Was Carl Sagan an Atheist?

Undesired Walrus

Penultimate Amazing
Undesired Walrus
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I have read a lot of Sagan. However, I have yet been able to underpin whether or not he was an Atheist, and I have come close to the conclusion he was an Agnostic, in the same way DeGrasse Tyson is.

Yet he never came out and declared himself an Agnostic or an Atheist, as far as I can see.

On Charlie Rose, his last show before his death, he gave an insight into his opinion when asked by Rose on his views on faith: 'In my opinion- Holding a belief without evidence, is a mistake'.

But perhaps his clearest view on God and Gods was provided by chapter 2 of Pale Blue Dot, in which he asks us to look at the dot and 'try to imagine that a God or Gods, created the entire world for one of the 10 Billion or-so species, that inhabit this dot'. In the rest of the chapter, he goes on to give one of the strongest arguments against the anthropic principle.

Then in Cosmos: 'If God is an unanswerable question, why not save a step, and deem the universe an unanswerable question? There is then no need for a creator, and there never was.'

Much has been made about a God being found in the numbers of Pi in his novel Contact, suggesting he did believe. However, I suspect this was an attempt at showing how a God could be proven.

One of the world's greatest Humans regardless, but thoughts?
 
The question is rather, did Sagan hold any theistic beliefs? No, he didn't.

Why is it always Atheists who have to defend themselves? Because that's what the question really is: An attack. "Are you now, or have you ever been...?"

We are born atheist, just as we are born a-political, a-racist, a-nationalistic, etc. All these come later (if ever), imposed on us or self-chosen. Therefore, we should always ask if people are religious. Not if they are Atheists.

Atheism is the starting position. Religion is a possible subset of human development.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
But perhaps his clearest view on God and Gods was provided by chapter 2 of Pale Blue Dot, in which he asks us to look at the dot and 'try to imagine that a God or Gods, created the entire world for one of the 10 Billion or-so species, that inhabit this dot'. In the rest of the chapter, he goes on to give one of the strongest arguments against the anthropic principle.
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No, no, no! He gives an argument against the anthropocentric principle - the idea that humans are special. The anthropic principle is essentially the opposite - it's the idea that humans are not special; that instead we are typical members of the class of lifeforms capable of questioning our place in the universe. As such, we notice certain things that seem special, but in fact are not - they are typical among our class.

To illustrate the difference, an anthropocentrist would look around, notice the contrast between the green and living surface of the earth and the cold emptiness of the space around it, note that there is much, much, much more empty space than there is surface of the earth, and conclude that we live in a special place because we are unique, and it was put there for us to live on.

An anthropicist would interpret the same evidence as indicating that we live in a special place because nearly all members of our class - the class of intelligent lifeforms - live in such places, presumably because it's the only place they are able to exist (they can't exist in empty space, for example). Put another way, if there are any intelligent creatures living in space, there should not be many of them compared to the number living on planets. Our anthropocentrist would come to no such conclusion - she would be perfectly happy with a universe in which the only planet was earth, but which was brimming with lifeforms living in space.
 
I went home at lunchtime so I checked what it was I incorrectly remembered! It was this:

'There seems to be something stunningly narrow about how the anthropic principle is phrased. Yes only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kinds of life. But essentially the same laws and constants, are required to make a rock. So why not talk of a universe designed so that rocks can one day come to be?'

I must have misunderstood him. Is he talking about how anthropocentrics describe the anthropic principle?
 
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Undesired Walrus said:
I went home at lunchtime so I checked what it was I incorrectly remembered! It was this:

'There seems to be something stunningly narrow about how the anthropic principle is phrased. Yes only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kinds of life. But essentially the same laws and constants, are required to make a rock. So why not talk of a universe designed so that rocks can one day come to be?'

I must have misunderstood him. Is he talking about how anthropocentrics describe the anthropic principle?
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Ah - that's in chapter 3, which I didn't look at (you referred to chapter 2). I've now looked at it, but it's not very coherent. He begins by assailing the anthropic principle as untestable and equivalent to the anthropocentric principle he rightfully criticized in the previous chapter, but ends by describing Linde's ideas about eternal inflation, in which the anthropic principle plays a central role, and praising them (for example he agrees they have some testable features).

The deeper contradiction in what he says arises from what I mentioned above - the anthropic principle applied to (for example) eternal inflation a la Linde is the claim that our observable universe is one of an ensemble of universes, and that absent evidence to the contrary, we shouldn't expect to be special or unique in any way within that ensemble. That is about as opposite to the anthropocentric view of the world as you can get, but it is the anthropic principle.

It sounds like Sagan hadn't thought this through very carefully.
 
