Religious views of Famous Scientists Continued

Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
Carl Sagan was a distinguished astronomer and a pulitzer prize winning popularizer of science. He presented and co-wrote the COSMOS television series that had been broadcast around the world in 60 countries.

Sagan was an outspoken critic of religion and a strong lobbyist for clear thinking. He believed that religion drew on primitive fears in the society and that ancient superstitions have been replaced by other superstitions in the modern world (e.g. UFOs and the paranormal).
In a Gifford lecture he presented at the University of Glasgow entitled “The God Hypothesis” (published in the Portable Atheist edited by Christopher Hitchens; Da Capo Press 2007) Sagan discussed the concept and the arguments for the existence of god.
Sagan goes through each of the arguments including the ontological argument, the argument from consciousness, and the argument from experience. He then one by one discounts these explanations as being unsatisfactory.

The cosmological argument basically asks what caused everything or how did the universe begin? One answer is that the universe was always there or god was always there. If god made the universe then who made god one might ask? The current thinking is that the universe arose when all matter compressed into an extremely small volume and that something like an explosion occurred (Big bang theory) around 15 billion years ago. This led to the expansion of all this condensed matter to form the known universe. The cooling and condensing of this matter led to the formation of galaxies, stars, planets, life, and living beings. There are also theories about what existed before that. For instance,the theory that the universe oscillates and there have been multiple occurrences of compressions and expansions over time and that these have always occurred and will continue to occur indefinitely. There are also theories that there are multiple universes existing simultaneously at any given time. Current evidence however sees the universe as expanding forever.
Sagan states that religious as opposed to scientific theories of the origins of the universe cannot be tested and answers will only come from continued research. We, he says, have to be patient, and live with ambiguities rather than accept religious theories. Experiments can be done that someday will allow us to know, whether there is enough matter in the universe that will stop its expansion (by “self-gravity”) leading eventually to contraction and the destruction of the universe as we know it, or whether there is not enough matter to cause this to happen and  the universe will continue to expand forever.

The argument from design states that all life and the world as we see it looks so perfect that it could only have been designed by a creator, someone smarter than us. This argument was completely refuted by Darwin who showed that given enough time (millennia) and random changes in individuals, that environmental pressures could confer selective advantages on individuals. These individuals would produce more offspring who would eventually replace those individuals who did not have these advantages. This was therefore a mechanism of change and could therefore explain that the world and life as we see it has evolved and was not perfectly created in its present form. In any case, there are many examples in nature that show that “god” made mistakes e.g. the backbone of humans is built for walking on two leg, ;the  mass extinction of the dinosaurs,  and the many examples of the destruction of galaxies in the universe which could mean that inhabited worlds in other solar systems were and continue to be routinely destroyed over the eons. Sagan says  "this does not sound as if god knows what he is doing."

The moral argument states because we are moral beings god must exist.
Sagan states that there are examples of altruistic behavior in the animal kingdom e.g. crocodiles who carry their eggs for enormous distances to protect their young. He argues that if crocodiles didn’t take care of their young, their species would most likely disappear. So what looks like ethical behavior in the animal kingdom is really behavior that enables the survival of species that have evolved by natural selection. Human beings, he argues, are aware of their surroundings and can see what is important and can therefore take steps to ensure their survival. He states that it is not clear whether you require the existence of god to explain “the limited but definite degree of moral and ethical behavior that is apparent in our species.”

The ontological argument for the existence of god, is as follows:
God is perfect, existence is an essential attribute of perfection. You can’t be perfect if you don’t exist, therefore God exists.
Sagan poses the questions what is meant by perfection and how do you know that god is perfect? He also asks why is existence a necessary prerequisite of perfection? Why for example is non-existence not an essential attribute of perfection? This is similar to Buddhism whose god is so great that he does not have to exist.

