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Title: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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| The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Penguin (Non-Classics) Mentally stimulating and entertaining | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
A mentally stimulating as well as entertaining look at science and religion. A book prepared by his wife after his death. Material used during a speaking engagement made many years ago but still very relevant. A new look at religion from the outstanding brain of a scientific genius. I like to study and consider other religious ideas, no religion is good if it can't be questioned. | | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Penguin (Non-Classics) A Gift to Mankind--Cosmos Vision for Leaders | I have ten pages of notes on this book. It is a beautifully presented volume of lectures that includes slides and stunning color photographs in the body.
The forward by Ann Druyan, editor, has several noteworthy lines:
+ He believed that the little we do know about nature suggests that we know even less about God.
+ His argument was not with God but with those who believed that our understanding of the sacred has been completed.
+ We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lack of centrality and find our actual place in the fabric of nature.
+ [His] vision of a critically thoughtful public, awakened to science as a way of thinking, impelled him....
+ The working title for these lectures was "Ethos."
The occasion of the lectures was a series on Natural Theology, which is defined as everything about the world not supplied by revelation.
Here are my flyleaf notes:
+ Coping with godliness versus superstition
+ Universe is mostly nothing/blackness; light is the rarity
+ Religion means "binding together" (consistent with those who seek to make religion more of a communitarian endeavor instead of supporting vast hierarchies of "leaders" living off the backs of the far-flung people)
+ 500 million years from now Earth will probably explode--worlds have lifetimes just as humans do.
+ Earth consists is one of a trillion bits in the universe, with 400 billion comprising our galaxy.
+ Churchs have sought to build a wall against science and be exempt from scientific examination.
+ Origin of earth can be conceptualized as a natural selection over millions of years, in which a single particle of dust, this one time, leads to a chain of collisions, electrical energy, and heat melting reactions that took millions of year to evolve to this point
+ Stability of atoms is a *spectacular* phenomenon.
+ Bio-chemical fossils have been recovered.
+ Sir William Higgins frightened the Earth in 1910 when gas-light analysis revealed that cyanide was present in distant stars some thought were on a collision course with earth.
+ Given millions of years the accidental or incidental spontaneous creation of amino acids is perfectly reasonable.
+ Densities in outer space are consistent with organic matter
+ Titan, specifically, has great lakes of liquid hydrocarbons ("chicken soup" for life) Date of this information from NASA: July 2006)
Search for extraterrestial intelligence could be compared to the search for God. There are two calculations:
+ Tough formula: just one, and it is us.
+ Liberal formula: a million other planets with life, but the nearest one is 100 light years away
+ Mathematics would appear to be the common language for inter-galactic communication (see my online review of "Google 2.0: The Calculating Predator--their computational mathematics are "out of this world."
+ UFO fraud is akin to the sale of religious relics
+ Scientology (declared a cult in Germany) has transmorgified from Dianetics
+ Spinoza and Einstein considered God to be the embodiment of all natural scientific principles
+ Religious "conversions" tend to "join" the existing prevalent community religion
+ Six arguments about the origins of the universe do not satisfy:
- Cosmological
- From Design
- Moral
- Ontological
- Consciousness
- Experience
+ Indigenous peoples recognize other levels of consciousness
+ Emotions may be bio-chemical attributes, and "religion" could be a molecule that produces social conformity
+ Book concludes with a chapter on "Crimes Against Creation" that is most t imely. The author worried about nuclear holocausts leading to firestorms (I would add, aggravated by the collapse of urban water systems). He speaks of a witches' brew of pyrotaxins, ultraviolet light, and time scale readiological fall-out (see also books such as
High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink
Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power
+ Golden Rule matters!
+ The author saw a steady trend of individuals identifying with ever larger wholes to the point of "Whole Earth" [Co-Evolution Quarterly by Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Review by Howard Rheingold, Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link or WELL in the 1970-1990 timeframe; today, the World Index of Social and Economic Responsibility led by Paul Hawken and Peggy Duvette, among others).
