Carl Sagan’s new article can be found in the March/April 2007 edition of Skeptical Inquirer. It is titled “Science’s Vast Cosmic Perspective Eludes Religion.”
Well, okay. As you know, Carl Sagan died of pneumonia in 1996. This “new” article was actually prepared by Ann Druyan, based on lectures Sagan gave in 1985.
Sagan begins the article by pointing out that there are more galaxies in the universe than there are stars in the Milky Way. This, he finds, is “a useful calibration of our place in the universe.” Nonetheless, virtually no religion has taken into account “this vast number of worlds [or] the enormous scale of the universe.”
If, as Sagan argues, life is commonplace throughout the universe, “it must follow that there is massive destruction, obliteration of the whole planets, that routinely occurs, frequently, throughout the universe. . . [T]hat is a different view than the traditional Western sense of a deity carefully taking pains to promote the well-being of intelligent creatures.”
Sagan concludes by arguing that the God portrayed by traditional religions “is too small. It is a God of a tiny world and not a God of a galaxy, much less of a universe.” Sagan suggests that science is, “at least in part, informed worship.” Further, curiosity and intelligence, to the extent provided by a God, would be gifts, which we must use. This passage reminds me of a humorous drawing I posted a few days ago.
Even if a traditional God does not exist, “then our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival in an extremely dangerous time.”
I found Sagan’s article compelling. God’s own book forgot to tell us that the universe is almost unimaginably large. In light of well-published findings of modern astronomers and biologists, it would be nonsensical to doubt that life abounds throughout the universe. Nonetheless, most religions avoid discussion of this possibility of the universe as A) existing and B) constituting a fertile field for large number of sentient life forms.
It’s just much easier to talk about an artificially contained story involving a man, woman and the serpent in an earthly garden. To the extent that fundamentalists (and even more “liberal” religions) focus only on Earth, however, the rest of the universe is a very big elephant in the room. If many believers have their way, 99.99999…% of the universe is dispensible frivolous scenary for the only show in town, everything worthwhile allegedly occurring on a single tiny blue speck.
Sagan’s point might just be the best reason of all for demonstrating the arrogance, ignorance and silliness of the inerrancy crowd.
The Bible is a record of God's dealings with one man's family. Others are mentioned only as they come in contact with this group. It is also not a scientific document, although the things it says are scientifically accurate. The Law given through Israel is also an "essential survival tool" – for Israel. Even Sagan can't talk about everything in the Cosmos in one book.
Larry wrote, "It is also not a scientific document, although the things it says are scientifically accurate."
Oh Larry, you left yourself wide open again. Will you never learn?
Larry: My point is directed toward the inerrancy crowd, those who claim that the words of the Bible are perfectly and completely true.
Any meaningfully true account of creation would mention "And the sun was but one of trillions of stars, but God focused his creation efforts on only one star, the sun, and only one of its planets."
To be full and meaningful, an account of the Savior would mention "And God chose to save only those people who resided on Earth (one out of trillions of planets) and did not send a Savior to any of the other sentient beings of the universe, none of whom will go to heaven" or "And God created trillions of Brothers, one of them named Jesus, who was assigned to Earth, while the others (James, Jerry, Josh, etc) were dispersed to the trillions of other planets.
Of course Sagan couldn't talk about everything in one book. He was not Divine. The tiny slice of Creation covered by the Bible presents even less coverage, ergo . . .
Again, I'm addressing this to the inerrancy crowd. The Biblical Creation account, in failing to acknowledge that our planet is but a speck in the vastness of space, rules out Divine authorship.
Perhaps this failure to even mention the vast scope of the cosmos amounts to piling on, however. After all, there are many other indications that the Bible is not not a meaningful account of the universe. For starters, the first two chapters of Genesis contain two contradictory accounts of Creation. See also here and here and here.
