The Sagan of Science John W

THE TRINITY REVIEW For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare [are] not fleshly but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. And they will be ready to punish all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled. September, October 1988 Copyright 2003 John W. Robbins Post Office Box 68, Unicoi, Tennessee 37692 Email: [email protected] Website: www.trinityfoundation.org Telephone: 423.743.0199 Fax: 423.743.2005 The Sagan of Science John W. Robbins Had Dr. Carl Sagan been born in any other century, name is as fitting for his work as Cardinal Jaime he would have been known as a teller of stories, a Sin’s name is for his, and Larry Speakes’ name is spinner of yarns, a maker of myths. Some of his for his. One can be amused by God’s sense of listeners would have been skeptical; most would humor in causing these men to bear the names they have hung on his every word, believing them all to do. be true, just as they do today. He is a talented Carl Sagan is David Duncan Professor of storyteller. Astronomy and Space Sciences and director of the But Dr. Sagan wasn’t born a thousand years ago or Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell in a primitive culture. He was born in this century, University. According to his biography, he has during the great depression, and he has become played a leading role in the Mariner, Viking, and perhaps the most popular and the most effective Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he propagandist for science in the twentieth century. received the NASA medal for exceptional scientific His function is, of course, to make myths and tell achievement; the International Astronautics Prize, tall tales, but to do it with such a flourish of the Prix Galabert; the NASA medal for scientific legerdemain and eloquence that the distinguished public service (twice); and the John F. credulous are easily and thoroughly convinced of Kennedy Astronautics Award. Sagan’s Peabody and the truth of his scientific sagas. Of course, he Emmy Award-winning thirteen-part government doesn’t start from scratch with his readers. They television series, Cosmos, has been seen by more have been prepared for a hundred years by other than 250 mil lion people in sixty countries. The storytellers: The Huxleys, Charles Darwin, Ernst book that Sagan wrote to accompany the television Haeckel, Jacob Bronowski, and Isaac Asimov, to series is the best selling science book ever published mention just a few. in the English language. Dr. Sagan has won the Pulitzer Prize for another book, The Dragons of According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a Eden; the Joseph Priestly Award "For Distinguished Sagan is a deputy of the Jewish High Priest; he is Contributions to the Welfare of Mankind"; and the the second highest functionary of the Temple. In Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the public interest this century, since our religion is science and our for his contribution to the discovery of nuclear temples are laboratories, Dr. Sagan’s name is, winter. He is past chairman of the division for appropriately and ironically enough, an accurate Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical description of his function. He is a prominent Society, past president of the Planetology Section of member of the new scientific priesthood, as anyone the American Geophysical Union, and was editor in can see by looking at his credentials. Dr. Sagan’s chief of Icarus (the leading professional journal 2 The Trinity Review September, October 1988 devoted to planetary research) for twelve years. The statement is not argued; no evidence is Sagan is the author of more than four hundred presented for our consideration; no hint is given that scientific and popular articles, and the author, this statement is open to revision of even the editor, and co-author of more than a dozen books: mildest sort. The Sagan has spoken; so let it be The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial written; so let it be done. This tone of dogmatic Perspective; Cosmos; Comet; The Dragons of finality appears in all his books, and while it Eden; Broca’s Brain; Contact; Murmurs of Earth; contradicts what he has to say about science, it is Intelligent Life in the Universe; UFO’S: A Scientific fundamental to his duties as a high priest of science. Debate; Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence; The Cold and the Dark: The World A few pages later (8), Sagan tells us that "the laws After Nuclear War; Other Worlds; and Mars and of nature are the same throughout the cosmos." He the Mind of Man. repeats the assertion several times throughout his books. He does not tell us how he knows that. It too Isaac Asimov, another writer of science fiction and is an unsupported assertion, and like a mythmaker a popularizer of science (Asimov has written and priest, Sagan offers no evidence for the hundreds of books and produces half a dozen or so assertion. What evidence could he offer? He had new books each year), surpasses Sagan in quantity already told us (Cosmos, 4) that "the size and age of of output; but Sagan, in academic and scientific the cosmos are beyond ordinary human respectability, surpasses Asimov and all other understanding ... [the cosmos] is the greatest of contenders for the title of Chief Propagandist for mysteries." Perhaps the Sagan is claiming greater Science. Only one other contemporary propagandist than ordinary human understanding. for science comes close, Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, but Dr. Gould has yet to host a A few more pages into Cosmos we read: "there government television series and spend millions of must be many such worlds [where the matter of the dollars in tax revenues spinning scientific sagas for cosmos has become alive and aware] scattered worldwide consumption. through space" (12). The Sagan does not offer any evidence for this oracular assertion. It is easy to In discussing Sagan’s views, we are not speaking of understand why: There isn’t any. But the lack of a man on the fringes of science or academia, but the evidence has never stopped priests, and Sagan views of a man who holds a full professorship at continues. He is convinced that evolution occurred one of the nation’s leading universities; who has not only on Earth, but on billions of other planets as worked closely with the government scientific well. "The initial chemical constituents for the establishment, including NASA and the National origin of life are the most abundant molecules in the Science Foundation; and who has won the praise of universe. Something like the processes that on Earth the scientific establishment and the fervid following led to man must have happened billions of other of millions of readers and television viewers. times in the history of our galaxy. There must be Simply because Sagan is so praised and so popular, other starfolk.... There must be, I think, many places it is necessary to examine his views. He is, if not the in the galaxy where there are beings far more high priest of modern science, then the deputy high advanced than we in science and technology, in priest, just as his name implies. politics, ethics, poetry, and music" (The Cosmic Connection, 257-258). He asserts that "evolution is a fact, not a theory" (Cosmos, 27). The mechanism of evolution, natural selection, is a "great Dogmatism discovery" made by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. "We are," he writes, presumably Like a priest, Dr. Sagan is given to making not in tending to speak only of himself and his co- dogmatic statements. The first line of his best- author, "the products of a long series of biological selling book Cosmos is an ipsedixitism: "The accidents.... We know that the atoms that make us Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." up were synthesized in the interiors of previous 3 The Trinity Review September, October 1988 generations of dying stars" (The Cosmic be seen not only in the area of biology, but in Connection, 52). The Earth itself "condensed out of physics as well. He declares, for example, that light interstellar gas and dust some 4.6 billion years ago" is a wave (Cosmos, 253). He offers no qualification (Cosmos, 30). The early history of Earth is equally for the statement, no hint that there is conflicting open to the penetrating gaze of Sagan: "In the early scientific evidence on the nature of light, no history of our planet, however, ... enormous suggestion that scientists have different opinions on amounts of organic molecules were being produced the issue, no admission that science is hopelessly by sunlight in a hydrogen rich atmosphere, ... some contradictory on the definition of light. In many similar chemistry must have occurred on a billion such cases Sagan writes clearly because he writes other worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy. The inaccurately. molecules of life fill the cosmos" (Cosmos, 40). Not only is there a paucity of empirical evidence for Assertions such as these are not true; they are not his dogmatic claims, they are sometimes based upon even good science. They are the stuff that legends logical fallacies as well as an overheated and myths are made of, and one cannot understand imagination. For example, in The Cosmic the importance of Sagan’s work unless one realizes Connection (3) Sagan writes: "The early its function as a new scientific mythology.

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