Showing posts with label Carl Sagan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carl Sagan. Show all posts
Monday, May 10, 2021
Monday, September 28, 2020
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
I'm adding this to my list of favorite quotes. It's about Carl Sagan's speech about a pale blue dot.
It is a good quotation, explaining how tiny and insignificant the Earth is in comparison to just our solar system, let alone the universe, and how anyone who attaches any importance for us on the grand scale of things is just fooling themselves.
There is no "grand plan" for the inhabitants of that "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
-- Princess
There is no "grand plan" for the inhabitants of that "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
-- Princess
Pale Blue Dot
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again 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.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. 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.
Carl Saga’s famous Pale Blue Dot speech given at Cornell University in 1994
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Everyone on this planet needs to watch this.
Transcript:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider 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. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps a 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. Speaker: Carl Sagan
YouTube videos for the victims of religious brainwashing, also known as child abuse.
Interesting YouTube videos at Rational Logic.
Here is one of them. It's to help brainwashed people to recover from their god disease.
Part of this quote was at the end of the video:
“The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”
― Carl Sagan
Here is one of them. It's to help brainwashed people to recover from their god disease.
Part of this quote was at the end of the video:
“The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”
― Carl Sagan
Thursday, July 9, 2020
"The Thinking Atheist - After The Rapture" This is well done. I recommend it.
https://www.thethinkingatheist.com/
The Thinking Atheist isn't a person.
It's an icon. An idea. An encouragement to reject faith and embrace reason and evidence as we approach humanity's challenges and opportunities.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Who are we?
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
"Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact."
-- Carl Sagan
This blog has 51 posts about Carl Sagan at Carl Sagan.
Wikipedia - Carl Sagan
-- Carl Sagan
"Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact."
-- Carl Sagan
This blog has 51 posts about Carl Sagan at Carl Sagan.
Wikipedia - Carl Sagan
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Carl Sagan quotes. Most of these quotes are from Wikiquote.
Wikiquote - Carl Sagan
I don't want to believe, I want to know.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions. There are, perhaps, places which are outside our universe. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.
Imagine, a room, awash in gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches. The other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead, who’s stronger. Well, that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable.
Remarks on the nuclear arms race, on ABC News Viewpoint — "The Day After" (20 November 1983)
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science.
Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.
In fact, the thickness of the Earth's atmosphere, compared with the size of the Earth, is in about the same ratio as the thickness of a coat of shellac on a schoolroom globe is to the diameter of the globe. That's the air that nurtures us and almost all other life on Earth, that protects us from deadly ultraviolet light from the sun, that through the greenhouse effect brings the surface temperature above the freezing point. (Without the greenhouse effect, the entire Earth would plunge below the freezing point of water and we'd all be dead.) Now that atmosphere, so thin and fragile, is under assault by our technology. We are pumping all kinds of stuff into it. You know about the concern that chlorofluorocarbons are depleting the ozone layer; and that carbon dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gases are producing global warming, a steady trend amidst fluctuations produced by volcanic eruptions and other sources. Who knows what other challenges we are posing to this vulnerable layer of air that we haven't been wise enough to foresee?
If you take a look at science in its everyday function, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotions and personalities and character and so on. But there’s one thing that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism that is considered acceptable or even desirable. The poor graduate student at his or her Ph.D. oral exam is subjected to a withering crossfire of questions that sometimes seem hostile or contemptuous; this from the professors who have the candidate’s future in their grasp. The students naturally are nervous; who wouldn’t be? True, they’ve prepared for it for years. But they understand that at that critical moment they really have to be able to answer questions. So in preparing to defend their theses, they must anticipate questions; they have to think, “Where in my thesis is there a weakness that someone else might find — because I sure better find it before they do, because if they find it and I'm not prepared, I'm in deep trouble."
Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever it has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
I don't want to believe, I want to know.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions. There are, perhaps, places which are outside our universe. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.
Imagine, a room, awash in gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches. The other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead, who’s stronger. Well, that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable.
Remarks on the nuclear arms race, on ABC News Viewpoint — "The Day After" (20 November 1983)
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science.
Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.