Another interesting problem with Genesis is God's apparent inability to know very much at all. Here's my newest favorite example of the obtuseness of God. In Gen 2:18, God notices that Adam is lonely:
So what does omnipotent and omniscient God do?
Did that solve the problem? No, not at all. That thing that Adam craved was not a bunch of animals.
Only then did God figure out that, perhaps, a WOMAN might be a solution (though God failed to foresee that this woman would get Adam thrown out of paradise).
The God portrayed by Genesis repeatedly sounds like he's not quite with it. Imagine an omniscient God that loses track of Adam in one small garden (Gen 3:9 "God called to Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?"). God sounds exactly like the kind of Guy who might forget to attend to all of those trillions of other planets (and gazillions of other people) he Created.
"One man's family"? Job? Adam? Noah? Onan? Moses? The great-grandfathers of the wives of Adam's kids? Of which man's family is the Bible an accurate record?
"Scientifically accurate"? So everything in the Bible can be verified using direct testing, or at least be confirmed by comparison to multiple independent resources? Please post a bibliography of these resources.
Show me the place in the million-year ice-core record where Noah's flood occurred. It would certainly have left a mark in Antarctica.
Point out to me the worldwide geological stratum (like the C-T iridium layer from 65 million years ago) that indicates the flood. Something that universal would certainly have left a telltale sediment disturbance, especially that close to the present.
Describe to me any possible (however improbable) method for making the sun stand still in the sky without killing everything on Earth. Don't make up your own laws of physics like Harry Rimmer (in 1936 he popularized the idea that science proved it happened, using an even less scientific reference from 1890). Use the current laws of gravity, inertia, and cohesion of matter as they've been repeatedly and consistently tested for 400 years as unchanging.
The Bible might get more scientific respect if it had mentioned little details like: How big is the world He created, what causes disease and how to prevent it, or how distant landslides can cause rivers to suddenly and briefly change colors, or volcanoes to bring down rains of frogs, fire, rocks, and/or noxious gases to kill cities (or selectively, the weakest members such as the youngest babies) fairly far away. The eastern end of the Mediterranean basin was very volcanically active in Biblical times, if you can trust the conclusions of a few thousand independent geologists.
The bible must at times say things scientifically accurate, based on the law of averages. I find Judges 1:19 particularly revealing of the nature and biblical limits of the power of 'god': "And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."
It would seem if I want to overcome the god described in the bible, all I need is an iron chariot.
It is untrue that God forgot to tell us that the universe is almost unimaginably large. The expansion of the Universe is one of the most imposing discoveries of modern science.
It was first suggested by the general theory of relativity and is backed up by physics in the examination of the galactic spectrum. Thus the size of the Universe is probably constantly increasing and this increase will become bigger the further away the galaxies are from us.
The following verse of the Qur'an (sura 51, verse 47) where God is speaking, may perhaps be compared with modern ideas:
"The heaven, We have built it with power. Verily. We are expanding it".
Based on a non-binding irrational psuedo-scientific evaluation of the arguments presented here, I am going to have to side with Larry J. Carter.
Abdellah,
Why not point to a far earlier source? Isaiah 42:5 says God "created the heavens and stretched them out." That's a good thousand years earlier.
Of course, that same verse goes on to say that God also "spread out the earth". Is this referring to a flat earth? No, wait, I know, this must refer to plate tectonics.
The problem with pointing to these kinds of statements in the various scriptural traditions is that they are isolated and ambiguous. They do not demonstrate understanding. Out of all the statements that could be taken to refer to the real world, one can pick out the few statements that are close enough to be taken as hits and ignore the many that miss. This does not make for a very convincing case.
Um, the Mormons have known this for over 150 years now. Check out the book of Moses in our scriptures – we know that there are ,many more planets with life.
The bible is not a book about the outside world. The bible is a book about oral history, mythology, collected wisdom. The bible cannot be updated; it is frozen in time (many centuries ago). It is claimed to be the word of god to keep it from being modified … because we are supposedly not as wise as ancestors who stoned people to death.