The argument from consciousness states that I think therefore god exists. In other words, you need god for consciousness to come into being. Sagan takes issue with the definition of consciousness citing examples from the animal kingdom such as the ability of earthworms to learn to find food in certain experiments or the phototactic response of microorganism. These behaviors are programmed genetically into the brains of these organisms. Finding food by an earthworm enables it to survive and therefore leave offspring. Sagan mentions that a view held by many neurobiologists is that consciousness is a function of the number a complexity of neuronal connections as well as the architecture of the brain. He states that human consciousness is seen with a brain that has approximately 10 to the 11th power neurons and 10 to the 14th power synapses. He then asks what would happen if humans would have brains of 10 to the 20th power or 10 to the 30th power synapses? Would such humans be as superior to humans with the normal number of neurons as would a human being currrntly is to an ant. There are he mentions alternatively explanations being tested using artificial intelligence.He questions whether the consciousness one observes in the animal kingdom as demonstrated by the gradient of behavior one sees going higher on the phylogenetic tree demonstrates the existence of god.

With regard to the argument from experience, Sagan mentions that although people in many cultures have reported having religious experiences that have changed their lives and led them to reforming their ways and doing good in the world, there are also examples where this has led to people doing the opposite. Can one trust such subjective experiences as providing proof for the existence of god? Sagan provides a parallel with the millions of reports of UFOs one can find since 1947, although there have been no known visitations to earth by any extraterrestrial beings. He also mentions that certain substances are known to produce hallucinogenic effects are used in some cultures (e.g. peyote culture in some Indian tribes) to bring about religious experiences and that, for instance, wine is consumed as a sacrament in western religions. So it seems that the use of such substances can bring on personal religious experiences rather than any natural theological evidence for the existence of god. This he implies discredits such arguments for the existence of god.

He sumarizes he views as follows. Arguments from the time of the early Greek philosophers (before Socrates) have stated that evil exists in the world and that god is benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Can all of these statements be true Sagan asks? If god is omnipotent why does he allow some much suffering and pain in the world? Why can’t he arrange it so that there is no pain? If god is not benevolent or compassionate does it mean that he is too busy to know about the day to day problems of people? Could this be explained by the fact that there are 10 to the 11th power worlds in each galaxy and that there are several times 10 to the 11th power galaxies in the universe showing that god would have a lot of ground to cover to keep up with everyone's problems and answer all prayers? Apparently god could create the universe and life and occasionally intervene in historical events but he doesn’t have time to oversee and influence everything and can’t therefore also cannot know everything. Why, Sagan asks, is it even necessary for god to intervene in human affairs at all coming to tell humans what the should and shouldn’t do? Why didn’t god get it right in the first place? If you can create the universe and see all potential future consequences why not arrange things so that your desired end is achieved? If all views of god are clearly more competent then human views, then the status quo of the world speaks of the limitations of god and not omnicompetence.

Sagan also presents some rather interesting and provocative thoughts of how god, if he had wanted to, could have left evidence of his existence in ancient times in the holy texts. For instance Sagan asks, if god is all knowing and all powerful, why did he not leave clues in the holy writings dating back to 600 BC during the Jewish Diaspora in Babylon in the Old Testament to say, for instance, that “the Sun is a star”, or to say “don’t forget that there is a planet mars that is now red, dusty, and dry but that used to have rivers. He could have said don’t forget these things, trust me, it will become clear later. Or why didn’t god make any mention of the laws of motion, that an object will keep moving if there is no friction opposing this motion, or why is there no law saying “Thou shalt not travel faster than the speed of light?” Or why are there no equations perhaps written in hieroglyphics to describe electric or magnetic fields or stating prophetically that two strands Of DNA will provide the secret of life. Of course none of these examples would have made sense to the scribes in ancient times but they would have been dutifully copied by the ancients over and over again during the centuries. But these writings would have been reproduced as are some of the puzzling texts that we now have today in the bible. Sagan’s point is that only a divine being would have been able to foresee what scientific progress would be made in the centuries to come. No one would have been able to understand this information in ancient times and would have shown the prophetic power of a divine being. Sagan even asks jokingly why didn’t god carve out the Ten Commandments on the surface of the moon. He could have made it large enough (10 kilometers across) allowing it to be seen with modern telescopes by spacecraft visiting the moon. Any of these things would be possible for an all powerful and all knowing god. Sagan asks why god should be so clear in the writing in the bible and so obscure in the world?

Sagan cites a quote from Protagoras, a Greek philosopher predating Socrates in the 5th century B.C, who said: "About the gods I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do exist or what they are to look at. Many things prevent my knowing. Among others is the fact that they are never seen"