In this video, Carl Sagan explores the vastness of the universe, the power of science, and the limitations of religious belief. He emphasizes the importance of skepticism, evidence, and the scientific method in shaping humanity’s future, while questioning the role of faith and mythology in understanding our place in the cosmos.
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Sources:
1. Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Arthur C. Clarke – God, The Universe and Everything Else (1988)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQQAv5svkk&t=334s
2. Carl Sagan’s last interview with Charlie Rose (Full Interview)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8HEwO-2L4w&t=265s
3. Carl Sagan’s 1994 “Lost” Lecture: The Age of Exploration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_-jtyhAVTc
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Bullshit. You will NEVER remove religion. It’s impossible. So instead of shitting it with utopian, unrealistic thinking, work with it.
Not someone who thinks humans can achieve logical perfection.
He’s a smart man, but not a wise one.
We aren’t robots.
It's all very simple really. The G Rated story of Adam & Eve is better explained in the movie The Blue Lagoon. It wasn't an apple or a snake that tempted Adam. So god is everywhere, that's the universe, or in our case, the milky way galaxy. Heaven and hell are not destinations, they are legacies. It took 4.5 billion years to turn planet earth into heaven. If we keep dealing with the devil and continue to release that captured carbon back into the atmosphere, we will definitely turn this planet back into hell. It's already happening. Meanwhile, the sun of god, always misspelled, is looking down at us going; I'm up here, throwing enough energy at you to do whatever you want. Nuclear? What do you think I'm powered with? The church coloured up the story to attract business.
See also this guy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
When the thing eating your brain says you don't need God you may just need god.
I wish Carl was still alive today…..the world badly needs rational people like Carl. We increasingly live in a snake oil world where those who shout the loudest on social media turn myth into fact.
Superb❤
Profoundly important as we reach a changing point of overpopulation and mass Extinktion.
Ath eistic com munism killed 100 million folks in the last hundred years. Right underneath your nose, poised high in the air, complaining about religion.
yes, we have to overcome religion but have to think something that replace it for lowering psychical tensions and encourage communication, improve the psychological state
The supranational of truth, by the Cathloic Chuch is the number one problem.
Religion has lot to answer for.Everyday in the past and in the future there are people suffering due solely to a belief in a god and the religion attached to it.The current war in the Middle East is currently the biggest example of this. To date over 42,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel and there is no end in sight to this war. The Israelis claim they are justified in carrying these massacres because Hamas murdered 1200 of their citizens but the ultra -right religious settlers have been killing Palestinians on the West Bank on regular basis and in Gaza 2 million are crowded into want is nothing more than a prison
But this is just one example of what has been occurring through the ages due to religious belief and it will never end in the foreseeable future.
Faith will be abolished when its opposite – – – fear – – – -disappears. Hint – – – -don't hold your breath.
II like how Carl Sagan speaks, and I agree with many of his views. But I would disagree with his description of Religion at 7:00. : "Religion deals with history, with poetry, with great literature, with ethics, with morals, including the morality of treating compassionately the least fortunate among us."
Much of what the Bible suggests as history is false, and I’m pretty sure it's not the only holy text to play loosely with 'recorded' events. If there is poetry, is is not good because it is religious. If there is great religious literature, again, it is not great because it is religious. The bible is often described as both, but overall, it is a mishmash of good and bad in every aspect one can think of. I can think of many rules in the Bible that are not ethical or moral, and some that are. I can think of many times Christians have persecuted the least (or less) fortunate, and many times when Christians have supported them. If there is good to be found in a religion, it is not because it is religious, it is because it contains some good people.
The only religion that we as humans should honour is for the planet we live on. Outside of this, nothing else matters.
Everything Carl said is correct to Carl and those with that mindset. Most religions focus on the prize after death. If you are good now, the life after death will be Amazing. A lot of people need that belief, so they have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
So what exactly about religion has made people "feel good?" There is no such religion that has ever done this. All religions tend to magnify our human weaknesses, and criticize our life styles, our untamed animal natures, and our life decisions. Religious beliefs tell us we are not where we need to be, and that we have to do better; but also that this journey will be very difficult and very painful.
What more clues do you need, Sagan? Wasn't Christ's crucifixion enough to demonstrate the perils we will experience in our human spiritual journeys?
Carl Sagan is an IDIOT to suggest that religion makes people "feel good", and fails to provide contrasts and conflicts that challenge human nature and human ignorance. Clearly, Carl knows nothing beyond the distance between his ego and his nose to make such a bold a ridiculous statement.
And perhaps this is why he appears so gaunt and tensed, with depressed sunken eyes and flat tone of voice, because his spirit seemed to have exhausted and defeated itself.
Carl, you have given up. You are defeated. You are not a great voice of hope for humanity. You are the opposite of this.
“The essence of the scientific method is the willingness to admit you are wrong, the willingness to abandon ideas that don’t work. And the essence of religion is to not change anything. The supposed truths are handed down by some revered figure, and no one is supposed to make any progress beyond that, because all the truth is thought to be in hand.”