In fact, the thickness of the Earth's atmosphere, compared with the size of the Earth, is in about the same ratio as the thickness of a coat of shellac on a schoolroom globe is to the diameter of the globe. That's the air that nurtures us and almost all other life on Earth, that protects us from deadly ultraviolet light from the sun, that through the greenhouse effect brings the surface temperature above the freezing point. (Without the greenhouse effect, the entire Earth would plunge below the freezing point of water and we'd all be dead.) Now that atmosphere, so thin and fragile, is under assault by our technology. We are pumping all kinds of stuff into it. You know about the concern that chlorofluorocarbons are depleting the ozone layer; and that carbon dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gases are producing global warming, a steady trend amidst fluctuations produced by volcanic eruptions and other sources. Who knows what other challenges we are posing to this vulnerable layer of air that we haven't been wise enough to foresee?
If you take a look at science in its everyday function, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotions and personalities and character and so on. But there’s one thing that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism that is considered acceptable or even desirable. The poor graduate student at his or her Ph.D. oral exam is subjected to a withering crossfire of questions that sometimes seem hostile or contemptuous; this from the professors who have the candidate’s future in their grasp. The students naturally are nervous; who wouldn’t be? True, they’ve prepared for it for years. But they understand that at that critical moment they really have to be able to answer questions. So in preparing to defend their theses, they must anticipate questions; they have to think, “Where in my thesis is there a weakness that someone else might find — because I sure better find it before they do, because if they find it and I'm not prepared, I'm in deep trouble."
Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever it has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
I never met a Christian creationist who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole, and I can't stress the words "stupid" and "asshole" enough.
Carl Sagan destroys creationist in debate
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
"Is God just Santa Claus for grownups?"
This is fantastic. I read the whole thing. This is the best "why I'm an atheist" I ever read.
Why I am an atheist – Jeff Duval
I’ve been an atheist since before I knew the word “atheist” existed. It still seems silly to me that we need a word to describe people who aren’t convinced by a claim that has zero evidence behind it. After all, we don’t waste time talking about a-ghostism or a-sasquatchism as if these were worldviews that had content and needed followers gathering weekly to reinforce.
I was raised in a mildly Roman Catholic, French-Canadian family in rural Maine. When I was a child, we went to mass occasionally and my siblings and I attended catechism classes after school. We had a big, creepy painting of Jesus with his crown of thorns in the foyer, crucifixes over many doorways, and a little ceramic nativity set my mother made under the Christmas tree. I always thought the nativity was cute, but the bloody, suffering dude disturbed me to no end. Why do we have such macabre taste in home decor? My journey from skeptical Catholic to atheist happened early, between the ages of about 7 and 12.
The first thing that struck me as odd was the fact that we went to two different places to learn about what sounded like history, and the learning process was so different. Why don’t I hear about Jesus stuff in history class at school? If this stuff really happened, shouldn’t we be learning about it there, too? Why do we have to go to a completely different place, with a weird, cultish atmosphere, dress up fancy and do a bunch of chanting? Why is it all Jesus all the time and nothing else at church? Why is there only one book to be obsessed over, when at school we have many books?
I remember when the Santa Claus myth was busted open thinking it sounded very similar to the core concept of our religion – an omniscient, bearded father figure simultaneously scrutinizing the behavior of millions of children and defying physics one night a year to deliver them all gifts, never to be seen, conveniently residing in a place I can never get to. Is God just Santa Claus for grown ups? Sounds like precisely the kind of story people would make up to keep other people in line.
The second thing that struck me as odd was the antiquated, barbaric flavor of the content we were subject to at church. Talk of holy ghosts, crucifixion, resurrection, original sin and some wizard scapegoat didn’t make a lick of sense to me. If this stuff is even possible, why doesn’t any of it happen today? Why are all these alleged miracles conveniently tucked millennia in the past when no one knew anything about anything? Why is there no mention of any of this at “real” school? Why does the bible sound like it was written by repressed patriarchs from ancient history? Why does God care about how we sacrifice a ram? Why does he even want that? Does anyone even do that? How does any of this have any bearing on modern life? Of course, I didn’t have the vocabulary or philosophical foundation to articulate those questions specifically, but those were the kinds of thoughts coalescing in my mind as I sat, bored to tears in the pews.
