Demon Haunted World, Carl Sagan

Poor old Sagan. Misses the mark on the spiritual experience. Because it can't be proven by objectivism, the objective implication is that it must not exist. To the disadvantage of the individual. Do we just not believe in God because others have done horrors in their misguided search for God? Is man a non-spiritual being because we cannot measure his spirit? 

What a waste. And what a waste for Sagan. He's dead now. He either knows that God exists - in which case he missed the joy of God in his life - and, is now suffering damnation unless our loving God has an exception of forgiveness for him - or he doesn't know God - in which case he still missed out in the hope and spiritual fulfillment he would have enabled if he had only accepted. There would have been no down side to his belief - nothing to lose - everything to gain - so why not get over the hump? Smart man in many ways - made his life and death unnecessarily meaningless for himself.

Sagan criticizes Christianity harshly for excesses and unmentionable acts perpetrated in its name. It is true and irreprehensible that those who call themselves Christians should participate in, endorse and look the other way in the burning of so-called witches, the torture of the inquisition and the intolerance of objective learning. But human beings are capable of deeply base acts of cruelty. Were not Nazi atrocities executed in the name of scientific research? How about blood letting and all the related horrors of pre-modern medicine? Also in the name of science. So, perhaps science should be abandoned because it has been perverted for the use of Evil?

Man has in the past and will in the future, pervert the precepts of even the most integruous pursuit. Both in science and in religion. But what escapes me is why, in the absence of a single piece of objective evidence, Sagan would rather believe and speculate about aliens than about God. Just read "Contact", or, better yet, watch the movie. Maybe he wasn't so objective after all........