“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Carl Sagan during a Q&A after his 1985 Gifford Lecture at the University of Glasgow entitled The Search For Who We Are, later transcribed to book form by his wife Ann Druyan in The Varieties of Scientific Experience. He goes on to say, “Neither is evidence of presence. And this is again a situation where our tolerance for ambiguity is required.” (Sagan, p.237).
Over the ages, humans have tried to seek out meaning in life. Why are we here? What is our purpose? Where did we come from? It seems only natural that the human psyche would yearn to find answers to these questions. Our need to understand our place seems to runs deep in every culture throughout time. And although the quest is noble, the danger according to Sagan lies in the acceptance of words or ideas without scientifically verifiable evidence to back them. To blindly follow without question a well spoken soul or to live by text in a book is a choice that every human can make, and Carl Sagan adamantly expresses he is not trying to tell others what to think or believe, but skeptical scrutiny must be applied to these claims otherwise we are doing mankind and in turn the universe a disservice by not seeking truths.
In his lectures, Sagan covers topics from the significance of life on Earth given the modern knowledge of cosmology, extraterrestrial intelligence and the origin of life, Natural theology and religious experience. The underlying notion I found throughout his talk was the curiosity as to why scholars have been known or perhaps are more comfortable in claiming ignorance over accepting theory without sufficient scientific proof where historically religion is more resistant to take this stance.
It seems world religions focus more on or are concerned with beliefs, traditions and to some extent control over its patrons and less concerned with discovering if any of these are actually backed with scientific fact making them truths. It is one thing to believe in something when there is evidence to support those claims, it is another to believe without knowing why or demanding proof in exchange for your commitment. Another curious aspect to religion is a sense of ‘Us v. Them’ meaning, religion has a way of segregating mankind (Williams). Many religions teach their theologies and practices are the ‘right ones’ making theirs the best, correct or only acceptable religion, excluding others from their ranks. Science, on the other hand, unifies mankind in a sense and this seems to be a fundamental difference between the two. Sagan explains this in more detail on page 231 in his book, “How can we tell what’s what? One thing we can do is we can check out the explanation in terms of repeatability. Verifiability. So, for example, if physicists after Isaac Newton say that the distance that a falling object falls in time t is a constant times t2, and if you are skeptical or dubious about that, you can preform the experiment… What is more, it is remarkable that Buddhist physicists find just the same regularity. And Hindu physicists, and atheist physicists, and Christian physicists, and so on. All find the same laws of nature.” So no matter what your background or location, science yields repeatable conclusionary results, unifying mankind. It is common in religious groups to promote a ‘if you do not believe what we believe, you are wrong’ mentality yet there is no repeatable scientific evidence that they are in fact the holders of the ‘right’ beliefs, it is all speculation.
Ultimately, religion can sometimes be seen as limiting and denies mankind the wonderment of being apart of something grander. “Carl wanted us to see ourselves not as the failed clay of a disappointed Creator but as starstuff, made of atoms forged in the fiery hearts of distant stars. To him we were “starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of 10 billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms. tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.” For him science was, in part, a kind of “informed worship.” No single step in the pursuit of enlightenment should ever be considered sacred; only the search was.” (Sagan, p. xii-xiii).
Works Cited
Sagan, Carl, et al. The Varieties of Scientific Experience: a Personal View of the Search for God. Penguin Books, 2007.
Sagan, Carl. “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.” The Gifford Lectures, 25 Apr. 2016,
Williams, Peter. “The Skeptic's Sceptic - Part 1-4.” Review of Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (Penguin, 2006).
I (obviously) share your enthusiasm for the cosmic perspective of Carl Sagan, Sarah! I really think his little book "Cosmic Connection" is where I caught the philosophy bug (my math wasn't strong enough for astronomy, much as I love to stargaze).
ReplyDelete"Informed worship" is a felicitous expression, and it seems just right in capturing what John Dewey might have called Carl Sagan's "natural piety" towards the universe. Ann Druyan should know, if anyone does. "Sacred search" also fits, and is a fitting description of education at its best. Searchers come from many angles, and should be grateful to learn what they can from the perspectives of those whose starting places are elsewhere. His largest point of course was that we ALL started in the same place, the bellies of stars. That may be the deepest, and at the same time the most obvious, insight of which human consciousness is capable.
Since I just finished reading Center of the Storm by John Scopes, I look forward to reading Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience. In his autobiography, Scopes provided more details about his life before, during, and after the trial and his continued friendship with Clarence Darrow. He also provided insight into his own beliefs - "On its simplest level, prejudice means people are afraid of what they don't know and don't understand," and "Myths die hard...," and "Yet when Congress or a court or a school is opened with a prayer based upon the Christian belief, some religion has been discriminated against, no matter how small a minority it represents. The act itself in unchristian in its basic implications; it is replacing love and tolerance with discrimination. It is saying that a Jew or a Buddhist or a Moslem doesn't have the same feeling for people or doesn't have the same sympathies toward humanity as a Christian does, which is a bigotry as malevolent as saying a man can't have a job because he is a Negro. If a person does not have the right to believe what he wishes and if he cannot express it, then he is not a free man." This was an interesting observation given that his book was published in 1967. When Scopes returned to Dayton after thirty-five years, many of the individuals who participated in the trial were deceased and I found his observation that "if the trial had been held again, in 1960, the verdict would have been the same. I couldn't see that the trial had altered the basic beliefs of most Daytonites." I wonder what most Daytonites today think of Carl Sagan if they are familiar with him.
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