From Skeptic vol. 4, no. 4, 1996, pp. 10-17.

The following article is copyright ©1996 by the Skeptics Society, P.O. Box 338, Altadena,
CA 91001, (626) 794-3119. Permission has been granted for noncommercial electronic circulation
of this article in its entirety, including this notice.

IN MEMORY OF

CARL SAGAN

1934-1996

STAR-STUFF

By Tom McDonough

"There is a place with four suns in the sky-red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close
together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them. I know of a world with a million moons. I
know of a sun the size of the Earth-and made of diamond....The universe is vast and awesome, and
for the first time we are becoming part of it."

-Carl Sagan, The Cosmic Connection

When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, I eagerly read the scientific papers of an obscure
young astrophysicist who was one of the few researchers investigating the possibilities of life on
other worlds. Then I went to graduate school at Cornell University, and not long afterwards, he
became a professor there. His name was Carl Sagan.
Over the years, as he became my teacher, friend, and colleague, I watched as his charisma and gift
of poetic language blossomed into a TV personality, bestselling writer, Pulitzer prizewinner, novelist,
and the world's leading evangelist of science. And all the while, he continued to do world-class
research. I would like to share some of my personal reminiscences of him.
Carl was a great professor. His ability to express the most arcane concepts in intuitive terms made
it easy to grasp difficult theories of astrophysics. I can still see him drawing on the blackboard,
reducing complex phenomena to comprehensible images. This same skill shone through his books
and TV shows.
He took over a minor scientific journal, Icarus, and persuaded the leading figures of solar-system
research to publish some of their major papers there. He loved editing it, even loved assembling the
tables of contents. His publisher sometimes got annoyed at the huge phone bills he rang up,
because he preferred to speak directly with scientists around the world, rather than rely on mail. But
it became a leading periodical in its field.
With his wide-ranging mind, he was one of the few scientists able to do research in both biology
and astrophysics. In his lab, he re-created the conditions that led to life on primitive Earth, and
furthered our understanding of the chances of life evolving on other worlds.
When NASA designed the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft to be the first ever to fly to Jupiter and
Saturn, they discovered that they had incidentally created the first interstellar spaceships. The
energy needed to get to Jupiter was so great that the Pioneers would be moving too fast for the sun
to pull them back. They would drift on through the Milky Way for billions of years. Some day, they
might be found by another civilization. So why not include a message to them? But who could
design a message to alien beings having no language in common with us but mathematics?
Naturally, they turned to Carl. He devised an ingenious map showing where we are in the galaxy by
drawing the positions of pulsars, dead supernova stars that emit fantastically regular radio pulses.
To show who made the plaque, it bore a picture of a man and woman. Because these humans were
naked, NASA received complaints about sending pornography into space. It is difficult to imagine,
though, that tentacled little green beings would find such pictures very erotic.
Today, the plaques are past the farthest planets of our solar system, drifting like a message in a
bottle through the cosmic ocean of which he often spoke. Perhaps, millions of years from now, after
wandering the dust-lanes of the interstellar void and gliding past stars of many colors, one may be
found by spacefaring aliens. If so, how wonderfully appropriate that they will be reading a message
from Carl Sagan.
After these were launched, he led a team including his future wife Ann Druyan, that created a more
sophisticated message for the two Voyager spacecraft following in the spatial footprints of the
Pioneers. They designed a kind of videodisk containing photos of life on Earth, samples of our
greatest music, and greetings in many languages.
Now that message, too, is traveling to the stars. Someday a being may unwrap this gift from a
distant planet, and see pictures of sheepherders and astronauts, listen to Beethoven's Fifth and
Johnny B. Goode, and puzzle at the kaleidoscope of languages. One of the English messages he,
she or it will hear is "Hello from the children of planet Earth" - spoken by Carl's son, Nick.
While the Voyagers flew from Jupiter to Saturn, he and scientists Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman
created an organization to further space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
(SETI). Thus was born The Planetary Society. It became the fastest-growing public-membership
organization in the world and quickly reached 100,000 members on every continent, educating
people about the universe, and supporting research, especially on Mars and SETI.
In his books, articles and shows, Carl campaigned against irrationality. Although he believed it was
likely that there is intelligent life on other worlds, he was relentlessly skeptical about claims that the
Earth is being visited by UFOs.
Despite his disbelief in UFOs, he was one of the pioneers of SETI. Back in the early 1960s, it took a
lot of courage to speak out in favor of looking for astronomical signs of other civilizations, when
most scientists regarded this as a lot of Buck Rogers nonsense.
He was asked to edit the translation of a book by Soviet astrophysicist Iosif Shklovsky called
Intelligent Life in the Universe. He added so many notes elaborating his own ideas that it doubled
the length of the book, so he was made coauthor. It became the bible of SETI, summarizing the
arguments about why life should exist elsewhere, and how we might find it.
So persuasive was he that by 1982, he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the
journal Science, signed by 70 scientists, including seven Nobel prizewinners. This was a
tremendous turnaround in the respectability of this controversial field.
Carl also had a wonderful sense of humor and loved to tell anecdotes. Once, he told me about
doing a TV show in which he discovered, just before the cameras rolled, that the seat of his pants
had split. He had to make certain that he never faced away from the camera.
One of my favorite stories was from when he and Shklovsky were sitting together at a conference in
the USSR. The speaker droned on about his dubious theory that great scientific ideas are born
during times when sunspots are active. Shklovsky whispered that this theory must have been
conceived when sunspots were absent.
Carl was sometimes criticized for things he was not responsible for, and mocked for things he never
said. In his enormously popular Cosmos series, there were many camera shots of his profile.
People criticized him for being so egotistical, but this was the director's choice, not his.
Johnny Carson, America's popular talk-show host, loved to affectionately mimic Carl - one of his
favorite guests - by saying "billions and billions," until everyone associated it with Carl. Yet Carl
never said that precise phrase in public until years later.
He grew quite tired of it. I remember a concert for Planetfest, a Planetary Society celebration of
space exploration in 1981. He spoke about space exploration while accompanied by music
conducted by John Williams, and inevitably had to use the word "billions." As soon as he did,
tittering broke out in the audience. He glared at the offenders and continued.
One of his greatest contributions to society came from his essays for the popular national Sunday
supplement, Parade. With these, he was able to explain to a huge audience topics from all realms
of science, and to attack the endless gullibility of a public that fell for even the most unsupported
claims of paranormal events. He reminded them that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence."
Through Carl, millions and millions of people learned much about the universe. One extraordinary
fact he taught them was that most of the atoms of which we are made were born in stars that
exploded long ago. He observed that "We are made of star-stuff."
He certainly was.