I watched a lot of PBS growing up. I was enamored by Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Nova, 3-2-1 Contact, and later Bill Nye. I loved science programming and have always had an insatiable curiosity about how things actually work. I began to understand what the difference was between how I was learning in school and from science programs and how I was being indoctrinated at church. The difference was evidence and explanation. With science, I was being shown the evidence by way of experiments. I could see claims being vindicated by test results in real time. I was being given explanations that really explained things by describing working mechanisms. At church I never saw any experiments and no mechanisms were ever described. The reasoning always seemed to come down to “it says in the bible” or “God did it,” which, of course, is circular logic, does no explanatory work and simply pushes the causal chain back one step. The “it’s magic” kind of answers just weren’t satisfying me at all. How did God/Jesus do it? How can you possibly know what heaven is like? It began to strike me that Christians cared more about preserving the idea of God than explaining how he went about his work.
I remember learning about Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology as well as other religions like Islam and Hinduism at school and thinking these “myths” sounded very familiar. I saw a lot of parallels between these myths and the stories I was hearing at church and reading in the bible. The same kind of barbarism, miracles and musty language were at play. Why do they have several gods and we only have one? Why, when it comes to things like heliocentrism or gravity, everyone is on the same page now, but when it comes to origins of life and what happens after death, everyone believes different things? They can’t all be right, right? Could it be that Christianity is just another ancient set of myths that landed in my lap because I happened to be born in a Christian part of the world? Could it be that every culture started with its own set of anthropomorphic allegories to describe the universe, then science comes along and renders them obsolete with real explanatory work? That would certainly explain all my earlier questions.
I remember playing in the woods, observing closely the natural world around me brought even more questions. If this is the handiwork of a god, I’m not impressed. Why do people go blind and deaf? Why are some people deformed or diseased or psychotic? Why is there so much wanton waste and destruction? Why are there gross things like maggots? If the universe really were perfect for life, wouldn’t it just be verdant arborea to infinity in all directions? What’s with stranding us on a rock with shifting climates and tectonics in the middle of a vast vacuum? Why this convoluted process of reproduction and gestation? Why doesn’t God just snap his fingers and blink each individual into existence the same way he did with Adam? I remember looking at the structure of leaves and the way plants and trees bend toward light. I remember looking at snowflakes melt on my mittens and images of capillaries and nerves and thinking, “I just don’t see design here. I don’t see intention or purpose. I see fractal noise. I see chemistry competing for space, finding niches, branching out and growing wherever and however it can. If this vibrant complexity is, however, the result of purely natural forces, I’m deeply impressed.” Again, these thoughts were not that clearly articulated at that age, but those were the kinds of thoughts I was having. I just didn’t know how to put them into words, so I didn’t voice them to anyone.
I remember watching an episode of Cosmos where Carl Sagan described evolution by natural selection and it blew my mind. So many things came into focus. I suspected it had to be something like that. I remember hearing my grandmother say, “I didn’t come from no monkey,” and I thought, “but look at how similar we are. If all the species of dogs we have today descended from wolves, it’s no stretch at all for humans to descend from ape-like creatures. Isn’t it so much more amazing to understand this process than lazily chalk it up to magic?”
This lead me to ponder further about why people might believe these myths. It seemed obvious that no one wants to die and the idea of heaven was very much wishful thinking. I had no reason to think being dead would be any different than not yet being born. It was certainly comforting to think that in times of loneliness, depression and doubt I could pretend the supreme, infallible boss of the universe was on my side and listening. That also seemed insanely conceited, though. People claiming they had a personal relationship with the inventor of the universe sounded a lot like, “Oh yeah, well my daddy is the President, so you better listen to what I say!”
I had a rosary I received as a First Communion gift. I was supposed to pray with it every night. I didn’t do it very often, though. What’s the use, it’s just wood and twine? I never hear the slightest peep from this god. What kind of petty game is he playing where he expects belief but never reveals himself? If he really cared wouldn’t he just hang out with us in an obvious manner? Wouldn’t he hold press conferences on the news every week? I just don’t see God anywhere at all. It seemed like all everyone was doing was pretending. Praying seemed like pretending. Worshiping seemed like pretending. Having faith seemed like pretending. As a child I did a lot of pretending I was a robot shooting lasers or a superhero soaring through the sky and moving boulders with my mind. Communicating with God seemed to yield the exact same results.