Well, I guess there may be some concepts of god which do not require an afterlife...
 
plumjam said:
Just to point out the above is a self contradicting statement. (It´s from Sagan, not UW)
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Not at all. I've seen people hold beliefs without evidence -- you're one of them --- and I see how much trouble that causes for both them and for others around them.

Therefore, I have evidence for my belief that holding beliefs without evidence is a mistake.
 
plumjam said:
Just to point out the above is a self contradicting statement. (It´s from Sagan, not UW)
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I'm not sure what you mean. If my housemate believes that hydrogen peroxide is orange juice, and bases his belief on faith, not evidence, presumably the resulting situation (hospital visits, removed bladders, humiliation) is sufficent evidence that his method of arriving at truth is a bad one?

..as drkitten said.
 
As much as I'd like to comment on the content of the OP directly, I am so sick of seeing this thread title or one's similar to it showing up that I have to address the content tangentallly.

Before thinking you have come up with some novel question, do a Tag search.
After that, do a forum search for the keywords you can come up with.
After that, do a forum specific search for the keywords you can come up with.

These things really aren't that hard nor do they take that much time unless you're on dial-up like I am.. and I have an advantage having been around for a while seeing numerous threads like this one crop up.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
Let me make clear I don't mean Agnostic in its more contemporary form, as in 'I'm unsure'.
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Then I don't know what you DO mean by it. If you mean by "agnostic" that he did not have knowledge of God, then yes, he was an agnostic, and so is every other person on Earth. But in that case, it's not a very useful word.

When you really start trying to get specific with the words, the only logical way I've found is that atheist/theist deals with beliefs, agnostic/gnostic deals with knowledge.

I think that everyone is either a theist or an atheist. If you ask him the question and he says he's not sure, he just doesn't want to answer the question. Not that it's always bad to refuse to answer, Carl Sagan probably knew what he was doing, in that his embracing the atheist word would hurt what he was trying to accomplish. That might also be the case with Tyson.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
As much as I'd like to comment on the content of the OP directly, I am so sick of seeing this thread title or one's similar to it showing up that I have to address the content tangentallly.

Before thinking you have come up with some novel question, do a Tag search.
After that, do a forum search for the keywords you can come up with.
After that, do a forum specific search for the keywords you can come up with.

These things really aren't that hard nor do they take that much time unless you're on dial-up like I am.. and I have an advantage having been around for a while seeing numerous threads like this one crop up.
Click to expand...

This is staggeringly uptight. Just don't enter (or look at) the thread if you are somehow offended by it.
 
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drkitten said:
Not at all. I've seen people hold beliefs without evidence -- you're one of them ---
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looks like another non-evidenced belief, unless you want to provide some

and I see how much trouble that causes for both them and for others around them.
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well all kinds of trouble comes from all kinds of beliefs, it seems reasonable to me to make the conjecture that a great deal more potential trouble lies in those beliefs whose believers most strongly believe their beliefs are based on some evidence

Therefore, I have evidence for my belief that holding beliefs without evidence is a mistake
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a great deal depends on what you´re willing to consider as evidence. Your belief system will be more or less defined and or limited by this decision.. and may well end up as a closed self-reinforcing loop, such as has happened with most of the materialists on this forum.
Other people will have different definitions of evidence from yourself, and you may well use this to say ´Ah, well.. that my dear boy, is not evidence´
And so the merry-go-round continues.

Seen against this background Sagan´s statement becomes essentially meaningless.
 
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If he was not an atheist, for sure he would not believe in the Bible's god or something similar.

Maybe some philosophical variant of a distant creator, more like someone running an experiment and watching the outcome. I think that he actually would not believe in this thing. Maybe its just what he considered as the concept with the smaller implausibility ammount.

But its all just guesses, nothing more nothing less.

Sagan's "god" in Contact has, I think, some points in common with the "god" presented at the Rama quadrilogy.
 
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plumjam said:
a great deal depends on what you´re willing to consider as evidence. Your belief system will be more or less defined and or limited by this decision.. and may well end up as a closed self-reinforcing loop, such as has happened with most of the materialists on this forum.
Other people will have different definitions of evidence from yourself, and you may well use this to say ´Ah, well.. that my dear boy, is not evidence´
And so the merry-go-round continues.

Seen against this background Sagan´s statement becomes essentially meaningless.
Click to expand...

Perhaps any evidence of any kind whatsoever might be helpful, then.
 
"Contrary to the fantasies of the fundamentalists, there was no deathbed conversion, no last minute refuge taken in a comforting vision of a heaven or an afterlife."

From "Billions and Billions" by Carl Sagan. The quote is from his widow, Ann Druyan, dated 14 February 1997, describing Sagan's death.

Any further questions on the issue ?
 
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