Julie Andrews Was Right

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
-- Carl Sagan, Astronomer, Writer, Philosopher (1934 - 1996)

"If the universe came into being out of nothing without a creator, why not the apple pie?"
-- L'Envoi, Blogger

A blogger who frequents this blog commented on Carl Sagan's view of life, with the latter having said in his Cosmos: "The cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be." This is existentialism at its best.

The blogger questions Sagan's world view as does this writer.

One of Carl Sagan's celebrated fictional works is Contact (1985). It was made into a film in 1997. This film is about SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). The movie raises the questions of life, science, and faith. In the ironic end, it is the scientist-protaganist Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) who asks the Congressioanl committe to believe her "contacting" an alien race by faith without evidence. (Actually, there was circumstantial evidence collected she might have made contact with the aliens. The evidence was suppressed because of a religious-political agenda.)

The crux of this Sagan vehicle is this: science is the only truth, faith impedes or stifles truth. This movie is the key to understand Sagan's philosophical bent.

The other side of the Sagan science coin is this philosophy: life and civilizations on earth are only some of the many products spawned by the cosmic conscious. We humans are made of "star stuff." Other star-stuff life forms, heretofore not discovered, are equally possible and plausible. Nothing ever existed or will exist separates from the cosmos, and yet every individual entity is unique. God is the cosmos.

Two years before his death, in his Pale Blue Dot (Random House 1994) Sagan makes his final construct for a new meaning of existence. First, he argues religion, Christianity in particular, is a fraud. God is concocted by the ancients to place man as the centrality of the universe. He claims science has enlightened us what the real universe is. Starting with the Copernican Revolution, science has dethroned the centrality of man and earth. Scientific endeavors are the new centrality of our existence. The new paradigm is to look to the source. Space exploration and colonization of the cosmos, our starry roots, is the only way to develop anew meaning of our existence on this pale blue dot and beyond.

It should be noted, on the one hand he is demoting the importance of mankind and earth. Yet on the other, he is exalting atheistic scientists as the high priests and oracles for our salvation on this planet. They will lead mankind out of the geocentric wilderness into a higher plane of actualization and fullfilment.

A favorite movie of this writer is David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Students of geopolitics and business management should see this film. An insightful and succinct dialog opens the second half of the movie. In this short exchange, the reporter Bentley, advised the Arab leader Feisal, to be leary of the design the British General Allenby had in mind for the good of Arabia.

Bentley: Watch out for Allenby. He's a slim customer.
Feisal: Excuse me?
Bentley: A clever man.
Feisal: 'Slim customer.' It's very good. I will certainly watch out for him...

Sagan's credential as an astronomer, author, and orator has won him acccolades many times around the world. His contribution to the educating of the public on science and astronomy was renown. Carl Sagan's legacy is still reverberating in the halls of secular academia for a deeper reason. He has certified the validity and raised the stature of atheistic naturalism. Sagan is the first scientific materialistic god showing the way to the heavens.

The famous agnostic philosopher, Bertrand Russell, once posted this dilemma: Either the world had a beginning, or it did not. If it did not, it did not need a cause (God). If it did, we can ask, "Who caused God?" But if God has a cause, he is not God. In either case, we do not arrive at the first uncaused cause (God). Carl Sagan says this kind of question is futile and useless in the cosmic scheme of things. His be all end all answer - to the delight of the atheists - God is Cosmos. Sagan is a slim customer, indeed.

Cleverness does not mean correct or convincing. The thorn in the side of the atheist scientists, includining Sagan, has always been the First Law of Thermodynamics.

The First Law of Thermodynamics (Enthalpy), when restated in simple English, says, "energy can neither be created nor destroyed." The cosmos is energy. It obeys this first law. The cosmos can not "Big Banged" out of nothing. Carl Sagan has castigated religion, specifically Christianity. To him it is a grand deceit. God does not exist, and therefore, no First Cause. There is no other alternative position for Sagan but for him to say the cosmos came into being from nothing. Julie Andrews has soothingly reminded us, however, "Nothing came from nothing. Nothing ever could."

To say "The cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be" then, is a philosophical statement. Such statement is not based on scientific observation nor conjecture, much less a scientific conclusion. It's Carl Sagan and his proponents' subjective truth. When truth is subjective, it is existentialsm.

For the sake argument, let's say Christianity is invalid. It is a subjective truth created by the ancients, according to Sagan. Then, how can Sagan's subjective truth of the "star stuff" be the real truth over the First Cause truth? It can't. (It is beyond the scope of this commentary to discuss the 'First Cause' and 'Who Made God?')

Furthermore, the existentialist Sagan stresses, that our essence is not held hostage by geocentricty. We need to be emancipated from religion and other mind sets. We are to certify our existence. The way to authenticate our existence is by going back to the roots "out there" to the stars. Only then can we be in touched with our true cosmic potential. A new world order shall arise and free from the tyranny of geocentricity.

The problem, of course, is how do we know when we get "there"? This subjective truth can never be objectively certified. This Sagan authentication of the cosmic-person-self is an epitome of existentialsm contradiction. As Gertude Stein once opined about Oakland, California, for being so an unremarkable a place, "there is no 'there' there."

Therefore, the Cosmos-to-Pale Blue Dot version of heaven renders the existentialist Carl Sagan incapable of evincing his believes to others. Just like his movie creation, Sagan, the Dr. Arroway of our pale blue dot, is asking others to place faith in his truth. If truth is subjective, how could this writer or any other knows what Sagan says is true? If one can't objectively evaluated the truth of the matter, why take a leap of faith into his truth?

Scientists, in particular astronomers and astro-physicists, are very good with numbers and estimates. If the situation applies, they can crunch real and theoretical variables such as distance and time down to the angstrom and nanosecond with smugness. The only equitable thing in Carl Sagan's orbit which he shares with the average person is the number of hours in a day. All live and breath 24 hours a day as does this writer. What we learn and do in between the breathing lessons determine our character. We take nothing from this world but our character into eternity.

These are some of Carl Sagan's last words spoken on his last days "...Many of them have asked me how it is possible to face death without the certainty of an afterlife. I can only say that it hasn't been a problem. With reservations about feeble souls, I share the view of a hero of mine, Albert Einstein: I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I, nor would I want to, conceive of an individual that survives his physical death. Let feeble souls, from fear for absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoting striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

Carl Sagan's has given his answer. His only comfort in life and now in death was in himself, and never in the Creator and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now this down to earth question: If the probability that God exists and God does not exist is p=.50 (i.e. half and half), which would one choose?

----
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (New International Version):

11 He has made everything appropriate in its time.
He has also set eternity in their heart,
yet so that man will not find out the work
which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

----
Isaiah 55:8-11 (New International Version):

8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.

9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.