Lunch With Carl Sagan

My Wish
                  If I would ask the Genie if I could sit down for a meal with my favorite person, it would be the late Carl Sagan. There I was, sitting across the table with my idol.  I didn’t ask a lot of silly questions. It was if he could read my mind. He just explained some of what he discovered, using Science and common sense.

         One of my favorite of Carl Sagan’s many books, The Demon-Haunted World is one of his best works. I asked him why he wrote such a controversial book. This book is about Sagan’s journey to prove whether God exists, or is there a scientific occurrence explaining the supernatural.

         Many critics and other scientists and even atheists all recommend everyone to read this book. Richard Dawkins, Fort Lavdedal Su Sentinel, and other scientific Americans believe that this book provokes our understanding of science and religion. Reading this book opens up many explanations.

         When I asked Sagan that if the Scripture is said to be divinely inspired, He thought a moment, and lifted his soup spoon but did not sip the wonderful onion soup. “Well,” he responded, “This is only because it is written by humans who didn’t understand science. Unusual happenings, like a solar eclipse, or other abnormal occurrences are easily explained by God’s making. That explanation seemed plausible to the supernatural of that time."

         I wanted to know, “What else is in the Scriptures did you study, “All of it,’ he answered, “I have read the Bible many times. “Science has proved that this is wrong,” Sagan explained,” The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in the Scripture to my mind casts further doubt its divine inspiration. “ He chuckled and added, “But I might be wrong. We are but a pale blue dot in this Universe.”

         Sagan and I ate our onion soup, roasted vegetables and everyone’s favorite, apple pie. Sagan quoted Henri Poincare, “We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether the delusion is not more consoling.”

                "yes, the world would be a more interesting place if there were UFOs lurking in the deep waters off Bermuda and eating ships and planes, or if dead people could take control of our hands and write us a message," He said with a smile. He laughed and told me, "I have, in my mind, and so do you and everyone else. We are equipped with tiny B.S. detectors that go off when we are being bamboozled, or if someone tries to flimflam us when we know better. Pay attention to your BS Detector. 

            " Are these types of thoughts and beliefs scientific? What does your BS Detector say" he grinned, " What about the paranormal spirit hunters and what about how much money is investigated in these projects? Sponsors. Do they ever find a real spook? The ratings are what matters. My BS Detector is going off again, " he said.

              "At the heart of pseudoscience ( and some religions, also an Old Age and New) is the absurd idea that wishing will make it so. How satisfying it would be, as in folklore and childrens' stories, to fulfill our heart's desire just by wishing it so," he chucked again and made a snapping gesture of his fingers and thumb, going up and down as he said, "Beep, beep, beep,beep, " That is the BS Detector.

            "Baloney, bamboozles, careless thinking, flimflam and wishes disguised as facts 'beep.. beep, are no restricted to parlor magic and ambiguous advice or matters of the heart. 'beep,' " Unfortunately they ripple through the mainstream politic, social, religious and economic issues in every nation, said Sagan.

            "The historian, Jyoce Applesby, and her collegues claim that when Darwin formulated his theory of evolution, he was an atheist and a materialist and suggested that evolution was a product of a purported atheist agenda. They have confused cause and effect," Sagan said and then, " Beep, beep, beep!"

            He began, " As of Darwin, his religious beliefs were at thet time, highly conventional. He found every one of the Anglican and Articles of Faith entirely believable. Through his interrogation of nature, through science, is slowly dawned on him that some of his religion was false. That is when Darwin changed his religious views, he finished.

          "If we could censor Darwin, what other kinds of knowledge could also be censored? Who, among us is wise enough to know which informational insights we can safely dispense with and which would be necessary ten or a thousand years into the future?" said Sagan, "But censoring knoweldge telling people what to think, is the aperture to thought police, foolish and incompetent decison making a long term decline."

            "The gears of poverty, ignorance hopelessness and low self-esteem mash to create a kind of perpetual failure machine," explained Sagan, " We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is the result. Frederick Davis taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom!" Dr. Sagan rose from his chair and pulled out my chair. "This has been a marveous lunch, but I do run on so," he smiled wide. After a brief by unforgettable hug, we went our separate ways. I would have liked to see him again.



         “We wait for light, but behold darkness.” ISAIAH 59.9

         “It to better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” ADAGE

Dr. Carl Sagan, linked forever to science, died on December 20, 1996.The brilliant man and scientist explained as he lay dying, much of the errors of the Bible, but he didn’t find the truth that God existed. “But I may be wrong,” he murmured with his dying breath.