CARL LEAVES US...

By James Randi

My heroes are few. Martin Gardner, Dick Feynman, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan. With all that
brilliance, my starry zodiac was more than adequate. Dick, Isaac, and now Carl are gone.
I'm glad that I last saw him in person in Seattle, looking well, and to all appearances recovering
from his ailment. We sat and spoke for a long time. The last time.
Up until the end, he was confident, cheery, optimistic. Despite the ravages of his illness and the
obvious, visible effects of the therapy he was undergoing, he made every public appearance he
could in his last weeks. He was brave in the face of his demise, and went like the warrior he was.
I remember his joy at seeing the first photos to come in from the surface of Mars, his exuberance
standing before a night sky in Cosmos, and the broad grin he unleashed when the stunning pictures
from Jupiter began to crawl across a computer monitor. I urge you, if you have not yet read his last
book, The Demon-Haunted World, please do so. Many months ago, I received a bound galley of
that book, with a cautionary note not to prepare a review based closely upon it, since there were
many planned changes due. When I eventually received the final draft, I noted many instances
where Carl had strengthened his language, upgraded and fortified his adjectives, and in general
hardened his language. I had the chilling thought that perhaps he felt this might be his last
statement about the pseudoscience, crackpots, frauds, and quacks that he so resented. Now I'm
more convinced of that possibility.
He had the ability to captivate with his words, spoken or written; the Cosmos series was seen by
400 million people worldwide. His students at Cornell worshiped him, and though his colleagues
were often pedantically annoyed at his high public profile and expressed opinions that he should
return to pure research, he managed to ignore that pressure-happily for us-and continued to be the
great teacher of critical thinking that the world came to know and respect. The academic pressure
was so great when he taught at Harvard, that he was "passed over" for tenure, and Harvard's stupid
loss was Cornell's gain.
Carl came up against the Reagan Star Wars fiasco, and became so involved as an advocate of
rationality that he was publicly arrested. He championed the SETI program - with Frank Drake - and
in all respects he supported science and the simple process of thinking.
A giant has fallen. We can only celebrate his life and continue to listen to him through his writings. I
miss him, and I feel cheated.