Understood as a book about man's inner world, the bible is sometimes valuable, as are the many other religious documents of the world. Taking it literally not only destroys its value, but prevents it from being updated … and keeps it more and more irrelevant … not only about outer reality, but about inner reality as well.
"God’s own book forgot to tell us that the universe is almost unimaginably large."
I'm having trouble figuring out why this is significant, or at least why it devalues religious texts. It's not as if people couldn't look up and see the stars and get a small sense of the vastness of the universe. I know this is a bad comparison, but I don't think the bible mentions ants, and there's not people stumbling over that. Whether divinely inspired or made up, I don't really see a need for the bible or other holy books to mention the size of the universe.
Matt:
Ants are mentioned in Proverbs 30:25 😛
Also, many people did not conceive of the stars as anything even approaching the scope of what we know them to be. For many primitive cultures they were pinholes in the sky, or mystic representations of some other powers or principalities.
@Matt,
> but I don’t think the bible mentions ants
Er, how about Proverbs 6:6-8
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
I am sure religions would be far more popular if they did modernise their bibles. I mean it would be interesting to see a bible made today.. I am sure it would be full of references to relativity, quantum physics and womens rights. It is simply a record of what we knew then as humans and it keeps religions and their followers years behind everyone else. They shoud re-write it all.
There are periodic attempts to update the bible. Around 300 A.D. the Christians did it. A few hundred years after that, Mohammed did it. Nearly a millennium after that, Martin Luther took a stab at it, in a retro sort of way. In the 19th century, Joseph Smith did it. And these are the attempts that have survived by dint of gathering large groups of adherents.
The problem is in the legacy. As a programmer, I know the problems of trying to change legacy rules and understandings as the actual functional environment changes.
There is also something in us that reveres ancient wisdom. Most ancient wisdom is propagated because it has been ancient wisdom, and "it wouldn't have survived if there hadn't been a reason".
Science takes a different tack: Find out why this was written in the first place. It's like the Dear Abby parable of the pot roast. Told again here in case you don't know it. Always find the first source, and check its assumptions, before propagating an idea.
With Holy Books, they are assumed to be completely and totally true, unassailable. So how can you update it if any faction using it as a reference might object to a different wording. There is a "KJV is the Bible" bumper sticker up the block from me. Even newer, more accurate translations of the original texts are anathema to people like that. How could they ever accept something completely new?
Jim wrote: "Um, the Mormons have known this for over 150 years now. Check out the book of Moses in our scriptures – we know that there are ,many more planets with life."
You'd like us to consult the Book of Mormon for intelligence and reason?! Believe me Jim, you don't want us to get into analyzing those scriptures, what with the talking magic hats and such! Space aliens on other planets are the LEAST of the problems with that text and its origins.
Jim said: "Um, the Mormons have known this for over 150 years now. Check out the book of Moses in our scriptures – we know that there are ,many more planets with life. "
Yes, and you believe God lives on one of them. Kolob, isn't it?
Dan, how the Sun could stand still without everything on Earth dying:
Assume that the universe is "n" dimensional, where "n" is greater than 4 but, less than or equal to 13. [SUSY Model before "big bang"].
Assume that at t=10 to the negative 43 rd power seconds after the "big bang" that the the universe (and its dimensions) expanded.
Assume that we perceive that "n" = 4 and that E=mc2(squared) but, that where "n" is greater than 4 but, less than or equal to 13, that c is not a constant (or limit).
Assume that there is a fold of the universe into and/or out of one of the other dimensions which is among those greater than the number we currently are able to perceive where space/time may be compressed to such a degree that it stops.
We and the Sun therby could become lodged in such a fold of the universe where the Sun stands still and the conditions necessary and sufficient for life on Earth to continue still exist, and emerge thereafter, returning to our present state.
Q.E.D.