As I learned more and more about the real universe at school, in Time-Life books, encyclopedias, PBS shows, etc., and saw how many times throughout history the answer “God did it” was replaced by natural processes discovered by scientists, I saw God’s hand recede further and further until I became comfortable with the idea that there was probably a natural explanation for everything.
I remember the news constantly filled with stories of unrest in the Middle-East. Here’s a group of people who believe one thing clashing with people who believe something else. They all think God is on their side and are willing to die for their beliefs. I remember hearing about the Salem witch trials and the Crusades in history class. I began to see the pernicious effects of believing in things that are not true. I began to see how much good science had brought to our quality of life and how it can be undone by ignorance and mob mentality. I began to get the sense that if I were born a thousand years ago, I might have been burned at the stake for having all these doubts. I began to get the sense religion was something that needed to go.
I found myself regarding religion the same way I regarded Santa Claus – a childish superstition. This then begged the question, “Am I crazy or is everyone else crazy?” It all seemed so absurd, so obvious. I still had no idea what an atheist was or that there were even other non-believers out there. I remember one Easter after mass, my cousins were speculating about God and I said, “meh, I don’t believe in God anymore.” I didn’t plan to say it. I didn’t have any premeditated desire to inform my family. I had never even formed that precise thought in my head before that moment. I arrived at it just then and it just slipped out as casually as if I were talking about Santa. It was an involuntary reaction, like when the doctor taps your knee. I had assumed that notion and all the others that had occurred to me over the years must also have occurred to others. It’s so hard to believe in the first place, everyone must have considered it, right? The gasps of horror said otherwise. One of them ran out of the room shouting, “Jeff said he doesn’t believe in God!” I don’t remember anything being made out of it after that. I got the sense no one took it seriously and either thought I was joking, being a troll, or just weren’t surprised given my enthusiasm for science.
As we got older and it became apparent my siblings and I had no enthusiasm for church, we just stopped going. No one seemed to miss it much.
One night, there was a Penn & Teller special on network TV. I loved it because they explained how their tricks worked after performing them. They didn’t insult my intelligence by pretending they had special powers. At the end of the show, as the camera dollied out, Penn waved and said, “..and remember, there is no Go..” and cut to commercial. I was stunned. Wait, what? Did that guy say, “There is no God,” then get cut off? There’s someone else on Earth who feels the same way I do and has the brass testicles to declare it on national television? My conviction was boosted another notch. I had my first atheist role model. Technically, it was Carl Sagan, but from watching Cosmos, I hadn’t yet realized he and many scientists were actually non-believers. No one talked about those things openly. Of course it was never one single influential person or idea that converted me, but many over the years, slowly and meticulously collapsing indoctrinated claims of faith under the weight of rigorous, rational inquiry until I had swayed to a position of pure incredulity.
To this day I happily engage in debate even at inappropriate times. I’m always open to new evidence, but have yet to hear an argument for theism that isn’t a tangled bird’s nest of fallacy.
Thanks to all communicators of science. You are my champions and you are the best people.
Jeff Duval
Why I am an atheist – Jeff Duval
I’ve been an atheist since before I knew the word “atheist” existed. It still seems silly to me that we need a word to describe people who aren’t convinced by a claim that has zero evidence behind it. After all, we don’t waste time talking about a-ghostism or a-sasquatchism as if these were worldviews that had content and needed followers gathering weekly to reinforce.
I was raised in a mildly Roman Catholic, French-Canadian family in rural Maine. When I was a child, we went to mass occasionally and my siblings and I attended catechism classes after school. We had a big, creepy painting of Jesus with his crown of thorns in the foyer, crucifixes over many doorways, and a little ceramic nativity set my mother made under the Christmas tree. I always thought the nativity was cute, but the bloody, suffering dude disturbed me to no end. Why do we have such macabre taste in home decor? My journey from skeptical Catholic to atheist happened early, between the ages of about 7 and 12.
The first thing that struck me as odd was the fact that we went to two different places to learn about what sounded like history, and the learning process was so different. Why don’t I hear about Jesus stuff in history class at school? If this stuff really happened, shouldn’t we be learning about it there, too? Why do we have to go to a completely different place, with a weird, cultish atmosphere, dress up fancy and do a bunch of chanting? Why is it all Jesus all the time and nothing else at church? Why is there only one book to be obsessed over, when at school we have many books?
