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Carl Sagan's Son

How common is it that sons find interests and Careers that are polar opposites to their fathers.

My dad; a machinist from the steel mills, hard core NRA Bush supporter and devote catholic.

Me, a chemical engineering professor centrist with no strong religous convictions.

Luckily we love each other greatly and I couldn't be prouder to have him as a father.
 
AmateurScientist said:
Science isn't about knowing the truth. It's a way of discovering provisional truths, yet always ready and willing to discard them in favor of new and better truths. Science is a method, a process.
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I know the above concept has been stated a hundred different ways, but I like the way you've worded it.

Steven
 
hgc said:
Oh God. I can see whey they might have clashed. This sounds like a classic intellectual argument between father and son. You haven't even read Kristeva, you old fossil! And the topic is the same old reality vs solipsism.
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The arguement is great for the development of a person's intellect. In much the same way high school students conduct momentum transfer experiments on a sliding track. We're not testing that feature anymore, we know the answer. It just aides the student to learn it.

The issue of "What IS real?" is dead. Clinging to the debate is intellectually equivilent to the Amish's rejection of mechanical power. Sure you can and I'm sure you can enjoy your life. But, there is more out there and most of us won't be bothered trying to convince solipsists otherwise.
 
joobz said:
How common is it that sons find interests and Careers that are polar opposites to their fathers.

My dad; a machinist from the steel mills, hard core NRA Bush supporter and devote catholic.

Me, a chemical engineering professor centrist with no strong religous convictions.

Luckily we love each other greatly and I couldn't be prouder to have him as a father.
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I'll be your counter example:

My Dad: retired Mechanical Engineer (what he really did would nowadays be called Industrial Engineering), who doesn't really hold strong political or religious opinions.

Me: Electrical Engineer who has learned from his past and now holds few strong political or religious positions.

Religiously speaking, my dad is more agnostic than I. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, he still pays lipservice to the Methodist church that he grew up in, but that's about it. Of course, paying lipservice to the Methodist Church is almost tantamount to being an atheist. :p
 
Dave1001 said:
Once again, there's no downside to it. A subset of religions will damn you if you convert to the wrong religion. But as far as I know the same ones also damn you if you choose no religion. So converting to one of those on your deathbead costs nothing, but its like getting a free an afterlife lottery ticket to a lottery that probably won't pay off. But who turns down a free lottery ticket?
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The downside is dying as a coward. Who would want that?

Also, do you really think that (a) God would be convinced by such a conversion? Such a "just in case" conversion wouldn't be sincere at all, and I'd think that such a powerful divinity would not be fooled.

But hey, if you want your last breath to be a weaseling, cowardly, insincere yielding, then be my guest. Some of us have this thing called dignity.
 
There's not a whole lot of point in dignity when you're dead, this is true. But a person who is really "virtuous" is going to have some difficulty and discomfort in throwing away their dignity, and in that sense it doesn't neccesarily pay off.

And of course, my personal favorite argument against that sort of reasoning is that there is no reason to completely rule out the Gods who nobody believes in as possibile deities, and in which case you have to worry about Atheisto, the god who damns the believers and rewards atheists with eternal awesome.
 
Or there’s also the possibility that God would be more accommodating to atheists than to those who vehemently believe in the "wrong" religion.
I think that even I am wrong about my atheism (which I seriously doubt); God would understand my lack of belief in him/her/it, given the lack of sufficient evidence to the contrary. :duck:
 
Beady said:
When I'm dead, I won't care.
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True, but I'll care on my deathbed, assuming I am lucky enough to have enough time to reflect. Even in those final moments, I'll wish to retain my intellectual honesty and integrity, the courage of my convictions, if you will.

The deathbed converter forfeits that.

AS
 
Thing is, in a godless universe, we products of blind evolution have to make our own meaning, and develop and subscribe to our own values.

To some that extends to a consideration of what we leave behind, and what people we are close to - or people at large - think of us, and how the good bits of our contribution to the world might be best continued after we've gone.

To others, that's less important.

To me, Pascal's wager seems like a mug's bet. But, I can see how it might not to others, though it's difficult to imagine how it could pay off, whether there's a God or not.

Ultimately, we all seem agreed that once you die, that's your lot; the issue is, how do you deal with that?
 
AmateurScientist said:
Pascal's Wager is a sniveling coward's bet.

AS
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Pascal's Wager also ignores the difficulty inherent in selection the right religion, as the South Park movie demonstrated by have droves of religious people in Hell. "I'm sorry, the correct religion is Mormon."

EDIT: Err, Hawkeye got this one.
 
UserGoogol said:
There's not a whole lot of point in dignity when you're dead, this is true. But a person who is really "virtuous" is going to have some difficulty and discomfort in throwing away their dignity, and in that sense it doesn't neccesarily pay off.

And of course, my personal favorite argument against that sort of reasoning is that there is no reason to completely rule out the Gods who nobody believes in as possibile deities, and in which case you have to worry about Atheisto, the god who damns the believers and rewards atheists with eternal awesome.
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I still think it's a very rational way to cover one's odds of a positive afterlife to convert to either christiany or islam on one's deathbed. In fact, to convert to whatever combination of religions one can hold simultaneously and expand one's afterlife odds. For example, I think one may be able to get baptized a catholic, accept jesus as one's savior, and submit to Allah without cancelling out being saved by each religion. If so, go for all three. If not, one should probably choose catholicism or islam. If there are no gods then it doesn't make a difference. If the only god with a say on your afterlife ends up being Atheisto, then you're admittedly screwed by this approach. But if one considers the religions people choose an "afterlife market", the market indicates christianity or islam. As an agnostic who believes markets can often be smarter than my personal intelligence, I'm going to choose Jesus and/or Allah over Atheisto to maximize my positive afterlife odds.
 
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