Tim: If the continuum around the sun and us stopped or slowed, then we would not have perceived the sun stopping. The sun stopping in the sky requires the sun to keep on pumping out photons, and the observer to continue all his internal chemical reactions that allow the perception. The apparent angular velocity of the sun had to stop suddenly, and then suddenly resume.
Let's say the Earth's rotation slowed to a stop in 5 minutes (only 1/4 gees laterally). The Mediterranean would still have surged completely across the middle east in about an hour. Unless you suspend the law of inertia.
The actual value of C is not relevant to the issue. As Einstein pointed out, everything relating to position, velocity, acceleration, jerk, and higher order derivatives are all measured in terms of C. Read the "Mr. Tompkins"
books to get a good layman's idea of how changing the value of C might affect our world.
You are just waving random formulas and numbers (those things that numb the innumerate among us) to say that the laws of physics may have been suspended. I.E: Magic.
I've been casually following the evolution of string theory for 30 years. I've also read Feynman's book "Q.E.D" (for Quantum Electrodynamics), that may have launched that whole line of inquiry. I know where these assumptions of yours originated, and where they lead. The sun stopping in the sky is not in their domain.
Eric – Men would have written a "meaningful account" of things differently, and many have tried to rewrite it – thus the errors. Inadequacy to a scientist simply means a scientist has different requirements for information, not that the information is inadequate. If you would limit your debunking to versions of the Bible rather than to the original autographs the wouldn't be an errancy issue.
Hey, Larry. Could you please, for my benefit (and for the benefit of the other readers), email me an accurate scan of the "original autographs" of the Bible? That would settle things for many of us, especially if the Gospel according to Matthew were actually signed, "Saint Matthew."
I know I shouldn't be poking fun at you, especially given that you have shown the courage to step back into this site, where many of us have been unsympathetic to your religious claims. On the other hand, your comment makes many (MANY) assumptions I just can't make.
Eric – Let's be clear, I'm not making religious claims, I'm not making stuff up, and I'm not trying to convert you. I am offering an alternate view that you believe you have already dealt with, satisfactorily enough to ignore. This is apparent to me because of the ridiculous accusations about God's character which demonstrate an ignorance of what God is doing in the world. I also have to be very careful not to "throw a stumbling block before the blind" or "poke fun" at people that don't yet see what I have been given to see.
Larry,
The one thing that you continually fail to see is that your insistence on treating as rock-solid absolutes those things that you feel or believe is contrary to the purpose of this blog and offensive to many who post here.
It is your terminology, your manner of speaking that offends. You have no proof that god is "doing" anything let alone that there even is one. It is perfectly fine for you to say "I believe that God has an influence on the world…" but not "…what God IS doing in the world…". Do you get the distinction?
No matter how strong your personal convictions, you do not have any proof other than your own feelings, if you are truly honest with yourself. That is enough for faith…but not enough for this blog.
I thought I had spelled your name correctly – sorry. You shouldn't make assumptions and you certainly shouldn't take my word for anything, I could be wrong. Scientific proof will not produce faith.
You might be able to appreciate the Covenants more as legal documents than religious mythology or a comprehensive description of the universe.
"But go and learn what this means: 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice', for I am not come to call the righteous but sinners {law-breakers} to repentance." People make a religion out of it when they start requiring a sacrifice.
Restoring people to a lawful relationship {reconciliation} with God is the ministry of Jesus, who also said, "Blessed is he whosoever is not offended in me." He was aware that some folks would be offended by being called criminals {sinners} before the Law. Redemption, justification, inheritance – all legal concepts.
gatomjp – I do understand the distinction, but I suppose I do not understand "the purpose of this blog" as well as you would like. Scientism is very dogmatic in insisting on the use of it's own ruler as the measure of all things.
I could also offer correction to your terminology when you allege that, I "have no proof that god is “doing” anything let alone that there even is one". If you would qualify your assertion with the phrase "that I will accept" I would be able to recognize your personal conviction on that matter.