AN AWFUL HOLE, A WONDERFUL LIFE

By Michael Shermer

December 20, 1996, as I was sitting in the Skeptics Society's office this
morning working on final edits of this issue and my forthcoming book, my
partner Pat Linse came in. I bid her good morning and inquired if there was
anything important happening that I needed to know. "Yes," she said with an
ashen look in her face. "Carl Sagan is dead." The news came like a blow to
the gut. Just last week I saw him on Nightline, telling Ted Koppel that the
prospects for his future health were excellent. Just last month Carl and I had
communicated by e-mail about doing an interview for Skeptic magazine. And
just like that he is gone.

How fleeting is our tenure on planet Earth, Sagan might have said. We must
make the most of it. Carl certainly did. Born November 9, 1934, in New York
City, he obtained a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from the University
of Chicago in 1960. From 1962 to 1968, he worked at the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory. >From 1972 to 1981 he was Associate Director of
the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell University. Up
until his death he was David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space
Science there. Throughout this time he worked closely with NASA and JPL
on many space probes, and he co-founded and served as President of the
Planetary Society. As if that wasn't enough, Sagan won the Pulitzer Prize for
his book The Dragons of Eden, following that up with such classic works as
Broca's Brain, The Cosmic Connection, Intelligent Life in the Universe,
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Pale Blue Dot, and The Demon-Haunted
World. Sagan is best known to the general public as the writer and host of
the most-watched documentary series in history, Cosmos, for his regular
appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, and for his column in
Parade magazine.

Among Sagan's plethora of awards were NASA's Apollo Achievement Award,

the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award from the American Astronautical
Society, the Masursky Award from the American Astronomical Society, the
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal from the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation, the
1981 Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association,
and honorary degrees from 22 universities. The film version of his novel
Contact, about the first communication between humans and an alien
intelligence, is scheduled for release in the summer of 1997. It stars Jodie
Foster and is directed by Robert Zemeckis, who did Back to the Future. What
a full life it has been.

It was a gloomy day here at the office. As I write Carl is on the television
screen discussing the long historical chain from genes to brains to books, as
Cosmos plays in the background-our own small tribute to one of the finest
human beings of our age. Like so many others my life was deeply affected by
Sagan. His book, The Dragons of Eden, got me thinking about the
evolutionary aspects of human behavior when I was a graduate student in
psychology, and provided material for a number of lectures in my
introductory psychology course when I was a professor. Cosmos showed me
how important the history of science is to our understanding of how science
works and its impact on our culture.
Most significantly, in the Fall of 1987, Sagan delivered a lecture I attended in
Pasadena, California, entitled "The Burden of Skepticism." It came at a
crossroads in my life when I was trying to find my intellectual moorings.
After reminding us of the joys and responsibilities of science and skepticism,
Sagan concluded: "If we teach school children the habit of being skeptical
perhaps they will not restrict their skepticism to aspirin commercials and
35,000 year old channelers. Maybe they will start asking awkward questions
about economic or social or political or religious institutions, and then where
will we be? Skepticism is dangerous. In fact, it is the business of skepticism
to be dangerous. That is exactly its function."

It is not only what Sagan said, but how he said it that signaled to me what I
needed to do. His forceful presence, deliberate style (with that sonorous
voice), carefully-chosen humor, and most of all his pure class radiated that
night. I wanted to be a part of the business of skepticism and start asking
awkward questions of any and all institutions and beliefs. It was a defining
moment. I wanted to be a skeptic.

Immediately after the lecture I applied to the Claremont Graduate School,

earned a Ph.D. in the history of science, and within six months of graduating
in 1991 founded the Skeptics Society. In a way, the Society was born at that
1987 lecture, at which Carl stated what I think is the essential tension
between skepticism and credulity, and serves as a beacon toward which we
may steer whenever we lose our intellectual moorings.

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between

two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all
hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a
great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no
new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything
new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that
nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to
support you.)