The first part of that quote is interesting in the context of a video that begins with a full minute of dogma.
The rest of the video is an attempt to play “science” against “religion” – as if the goal is to so narrowly define both that the two can be considered not only antithetical but mutually exclusive. So let’s examine some of the statements that were made in that process.
“…..we are in desperate need of change.”
It isn’t possible to improve something without changing it so I’m not opposed to change per se. On the other hand, not all change is good, so when the need for change is driven by a sense of desperation, mistakes become much more likely.
“Faith is belief in the absence of evidence.”
The majority of English-speaking people think of faith as believing something for which there is inadequate evidence or none. Archie Bunker paraphrased it this way, “You know what faith is. Faith is believing something nobody in his right mind would.”
Not everyone defines faith that way, however. To some people who assume there is a spiritual dimension to the universe, faith is the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1 King James translation)
“The trouble comes with people who are biblical literalists – people who believe that the Bible is dictated by the creator of the universe to an unerring stenographer, and has no metaphor or allegory in it.”
It was probably in the 1950s that I first became aware that there are people who dogmatically promote verbal inspiration of the Bible and think they are interpreting the Bible literally.
Our parents read Bible stories to my siblings and me. When we could read for ourselves, they encouraged us to read Bible stories for ourselves. They encouraged us to memorize Bible passages and I had memorized more than 150 before 1954. Our parents, however, subscribed to neither the doctrine of verbal inspiration nor the belief that everything in the Bible can be understood literally. The only way for people to even pretend they are doing that is to ignore the Bible passages that don’t fit their chosen belief system. Dad repeatedly told me, “Read for yourself, study for yourself and think for yourself.
When he was born, Dad’s mother was an adherent of one denomination, his father was a member of another denomination, and Dad’s father (my grandfather) was the caretaker of the Hebrew cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So Dad, his two brothers and their parents were exposed to three different belief systems. Before 1935, my paternal grandparents, Dad and his two brothers had rejected SOME of what they had been taught as children.
Why?
Because they had been exposed to evidence that hadn’t been taken into account by the people who had created those beliefs systems.
In English, the word, “god” (lowercase) is a reference to anyone or anything that is worshiped. The word is customarily capitalized when referring to the God of the Bible.
Yes, it is true that, even among people who profess “faith” in the God of the Bible, there are differences of opinion about how he should be described and differences of opinion about how he relates to members of Adam’s race but, in the natural realm, order tends to disorder*. Even if the word, “God”, doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone who makes a profession of faith, “God”, is considered the person (or cosmic force) that has been able to create order out of chaos.
Perhaps more important to this discussion is that there is more than one way to define “religion”. My working definition is this: – the sum of those beliefs, practices and prohibitions that pertain to a person’s concept of the highest powers of the universe.
It is disingenuous to pretend that all “religious” people are dedicated to traditions or creeds.
Because of the way I interpret the evidence, I believe people who think the origin of the order (and complexity) we see in the universe is a big bang shouldn’t be placed at an economic or even at a social disadvantage in society. I believe they should be allowed – encouraged even – to promote their belief system(s), BUT NOT AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. For that same reason, I believe people whose belief systems are theistic should be allowed to promote our belief systems, BUT NOT AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE.
Further, I believe civil governments should NOT enforce theists prohibitions AND should NOT enforce prohibitions that are based on the worship of Mother Earth or the big bang.
*Order tends to disorder. If you have any question about whether that is a “natural law”, consider this: If you walk into a room and there is a deck of cards scattered on the floor, you don’t know whether the wind put them there or whether someone scattered the cards out of frustration. BUT, if you walk into a room where a deck of cards is stacked neatly on a table, you “know” (beyond the slightest shadow of reasonable doubt) that the wind didn’t stack them that way.
Yes, stop reading about it and experience it directly. Science is not direct.
Faith isn't outgrown. It needs to be stopped from infecting young minds (parents), otherwise it's part of how one's brain actually forms – good luck with the rewiring!
ASCRIPTION
The ascription of the so-called meaning of life and how it's supposed to be will never find a unified agreement of what life is supposed to be and what life is not supposed to be. Life is not a one size, fits all scheme and the only thing certain in life is uncertainty. What is the true meaning of life? What is the true meaning of truth? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The true meaning of life might not have any subscriptive, purposeful meaning at all. The superior Gods worshipped today will become the inferior Gods, unworshipped tomorrow. What life conceals may never be revealed; we grow, we live and we die. Accept it. So live in the moment, because life is about living in the ever now and ever new…
The government and those behind government are using religion against the people.
Is it Carl's voice that makes what he says is amazing, or what he say's makes his voice amazing.. Now there is a question. Or simple duality. I love Carl 😭😭
yes, it is main question what is God? After that next question haw you know that? It is myths, phantasies, tales as others, but that peoples loves so much. In phantasies peoples can live all live. It is worst maybe it is easiest way to start fight – to defend own phantasy.