Sailors On A Becalmed Sea, We Sense The Stirring Of A Breeze.

The Gears Of Poverty, Ignorance, Hopelessness And Low Self-esteem Interact To Create A Kind Of Perpetual Failure Machine That Grinds Down Dreams From Generation To Generation. We All Bear The Cost Of Keeping It Running. Illiteracy Is Its Linchpin.

The Nitrogen In Our Dna, The Calcium In Our Teeth, The Iron In Our Blood, The Carbon In Our Apple Pies Were Made In The Interiors Of Collapsing Stars. We Are Made Of Starstuff.

The Universe Seems Neither Benign Nor Hostile, Merely Indifferent.

A Book Is Proof That Humans Are Capable Of Working Magic.

If There Is Life, Then I Believe We Should Do Nothing To Disturb That Life. Mars Then, Belongs To The Martians, Even If They Are Microbes.

We Are One Species. We Are Starstuff.

We Are Prodding, Challenging, Seeking Contradictions Or Small, Persistent Residual Errors, Proposing Alternative Explanations, Encouraging Heresy. We Give Our Highest Rewards To Those Who Convincingly Disprove Established Beliefs.

We Have Begun To Contemplate Our Origins: Starstuff Pondering The Stars; Organized Assemblages Of Ten Billion Billion Billion Atoms Considering The Evolution Of Atoms; Tracing The Long Journey By Which, Here At Least, Consciousness Arose.

Not All Birds Can Fly. What Separates The Flyers From The Walkers Is The Ability To Take Off.

Science Is Far From A Perfect Instrument Of Knowledge. It's Just The Best We Have.

It's Sometimes Easier To Reject Strong Evidence Than To Admit That We've Been Wrong, This Is Information About Ourselves Worth Having.

Science Is More Than A Body Of Knowledge. It's A Way Of Thinking: A Way Of Skeptically Interrogating The Universe.

Scientists Constantly Get Clobbered With The Idea That We Spent 27 Billion Dollars On The Apollo Programs, And Are Asked "what More Do You Want?" We Didn't Spend It; It Was Done For Political Reasons. ... Apollo Was A Response To The Bay Of Pigs Fiasco And To The Successful Orbital Flight Of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's Objective Was Not To Find Out The Origin Of The Moon By The End Of The Decade; Rather It Was To Put A Man On The Moon And Bring Him Back, And We Did That.

We Wish To Find The Truth, No Matter Where It Lies. But To Find The Truth We Need Imagination And Skepticism Both. We Will Not Be Afraid To Speculate, But We Will Be Careful To Distinguish Speculation From Fact.

The Brain Is Like A Muscle. When It Is In Use We Feel Very Good. Understanding Is Joyous.

Not Explaining Science Seems To Me Perverse. When You're In Love, You Want To Tell The World.

What Began In Deadly Competition Has Helped Us To See That Global Cooperation Is The Essential Precondition For Our Survival. Travel Is Broadening. It's Time To Hit The Road Again.

Who Are We? We Find That We Live On An Insignificant Planet Of A Humdrum Star Lost In A Galaxy Tucked Away In Some Forgotten Corner Of A Universe In Which There Are Far More Galaxies Than People.

Our Intelligence Is Imperfect, Surely, And Newly Arisen; The Ease With Which It Can Be Sweet-talked, Overwhelmed, Or Subverted By Other Hardwired Propensities - Sometimes Themselves Disguised As The Cool Light Of Reason - Is Worrisome.

Books Permit Us To Voyage Through Time, To Tap The Wisdom Of Our Ancestors.

Virtually Every Major Technological Advance In The History Of The Human Species - Back To The Invention Of Stone Tools And The Domestication Of Fire - Has Been Ethically Ambiguous.

Life Is But A Momentary Glimpse Of The Wonder Of This Astonishing Universe, And It Is Sad To See So Many Dreaming It Away On Spiritual Fantasy.

Scientists Can Routinely Predict A Solar Eclipse, To The Minute, A Millennium In Advance. You Can Go To The Witch Doctor To Lift The Spell That Causes Your Pernicious Anaemia, Or You Can Take Vitamin B12. If You Want To Save Your Child From Polio, You Can Pray Or You Can Inoculate. If You're Interested In The Sex Of Your Unborn Child, You Can Consult Plumb-bob Danglers All You Want . . . But They'll Be Right, On Average, Only One Time In Two. If You Want Real Accuracy . . . Try Amniocentesis And Sonograms. Try Science.

Science Is A Way To Not Fool Ourselves.

In Many Cultures It Is Customary To Answer That God Created The Universe Out Of Nothing. But This Is Mere Temporizing. If We Wish Courageously To Pursue The Question, We Must, Of Course Ask Next Where God Comes From? And If We Decide This To Be Unanswerable, Why Not Save A Step And Conclude That The Universe Has Always Existed?

In More Than One Respect, The Exploring Of The Solar System And Homesteading Other Worlds Constitutes The Beginning, Much More Than The End, Of History.

We Are Not Smart Enough To Decide Which Pieces Of Knowledge Are Permissible And Which Are Not.

The Earth Is The Only World Known So Far To Harbor Life. There Is Nowhere Else, At Least In The Near Future, To Which Our Species Could Migrate. Visit, Yes. Settle, Not Yet. Like It Or Not, For The Moment The Earth Is Where We Make Our Stand. It Has Been Said That Astronomy Is A Humbling And Character-building Experience..... To Me, It Underscores Our Responsibility To Deal More Kindly With One Another, And To Preserve And Cherish The Pale Blue Dot, The Only Home We've Ever Known.