I remember when the Santa Claus myth was busted open thinking it sounded very similar to the core concept of our religion – an omniscient, bearded father figure simultaneously scrutinizing the behavior of millions of children and defying physics one night a year to deliver them all gifts, never to be seen, conveniently residing in a place I can never get to. Is God just Santa Claus for grown ups? Sounds like precisely the kind of story people would make up to keep other people in line.
The second thing that struck me as odd was the antiquated, barbaric flavor of the content we were subject to at church. Talk of holy ghosts, crucifixion, resurrection, original sin and some wizard scapegoat didn’t make a lick of sense to me. If this stuff is even possible, why doesn’t any of it happen today? Why are all these alleged miracles conveniently tucked millennia in the past when no one knew anything about anything? Why is there no mention of any of this at “real” school? Why does the bible sound like it was written by repressed patriarchs from ancient history? Why does God care about how we sacrifice a ram? Why does he even want that? Does anyone even do that? How does any of this have any bearing on modern life? Of course, I didn’t have the vocabulary or philosophical foundation to articulate those questions specifically, but those were the kinds of thoughts coalescing in my mind as I sat, bored to tears in the pews.
I watched a lot of PBS growing up. I was enamored by Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Nova, 3-2-1 Contact, and later Bill Nye. I loved science programming and have always had an insatiable curiosity about how things actually work. I began to understand what the difference was between how I was learning in school and from science programs and how I was being indoctrinated at church. The difference was evidence and explanation. With science, I was being shown the evidence by way of experiments. I could see claims being vindicated by test results in real time. I was being given explanations that really explained things by describing working mechanisms. At church I never saw any experiments and no mechanisms were ever described. The reasoning always seemed to come down to “it says in the bible” or “God did it,” which, of course, is circular logic, does no explanatory work and simply pushes the causal chain back one step. The “it’s magic” kind of answers just weren’t satisfying me at all. How did God/Jesus do it? How can you possibly know what heaven is like? It began to strike me that Christians cared more about preserving the idea of God than explaining how he went about his work.
I remember learning about Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology as well as other religions like Islam and Hinduism at school and thinking these “myths” sounded very familiar. I saw a lot of parallels between these myths and the stories I was hearing at church and reading in the bible. The same kind of barbarism, miracles and musty language were at play. Why do they have several gods and we only have one? Why, when it comes to things like heliocentrism or gravity, everyone is on the same page now, but when it comes to origins of life and what happens after death, everyone believes different things? They can’t all be right, right? Could it be that Christianity is just another ancient set of myths that landed in my lap because I happened to be born in a Christian part of the world? Could it be that every culture started with its own set of anthropomorphic allegories to describe the universe, then science comes along and renders them obsolete with real explanatory work? That would certainly explain all my earlier questions.
I remember playing in the woods, observing closely the natural world around me brought even more questions. If this is the handiwork of a god, I’m not impressed. Why do people go blind and deaf? Why are some people deformed or diseased or psychotic? Why is there so much wanton waste and destruction? Why are there gross things like maggots? If the universe really were perfect for life, wouldn’t it just be verdant arborea to infinity in all directions? What’s with stranding us on a rock with shifting climates and tectonics in the middle of a vast vacuum? Why this convoluted process of reproduction and gestation? Why doesn’t God just snap his fingers and blink each individual into existence the same way he did with Adam? I remember looking at the structure of leaves and the way plants and trees bend toward light. I remember looking at snowflakes melt on my mittens and images of capillaries and nerves and thinking, “I just don’t see design here. I don’t see intention or purpose. I see fractal noise. I see chemistry competing for space, finding niches, branching out and growing wherever and however it can. If this vibrant complexity is, however, the result of purely natural forces, I’m deeply impressed.” Again, these thoughts were not that clearly articulated at that age, but those were the kinds of thoughts I was having. I just didn’t know how to put them into words, so I didn’t voice them to anyone.
I remember watching an episode of Cosmos where Carl Sagan described evolution by natural selection and it blew my mind. So many things came into focus. I suspected it had to be something like that. I remember hearing my grandmother say, “I didn’t come from no monkey,” and I thought, “but look at how similar we are. If all the species of dogs we have today descended from wolves, it’s no stretch at all for humans to descend from ape-like creatures. Isn’t it so much more amazing to understand this process than lazily chalk it up to magic?”