On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and
have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot
distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones. If all ideas
have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to
me, no ideas have any validity at all.

No one is grieving today more than Carl's family. But on another level we are
all grieving because Sagan transcended self and science, reaching through
the intellectual, cultural, and political boundaries to all peoples. To quote
George Bailey's guardian angel, Clarence Oddbody, from It's a Wonderful
Life: "Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives, and
when he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"
You see, Carl, you really had a wonderful life.

IN HIS OWN WORDS...

ON THE COSMOS:

"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest
contemplations of the Cosmos stir us-there is a tingling in the spine, a catch
in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height.
We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries."

-"The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean," Cosmos, p. 4.

ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE:

"There are some hundred billion (1011) galaxies, each with, on the average, a
hundred billion stars. In all the galaxies, there are perhaps as many planets
as stars, 1011 x 1011 = 1022, ten billion trillion. In the face of such
overpowering numbers, what is the likelihood that only one ordinary star, the
Sun, is accompanied by an inhabited planet? Why should we, tucked away in
some forgotten corner of the Cosmos, be so fortunate? To me, it seems far
more likely that the universe is brimming over with life. But we humans do
not yet know. We are just beginning our explorations. The only planet we are
sure is inhabited is a tiny speck of rock and metal, shining feebly by reflected
sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost."

-"The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean," Cosmos, p. 7.

ON DISCOVERING EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCES:

"The receipt of a message from an advanced civilization will show that there
are advanced civilizations, that there are methods of avoiding the self-
destruction that seems so real a danger of our present technological
adolescence. ...Finding a solution to a problem is helped enormously by the
certain knowledge that a solution exists. This is one of many curious
connections between the existence of intelligent life elsewhere and the
existence of intelligent life on Earth."

-"Knowledge is Our Destiny," The Dragons of Eden, p. 234.

ON EXPLORING THE COSMOS:

"This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The
modern ships that ply the Keplerian trajectories to the planets are
unmanned. They are beautifully constructed, semi-intelligent robots
exploring unknown worlds."

-"Travelers' Tales," Cosmos, p. 138.

ON THE VIEW OF EARTH FROM 3.7 BILLION MILES AWAY AS A PALE BLUE
DOT:

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home, That's us. On it everyone
you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human
being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and
suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic
doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator
and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in
love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every
teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme
leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a
mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. ... There is perhaps no better
demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our
tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with
one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home
we've ever known."

-"You Are Here," Pale Blue Dot, pp. 8-9.

ON COMETS:

"Comets approach the Sun, flicker a few hundred times, and die like moths
around a flame. But a vast repository of them waits at the periphery of the
Solar System. When the present configuration of continents is
unrecognizably altered, when the Earth is engulfed by the expanding Sun,
when, in its dotage, our star feebly illuminates the charred remains of this
planet - then, even then, the skies will still be brightened as young comets,
newly arrived from the interstellar dark, make their wild perihelion passages.
When the rest of the solar system is dead, and the descendants of humans
long ago emigrated or extinct, the comets will still be here."

-"A Mote of Dust," Comet, p. 372.

ON CHILDHOOD:

"As soon as I was old enough, my parents gave me my first library card. I
think the library was on 85th Street, an alien land. Immediately, I asked the
librarian for something on stars. She returned with a picture book displaying
portraits of men and women with names like Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. I
complained, and for some reason then obscure to me, she smiled and found
another book - the right kind of book. I opened it breathlessly and read until I
found it. The book said something astonishing, a very big thought. It said
that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close
up."

-"The Backbone of Night," Cosmos, p. 168.

ON CHILDHOOD DREAMS OF BEING AN ASTRONOMER:

"When I was twelve, my grandfather asked me-through a translator (he had

never learned much English)-what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered,
'An astronomer,' which, after a while, was also translated. 'Yes,' he replied,
'but how will you make a living?' I had supposed that, like all the adult men I
knew, I would be consigned to a dull, repetitive, and uncreative job;
astronomy would be done on weekends. It was not until my second year in
high school that I discovered that some astronomers were paid to pursue
their passion. I was overwhelmed with joy; I could pursue my interest full-
time."

-"Preface," The Cosmic Connection, p. vii.