Any Civilization That Doesn't Develop Space Travel Dies.

Once We Overcome Our Fear Of Being Tiny, We Find Ourselves On The Threshold Of A Vast And Awesome Universe That Utterly Dwarfs — In Time, In Space, And In Potential — The Tidy Anthropocentric Proscenium Of Our Ancestors.

At The Heart Of Science Is An Essential Balance Between Two Seemingly Contradictory Attitudes-an Openness To New Ideas, No Matter How Bizarre Or Counterintuitive They May Be, And The Most Ruthless Skeptical Scrutiny Of All Ideas, Old And New. This Is How Deep Truths Are Winnowed From Deep Nonsense.

If We Could Travel Into The Past, It's Mind-boggling What Would Be Possible. For One Thing, History Would Become An Experimental Science, Which It Certainly Isn't Today. The Possible Insights Into Our Own Past And Nature And Origins Would Be Dazzling. For Another, We Would Be Facing The Deep Paradoxes Of Interfering With The Scheme Of Causality That Has Led To Our Own Time And Ourselves. I Have No Idea Whether It's Possible, But It's Certainly Worth Exploring.

Frederick Douglas Taught That Literacy Is The Path From Slavery To Freedom. There Are Many Kinds Of Slavery And Many Kinds Of Freedom, But Reading Is Still The Path.

If I Finish A Book A Week, I Will Read Only A Few Thousand Books In My Lifetime, About A Tenth Of A Percent Of The Contents Of The Greatest Libraries Of Our Time. The Trick Is To Know Which Books To Read.

'in His Celebrated Book, 'on Liberty', The English Philosopher John Stuart Mill Argued That Silencing An Opinion Is "a Peculiar Evil." If The Opinion Is Right, We Are Robbed Of The "opportunity Of Exchanging Error For Truth"; And If It's Wrong, We Are Deprived Of A Deeper Understanding Of The Truth In Its "collision With Error." If We Know Only Our Own Side Of The Argument, We Hardly Know Even That: It Becomes Stale, Soon Learned By Rote, Untested, A Pallid And Lifeless Truth.'

We On Earth Have Just Awakened To The Great Oceans Of Space And Time From Which We Have Emerged.

I Don't Know The Answer. Maybe No One Knows. Maybe When You Grow Up, You'll Be The First To Find Out.

The Nuclear Arms Race Is Like Two Sworn Enemies Standing Waist Deep In Gasoline, One With Three Matches, The Other With Five.

It Is Clear That The Nations Of The World Now Can Only Rise And Fall Together. It Is Not A Question Of One Nation Winning At The Expense Of Another. We Must All Help One Another Or All Perish Together.

Who Are We, If Not Measured By Our Impact On Others?

Man Is A Transitional Animal. He Is Not The Climax Of Creation

Some Racists Still Reject The Plain Testimony Written In The Dna That All The Races Are Not Only Human But Nearly Indistinguishable. . . .

It Took The Church Until 1832 To Remove Galileo 's Work From Its List Of Books Which Catholics Were Forbidden To Read At The Risk Of Dire Punishment Of Their Immortal Souls.

Books Break The Shackles Of Time, Proof That Humans Can Work Magic.

In Science It Often Happens That Scientists Say, 'you Know That's A Really Good Argument; My Position Is Mistaken,' And Then They Would Actually Change Their Minds And You Never Hear That Old View From Them Again. They Really Do It. It Doesn't Happen As Often As It Should, Because Scientists Are Human And Change Is Sometimes Painful. But It Happens Every Day. I Cannot Recall The Last Time Something Like That Happened In Politics Or Religion.

Our Passion For Learning ... Is Our Tool For Survival.

My Long-time View About Christianity Is That It Represents An Amalgam Of Two Seemingly Immiscible Parts-the Religion Of Jesus And The Religion Of Paul. Thomas Jefferson Attempted To Excise The Pauline Parts Of The New Testament. There Wasn't Much Left When He Was Done, But It Was An Inspiring Document.

The Uniqueness Of Humans Has Been Claimed On Many Grounds, But Most Often Because Of Our Tool-making, Culture, Language, Reason And Morality. We Have Them, The Other Animals Don't, And -- So The Argument Goes -- That's That.

Maybe It's A Little Early. Maybe The Time Is Not Quite Yet. But Those Other Worlds - Promising Untold Opportunities - Beckon. Silently, They Orbit The Sun, Waiting.

The Idea That God Is An Oversized White Male With A Flowing Beard, Who Sits In The Sky And Tallies The Fall Of Every Sparrow Is Ludicrous. But If By 'god,' One Means The Set Of Physical Laws That Govern The Universe, Then Clearly There Is Such A God. This God Is Emotionally Unsatisfying... It Does Not Make Much Sense To Pray To The Law Of Gravity.

The Chief Deficiency I See In The Skeptical Movement Is Its Polarization: Us Vs. Them - The Sense That We Have A Monopoly On The Truth; That Those Other People Who Believe In All These Stupid Doctrines Are Morons; That If You're Sensible, You'll Listen To Us; And If Not, To Hell With You. This Is Nonconstructive. It Does Not Get Our Message Across. It Condemns Us To Permanent Minority Status.

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