This lead me to ponder further about why people might believe these myths. It seemed obvious that no one wants to die and the idea of heaven was very much wishful thinking. I had no reason to think being dead would be any different than not yet being born. It was certainly comforting to think that in times of loneliness, depression and doubt I could pretend the supreme, infallible boss of the universe was on my side and listening. That also seemed insanely conceited, though. People claiming they had a personal relationship with the inventor of the universe sounded a lot like, “Oh yeah, well my daddy is the President, so you better listen to what I say!”
I had a rosary I received as a First Communion gift. I was supposed to pray with it every night. I didn’t do it very often, though. What’s the use, it’s just wood and twine? I never hear the slightest peep from this god. What kind of petty game is he playing where he expects belief but never reveals himself? If he really cared wouldn’t he just hang out with us in an obvious manner? Wouldn’t he hold press conferences on the news every week? I just don’t see God anywhere at all. It seemed like all everyone was doing was pretending. Praying seemed like pretending. Worshiping seemed like pretending. Having faith seemed like pretending. As a child I did a lot of pretending I was a robot shooting lasers or a superhero soaring through the sky and moving boulders with my mind. Communicating with God seemed to yield the exact same results.
As I learned more and more about the real universe at school, in Time-Life books, encyclopedias, PBS shows, etc., and saw how many times throughout history the answer “God did it” was replaced by natural processes discovered by scientists, I saw God’s hand recede further and further until I became comfortable with the idea that there was probably a natural explanation for everything.
I remember the news constantly filled with stories of unrest in the Middle-East. Here’s a group of people who believe one thing clashing with people who believe something else. They all think God is on their side and are willing to die for their beliefs. I remember hearing about the Salem witch trials and the Crusades in history class. I began to see the pernicious effects of believing in things that are not true. I began to see how much good science had brought to our quality of life and how it can be undone by ignorance and mob mentality. I began to get the sense that if I were born a thousand years ago, I might have been burned at the stake for having all these doubts. I began to get the sense religion was something that needed to go.
I found myself regarding religion the same way I regarded Santa Claus – a childish superstition. This then begged the question, “Am I crazy or is everyone else crazy?” It all seemed so absurd, so obvious. I still had no idea what an atheist was or that there were even other non-believers out there. I remember one Easter after mass, my cousins were speculating about God and I said, “meh, I don’t believe in God anymore.” I didn’t plan to say it. I didn’t have any premeditated desire to inform my family. I had never even formed that precise thought in my head before that moment. I arrived at it just then and it just slipped out as casually as if I were talking about Santa. It was an involuntary reaction, like when the doctor taps your knee. I had assumed that notion and all the others that had occurred to me over the years must also have occurred to others. It’s so hard to believe in the first place, everyone must have considered it, right? The gasps of horror said otherwise. One of them ran out of the room shouting, “Jeff said he doesn’t believe in God!” I don’t remember anything being made out of it after that. I got the sense no one took it seriously and either thought I was joking, being a troll, or just weren’t surprised given my enthusiasm for science.
As we got older and it became apparent my siblings and I had no enthusiasm for church, we just stopped going. No one seemed to miss it much.
One night, there was a Penn & Teller special on network TV. I loved it because they explained how their tricks worked after performing them. They didn’t insult my intelligence by pretending they had special powers. At the end of the show, as the camera dollied out, Penn waved and said, “..and remember, there is no Go..” and cut to commercial. I was stunned. Wait, what? Did that guy say, “There is no God,” then get cut off? There’s someone else on Earth who feels the same way I do and has the brass testicles to declare it on national television? My conviction was boosted another notch. I had my first atheist role model. Technically, it was Carl Sagan, but from watching Cosmos, I hadn’t yet realized he and many scientists were actually non-believers. No one talked about those things openly. Of course it was never one single influential person or idea that converted me, but many over the years, slowly and meticulously collapsing indoctrinated claims of faith under the weight of rigorous, rational inquiry until I had swayed to a position of pure incredulity.
To this day I happily engage in debate even at inappropriate times. I’m always open to new evidence, but have yet to hear an argument for theism that isn’t a tangled bird’s nest of fallacy.
Thanks to all communicators of science. You are my champions and you are the best people.
Jeff Duval
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Look at what’s out there.