ON THE BRAIN:

"The human brain seems to be in a state of uneasy truce, with occasional

skirmishes and rare battles. The existence of brain components with
predispositions to certain behavior is not an invitation to fatalism or despair:
we have substantial control over the relative importance of each component.
Anatomy is not destiny, but it is not irrelevant either."

-"The Future Evolution of the Brain," The Dragons of Eden, p.

189.

ON GENES, BRAINS, AND BOOKS:

"When our genes could not store all the information necessary for survival,
we slowly invented brains. But then the time came, perhaps ten thousand
years ago, when we needed to know more than could conveniently be
contained in brains. So we learned to stockpile enormous quantities of
information outside our bodies. We are the only species on the planet, so far
as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our
genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of that memory is called the library.

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still

called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it
and you hear the voice of another person-perhaps someone dead for
thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and
silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of
human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who
never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that
humans can work magic."

-"The Persistence of Memory," Cosmos, p. 281.

ON PSEUDOSCIENCE:

"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and
superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of
unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before?
Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity,
during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about
our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up
around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the
controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness
gathers. The demons begin to stir."

-"Science and Hope," The Demon-Haunted World, pp. 26-27.

WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE NONSENSE:

"Such reports persist and proliferate because they sell. And they sell, I think,
because there are so many of us who want so badly to be jolted out of our
humdrum lives, to rekindle that sense of wonder we remember from
childhood, and also, for a few of the stories, to be able, really and truly, to
believe-in Someone older, smarter, and wiser who is looking out for us. Faith
is clearly not enough for many people. They crave hard evidence, scientific
proof. They long for the scientific seal of approval, but are unwilling to put up
with the rigorous standards of evidence that impart credibility to that seal."

-"The Man in the Moon and the Face on Mars," The Demon-
Haunted World, p. 58.

ON SCIENCE LITERACY:

"All inquiries carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee
that the universe will conform to our predispositions. But I do not see how
we can deal with the universe-both the outside and the inside universe-
without studying it. The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in
general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such
investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to
explain their work. If science is considered a closed priesthood, too difficult
and arcane for the average person to understand, the dangers of abuse are
greater. But if science is a topic of general interest and concern - if both its
delights and its social consequences are discussed regularly and
competently in the schools, the press, and at the dinner table - we have
greatly improved our prospects for learning how the world really is and for
improving both it and us."

-"Broca's Brain," Broca's Brain, p. 12.

ON SCIENCE AND UNCERTAINTY:

"We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is
to reduce the error bars a little, and to add to the body of data to which error
bars apply. The error bar is a pervasive, visible self-assessment of the
reliability of our knowledge. You can often see error bars in public opinion
polls...Imagine a society in which every speech in the Congressional Record,
every television commercial, every sermon had an accompanying error bar
or its equivalent."

-"Science and Hope," The Demon-Haunted World, p. 28.

ON HUMANS AND ANIMALS:

"We must stop pretending we're something we are not. Somewhere between
romantic, uncritical anthropomorphizing of the animals and an anxious,
obdurate refusal to recognize our kinship with them - the latter made tellingly
clear in the still-widespread notion of 'special' creation - there is a broad
middle ground on which we humans can take our stand."

-"Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors," Shadows of Forgotten

Ancestors, p. 413.

ON VELIKOVSKY:

"In the entire Velikovsky affair, the only aspect worse than the shoddy,
ignorant and doctrinaire approach of Velikovsky and many of his supporters
was the disgraceful attempt by some who called themselves scientists to
suppress his writings. For this, the entire scientific enterprise has suffered.
Velikovsky makes no serious claim of objectivity or falsifiability. There is at
least nothing hypocritical in his rigid rejection of the immense body of data
that contradicts his arguments. But scientists are supposed to know better,
to realize that ideas will be judged on their merits if we permit free inquiry
and vigorous debate."

