Audiovisual Media>Audio Recording:  Sagan , Carl and Gross, Terry (12-16-1999), Fresh Air Archive: Charles Haden and Carl Sagan, NPR Fresh Air, Retrieved on 2011-06-04
Folksonomies: science religion wonder

Memes

04 JUN 2011

 Carl Sagan on the Belief in God

I think it's impossible to be a scientist and to confront, even occassionally, the grandure, subtlety, elegance and magnificience of the universe without feeling a sense of reverence and awe, but that's very different from concluding that there's a god who issues punishments and rewards after your dead or that prayer works or that the bible is written by anybody but fallible human beings. [...] The word god is used to cover so many different points of view... First of all, you can be religi...
Folksonomies: religion atheism god
Folksonomies: religion atheism god
  1  notes

A very political commentary on the subject. Beautiful rhetorically.

04 JUN 2011

 Carl Sagan on Science Fiction

When I was little, starting about eight, nine, 10, science fiction held enormous fascination. I couldn't read textbooks, or atleast I didn't have access to textbooks that I could read, but there was a lot of science in science fiction and it was rippling with the sense of wonder. But as I got older, and could learn some science, I found the science to be more subtle, more complex, more challenging, more full of wonder and having the additional, not inconsiderable, virtue of being true. To wha...
Folksonomies: science science fiction
Folksonomies: science science fiction
  1  notes

It holds the sense of wonder, but science is more subtle and sophisticated and therefore took over his attention.

04 JUN 2011

 Tolerance for Ambiguity

I have a tolerance for ambiguity. It's clear to me that there's some questions that humans don't have the answers to and what arrogance to imagine we have answers to all questions. Science is sometimes, I know, attacked for supposed arogance, but I think it's the most humble occupation and discipline around. Because, instead of trying to impose our preconceptions, our predispositions on the Universe, we are open before the Universe to see what the Universe has to offer. Science is in the busi...
  1  notes

Carl Sagan on the humility of science in not imposing its preconceptions on reality.

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