"Does Christianity exist in alien planets?"
An interesting question.
There are countless trillions of solar systems in the universe. There could be numerous civilizations with creatures more or less like us. If this is true, would these planets have the same god bullshit problem we have?
Christians think their loving God is only interested in this middle-of-nowhere planet in a vast universe. And that's ridiculous. If Christians knew how to think they wouldn't be Christians.
So altogether I can’t believe the special stories that’ve been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too connected, too local, too provincial. The “earth,” He came to “the earth”, one of the aspects of God came to “the earth!” mind you, and look at what’s out there. It isn’t in proportion!
-- Richard Feynman
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
-- Carl Sagan
An interesting question.
There are countless trillions of solar systems in the universe. There could be numerous civilizations with creatures more or less like us. If this is true, would these planets have the same god bullshit problem we have?
Christians think their loving God is only interested in this middle-of-nowhere planet in a vast universe. And that's ridiculous. If Christians knew how to think they wouldn't be Christians.
So altogether I can’t believe the special stories that’ve been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too connected, too local, too provincial. The “earth,” He came to “the earth”, one of the aspects of God came to “the earth!” mind you, and look at what’s out there. It isn’t in proportion!
-- Richard Feynman
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
-- Carl Sagan
Thursday, September 19, 2019
A Universe Not Made For Us (Carl Sagan on religion)
This is part 1 of Callum C. J. Sutherland's tribute series to Carl Sagan. One of several excellent playlists dedicated to Carl Sagan.
You can check out them out here:
The Sagan Series 10 videos
I found this comment at YouTube. It's a good thing. Science is killing religion.
"I was a devout Muslim before I discovered Carl Sagan thanks to YouTube. I'm ever so grateful to Carl Sagan for liberating me."
Sunday, September 15, 2019
Look at what's out there.
"If God is good and omnipotent why would he allow children to agonize and die of cancer?"
If I wanted to throw out reality and pretend a magical master of the entire universe was real, I can't imagine why the thing would be interested in this insignificant planet in a universe of countless trillions of solar systems.
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
"I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion."
-- Richard Feynman
If I wanted to throw out reality and pretend a magical master of the entire universe was real, I can't imagine why the thing would be interested in this insignificant planet in a universe of countless trillions of solar systems.
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
"I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion."
-- Richard Feynman
Friday, July 5, 2019
THE 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.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. 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.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Google Search by voice: How many stars are there in the universe?
"There are about 10 billion galaxies in the observable universe! The number of stars in a galaxy varies, but assuming an average of 100 billion stars per galaxy means that there are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars in the observable universe!"
A trillion a billion times is a large number. And that's just the stars we can see. Isn't amazing that here on this little insignificant planet in the middle of nowhere, a magical master of the entire universe would be interested in the human apes who live here. Of course that's bullshit. Even if the magic fairy was real, it would be virtually impossible for the thing to know we exist.
Every time I try to explain this to Christian fucktards, they don't understand. Christians are Christians because they are very hard of thinking. Or to be more accurate, Christians are fucking morons.
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
"I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion."
-- Richard Feynman
A trillion a billion times is a large number. And that's just the stars we can see. Isn't amazing that here on this little insignificant planet in the middle of nowhere, a magical master of the entire universe would be interested in the human apes who live here. Of course that's bullshit. Even if the magic fairy was real, it would be virtually impossible for the thing to know we exist.
Every time I try to explain this to Christian fucktards, they don't understand. Christians are Christians because they are very hard of thinking. Or to be more accurate, Christians are fucking morons.
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
"I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion."
-- Richard Feynman
Thursday, June 13, 2019
What I wrote about the Magical Master of the Entire Fucking Universe.
"A truly caring God could not just sit and watch this chaos on Earth unfold without intervening. So either he doesn't care or he doesn't exist. Which is it?"
Of course the thing is not real but if it was real there would be no reason to pretend the Magical Master of the Entire Fucking Universe would be interested in the human apes on this insignificant planet in the middle of nowhere.
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
"I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion."
-- Richard Feynman
Of course the thing is not real but if it was real there would be no reason to pretend the Magical Master of the Entire Fucking Universe would be interested in the human apes on this insignificant planet in the middle of nowhere.
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
"I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion."
-- Richard Feynman
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