Talk:Carl Sagan

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Discussion of pantheism and Carl Sagan at: Talk:Carl Sagan/pantheism

Talk:Carl Sagan/Subpages

I propose that all discussion from this page on the issue of how pantheism relates to Carl Sagan's views be moved to Talk:Carl Sagan/pantheism. JWSchmidt 19:20, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

.....AND that the discussion of pantheism be removed from this page.

.....And that people be requested to go to Talk:Carl Sagan/pantheism when they want to add new discussion of pantheism. Maybe there also needs to be Talk:Carl Sagan/cosmotheism or Talk:Carl Sagan/Attempts to cliam that Sagan was religious, a page that would cover all religions. JWSchmidt 14:16, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Oh, please. We're listing the nuclear winter in Iraq silliness but not saying what happened? Now I'm offended because he intruded into history, which he didn't understand. MichaelTinkler

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"In a Nightline debate, Fred Singer predicted that on the contrary winds would dissipate the smoke within a few days."

Can anybody clarify this? I don't see how "dissipating" the smoke would ameliorate cooling effects.

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Removed text:

During the Gulf War, Sagan predicted that smoke resulting from U.S. bombing of Iraqi oil and refining facilities would result in a condition similar to nuclear winter. In a Nightline debate, Fred Singer predicted that on the contrary winds would dissipate the smoke within a few days.

It's unclear where this is supposed to be going. Sagan made a prediction, someone else made a different prediction, and... what? Did the facts bear either of them out? --Brion

I guess where it is going is this: Sagan and Ehrlich's "nuclear winter" scenario always attracted a considerable degree of skepticism from other physicists, but like SETI (his other favourite project) was practically unfalsifiable. Sagan's prediction of 1991 being a "year without summer" on the basis of the same model, provided a way to falsify it. And it was very wrong - according to CRU data, 1991 was actually an unusually warm year. 203.51.99.36 10:56, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No Gulf War Winter

The smoke had an effect on local, but not measurably on global climate, thus Sagan was demonstrably wrong on this. [1]

I don't know how fast the smoke was dissipated after the fires were extinguished, though.

Aragorn2 14:00, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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"His father was a Jewish garment worker and his mother a housewife": this is awkward. Was his mother not a Jew? If the point is just to say that Carl Sagan was ethnicly a Jew, or was raised a Jew, let's just say it.

He was ethnically and culturally jewish. However, orthodox jews would not ever duly consider him to be a real jew, unless his mother was actually a jew.

His adopted religion, like Spinoza and Einstein before him, was actually a form of pantheism or cosmotheism.

According to a Cosmotheist Web site and dedicated to the late Dr. William L. Pierce:

"Cosmotheism is a religion which positively asserts that there is an internal purpose in life and in cosmos, and there is an essential unity, or consciousness that binds all living beings and all of the inorganic cosmos, as one."

"What is our true human identity is we are the cosmos made self-aware and self-conscious by evolution. "

"Our true human purpose is to know and to complete ourselves as conscious individuals and also as a self-aware species and thereby to co-evolve with the cosmos towards total and universal awareness, and towards the ever higher perfection of consciousness and being."[2]

Some quotes by Carl Sagan from his Cosmos TV series that do mirror the three Cosmotheist statements above are:

"The Cosmos is all that is, was, or ever will be." "The Cosmos is within all of us; we are all made of Star Stuff."

"We Humans have here on earth evolved consciousness and have gained some measure of understanding. We Humans are a precious form of matter, life, and which has been groomed by evolution to consciousness."

"We Humans are the legacy of 15 billion years of Cosmic Evolution." "We Humans are truely creatures of the Cosmos." "We are the way for the Cosmos to know itself".

If Sagan had been interested in adopting the God Hypothesis he would have said so after having said each of the above comments. However, as Sagan's work makes clear, he saw no utility in adopting the God Hypothesis and was not a "theist" of any kind. JWSchmidt 14:09, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Obviously, that "hypothesis" of JWSchmidt that Carl Sagan "would have said so" is just completely without any foundation in fact, and is just purely his own subjective and pov bias against the facts and Carl Sagan's own words. Carl Sagan was NOT any PERSONAL THEIST, but, his own words do clearly indicate that he was a IMPERSONAL THEIST, ie. a pantheist or a cosmotheist, and this is factually true whether JWSchmidt falsely claims that he wasn't or not.-PV

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Truth in advertising

At the bottom of the Carl Sagan page is an external link to an article called Contact: A Eulogy to Carl Sagan by Ray Bohlin.

If you follow the link you can find at the end of Bohlin's article the following:

"Remember that enemies of the faith are lost and in need of a Savior. But even though they may be prayed for and witnessed to by colleagues up to the end, many, including Carl Sagan, will still, defiantly, die in their sins."

The entire article by Bohlin is an attempt to condemn Carl Sagan for being an irrational materialist, a faithless atheist and an "enemy of the faith".

I think it is useful to have this link. It demonstrates the kind of reaction that Carl Sagan provoked due to his philosophical orientation as a free-thinker. However, I think it would be appropriate to label the link with a warning to readers not to be misled by the title of the article.

eulogy. n : a formal expression of praise (to speak well of someone).

The title of the article might mistakenly be taken to suggest that Bohlin wrote a eulogy about Carl Sagan. However, the article simply describes the movie Contact as being a eulogy for Carl Sagan. I can accept this portrayal of the movie as "a fitting eulogy", even though the movie was constructed before Carl Sagan died. However, there is nothing in the title to warn the Wikipedia reader that Bohlin does NOT intend a formal expression of praise and that he instead provides a condemnation of Carl Sagan's religious views. JWSchmidt 02:13, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree. How do you suggest the link description should be changed?—Eloquence 05:41, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

Maybe it would be helpful to change,

Analyzes Sagan's views from a Christian perspective.

to

Dr. Bohlin suggests that the movie Contact can serve as a fitting eulogy for Carl Sagan. Sagan's scientific approach to the question, "was the universe created?" is critically analyzed by Bohlin from his Christian perspective.

I was going to sleep on it. JWSchmidt 06:07, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)