-"Venus and Dr. Velikovsky," Broca's Brain, p. 127

BIOLOGY AND HISTORY:

"Biology is much more like language and history than it is like physics and
chemistry. ...Now you might say that where the subject is simple, as in
physics, we can figure out the underlying laws and apply them everywhere in
the Universe; but where the subject is difficult, as in language, history, and
biology, governing laws of Nature may well exist, but our intelligence may be
too feeble to recognize their presence - especially if what is being studied is
complex and chaotic, exquisitely sensitive to remote and inaccessible initial
conditions. And so we invent formulations about "contingent reality" to
disguise our ignorance. There may well be some truth to this point of view,
but it is nothing like the whole truth, because history and biology remember
in a way that physics does not. Humans share a culture, recall and act on
what they've been taught. Life reproduced the adaptations of previous
generations, and retains functioning DNA sequences that reach billions of
years back into the past. We understand enough about biology and history to
recognize a powerful stochastic component, the accidents preserved by
high-fidelity reproduction."

-"Life is Just a Three-Letter Word," Shadows of Forgotten

Ancestors, p. 92.

ON GOD:

"Because the word 'God' means many things to many people, I frequently
reply [to people who ask 'Do you believe in God?'] by asking what the
questioner means by 'God.' To my surprise, this response is often
considered puzzling or unexpected: 'Oh, you know, God. Everyone knows
who God is.' Or 'Well, kind of a force that is stronger than we are and that
exists everywhere in the universe.' There are a number of such forces. One
of them is called gravity, but it is not often identified with God. And not
everyone does know what is meant by 'God.'...Whether we believe in God
depends very much on what we mean by God.

My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort
exists, our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would
be unappreciative of those gifts (as well as unable to take such a course of
action) if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves.
On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, our curiosity and
our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival. In either
case, the enterprise of knowledge is consistent with both science and
religion, and is essential for the welfare of the human species."

-"A Sunday Sermon," Broca's Brain, p. 291.

ON THEISM AND ATHEISM:

"Those who raise questions about the God hypothesis and the soul
hypothesis are by no means all atheists. An atheist is someone who is
certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence
against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.
Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate
causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we
do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of
God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the
confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to
inspire very little confidence indeed. A wide range of intermediate positions
seems admissible, and considering the enormous emotional energies with
which the subject is invested, a questioning, courageous and open mind
seems to be the essential tool for narrowing the range of our collective
ignorance on the subject of the existence of God."

-"The Amniotic Universe," Broca's Brain, p. 311.

ON A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE:

"We have held the peculiar notion that a person or society that is a little
different from us, whoever we are, is somehow strange or bizarre, to be
distrusted or loathed. Think of the negative connotations of words like alien
or outlandish. And yet the monuments and cultures of each of our
civilizations merely represent different ways of being human. An
extraterrestrial visitor, looking at the differences among human beings and
their societies, would find those differences trivial compared to the
similarities. The Cosmos may be densely populated with intelligent beings.
But the Darwinian lesson is clear: There will be no humans elsewhere. Only
here. Only on this small planet. We are a rare as well as an endangered
species. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human
disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not
find another."

-"Who Speaks for Earth?," Cosmos, p. 339.

ON THE TRANSIENCE OF LIFE:

"Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of

the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star. ...The longest-
lived organisms on Earth endure for about a millionth of the age of our
planet. A bacterium lives for one hundred-trillionth of that time. So of course
the individual organisms see nothing of the overall pattern-continents,
climate, evolution. They barely set foot on the world stage and are promptly
snuffed out-yesterday a drop of semen, as the Roman Emperor Marcus
Aurelius wrote, tomorrow a handful of ashes. If the Earth were as old as a
person, a typical organism would be born, live, and die in a sliver of a
second. We are fleeting, transitional creatures, snowflakes fallen on the
hearth fire. That we understand even a little of our origins is one of the great
triumphs of human insight and courage."
 -"Snowflakes Fallen on the Hearth," Shadows of Forgotten
Ancestors, pp. 30-31.

ON LIFE AND DEATH:

"Most people would rather be alive than dead. But why? It's hard to give a
coherent answer. An enigmatic "will to live" or "life force" is often cited. But
what does that explain? Even victims of atrocious brutality and intractable
pain may retain a longing, sometimes even a zest, for life. Why, in the cosmic
scheme of things, one individual should be alive and not another is a difficult
question, an impossible question, perhaps even a meaningless question. Life
is a gift that, of the immense number of possible but unrealized beings, only
the tiniest fraction are privileged to experience. Except in the most hopeless
of circumstances, hardly anyone is willing to give it up voluntarily - at least
until very old age is reached."

-"What Thin Partitions...," Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, p.

159.