The Q&A section is a very fine segue to the book.
Q: How do you recognize truth?
A: It must be consistent of itself, not inconsistent with what is already proven, and we must really understand how badly we want to know or are biased toward accepting without question. Good science is reproducible; miracles are not.
Q: If universe expanding, what is it expanding into?
A: Additional dimensions beyond three.
Q: What is to be done to avoid self-immolation?
A: Demand and practice participatory democracy with a vengeance.
On this latter, see also:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus)
101 Myths of the Bible
Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World
To Govern Evolution: Further Adventures of the Political Animal
The Age of Missing Information
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
The Republican War on Science
Other books I would have linked if allowed:
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition
The Future of Life
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
I put the book down regretting that I never had a chance to hear the author speak in person. | | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Penguin (Non-Classics) A lost voice of reason | This collection of Sagan's 1985 Gifford Lectures are as fresh and relevant today as they were over 20 years ago...perhaps even more so. In this collection, we are reminded of what made Sagan such as successful spokesman for scientific endeavor and rationality in general.
The material Sagan uses to frame his arguments are familiar to anyone who watched his Cosmos series on PBS. In these lectures, he hits on many of the same themes: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the tiny amount of time that humankind has inhabited the earth relative to the planet's geological age, the wonders of evolution, our willingness (or even "need") to believe in the paranormal and the perils posed by nuclear weapons. These lectures are, however, more pointed about the nature (or "causes") of religion. While Sagan is quite careful and indeed artful in avoiding the direct disparagement of religion and its reliance on God as an explanation for all mysteries, his position is clear. What he requires of all statements and assertions is rigorous proof, demonstrable evidence. In this, he finds paranormal beliefs lacking. The thoroughness, forthrightness and delicacy of his arguments are all the more refreshing in this time of theocratic political leanings and scientific illiteracy in the United States.
Perhaps the most effective aspect of his arguments are that they are not condescending, mocking or inconsiderate. Rather, he dispassionately challenges the listener to find fault with his position that those things which are knowable and true are subject to analysis and confirmation. All else belongs to the realm of subjective emotion. | | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Penguin (Non-Classics) Sharing the Awe of Astronomy | | Unlike much of science, these 1985 lectures capturing the awe of astronomy and our minute place in the universe stand the test of time. Sagan describes his veiw of science as the tool to understand the wonder of the universe, compared with traditional theological tools of using faith. It's great pop reading - less of a call to arms than his outstanding "Demon Haunted World" and more a challenge to appreciate the magnitude of the universe and to humbly accept our place in it. | | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Penguin (Non-Classics) Question & Answer Section at the End is Fascinating | | I was thrilled to receive this "undiscovered" Sagan work as a birthday present recently. Sagan's ability to blur the lines between the worlds of science and religion has always fascinated me. I didn't find this work to be quite as powerful as Cosmos or Pale Blue Dot, but then I considered the context in which it was composed: the book is actually a series of lectures Sagan gave to an audience that seems largely composed of religious potentates. The most incredible part of this book is actually the end in which Sagan takes questions from the audience. He's put in the position of defending his arguments in the face of religious doctrinism. Sagan does so with great articulation and persuasiveness. It's remarkable to read him "thinking on his feet," as it were. I wish I could have been witness to it. | | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Penguin (Non-Classics) Product Description | Carl Sagan’s prophetic vision of the tragic resurgence of fundamentalism and the hope-filled potential of the next great development in human spirituality
The late great astronomer and astrophysicist describes his personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos. Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, Sagan presents his views on a wide range of topics, including the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets, creationism and so-called intelligent design, and a new concept of science as “informed worship.” Originally presented at the centennial celebration of the famous Gifford Lectures in Scotland in 1985 but never published, this book offers a unique encounter with one of the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century. |
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