Bloomsburg University                                           Dr.Robert C. Newman

7 February 2001                                                    BiblicalSeminary/IBRI

e-mail: rcnewman@ibri.org                                                www.ibri.org

 

COSMOS & CONTACT:

The Religion of Carl Sagan

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Want to talk about the religion ofCarl Sagan as it is revealed in the two films and books Cosmos and Contact, making some use also of Sagan=s last book The Demon-HauntedWorld.

Not just a survey of Sagan=s views, but an attempt to thinkthrough the whole question of how one should decide between one worldview andanother

 

SAGAN=S OPENING STATEMENT IN COSMOS

 

The cosmos is all that is,

or ever was,

or ever will be

 

This is nota scientific statement, but a religious one

From this statement, it appears thatSagan believes nothing exists but the cosmos.

Does CarlSagan have a religion?

 

WHAT IS ARELIGION@?

 

Webster=s New World Dictionary (1955)

Sagan doesn=t have a religion by first two meanings here, but 3rd:

AAny specific belief, worship, conduct, etc., often involvinga code of ethics and a philosophy@

 

RoyClouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality, 21-22:

AA religious belief is any belief in something or other asdivine@

A>Divine= means having the status of notdepending on anything else.@

 

Sagan has areligion in this sense, as we shall see that he believes the universe has alwaysexisted.

 

THE BIGBANG (Cosmos, 246)

 

In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began anexpansion which has never ceased. It is misleading to describe the expansion of the universe as a sort ofdistending bubble viewed from the outside.  By definition, nothing we can ever know about was outside.

 


Here Saganseems to indicate that he believes there is nothing outside the universe, or atleast, that we can never know about anything beyond our universe.  Is this true?  How could we learn about something that we cannot reach outto with our technology?  Sagan willtry to address this in his sci-fi novel and film Contact.

 

HOW ITALL BEGAN (Cosmos, 257)

 

In many cultures it is customary to answer that Godcreated the universe our of nothing. But this is mere temporizing... if we decide [where God comes from] tobe unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universeis an unanswerable question?  Or,if we say God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universehas always existed?

 

Here we seethat Sagan is very reluctant to allow the postulation of a God to help inunderstanding the universe.

 

SAGAN=S METHODOLOGY (Demon-Haunted World)

 

B Sagan concerned about the rise of Asuperstitions,@ e.g., New Age philosophies, beliefin UFOs, belief in supernatural

B Sagan wants to be open to the evidence of nature

B He does not in principle rule out the supernatural

B He says he is not impressed byevidence for the supernatural he has seen

 

But is itreally true that we are faced with a lack of evidence for God?

 

ORIGINOF LIFE (Cosmos, 39)

 

Saganadmits there is much we don=t understand about the origin of life, including the origin of thegenetic code (the information stored in DNA molecules).  He admits there are many majorquestions in science which have not been explained by purely naturalcauses.  But Sagan thinks that allof these will eventually be explained without having to call in thesupernatural as a cause.

 

COMPLEXITYOF LIFE (Article ALife@ in Encylopaedia Britannica [1970])

 

The information content of a simple cell has beenestimated as around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred millionpages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. (13:1083B)

 

Saganhimself, in his article ALife@ which appeared in two editions of the EB, grantedthat the complexity of even the simplest known life is staggering.

 

 

 



RECOGNIZINGA MESSAGE FROM AN EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

 

In hisscience fiction novel Contact, made into a film just a few months before he died, Saganimagined what it would be like to receive a message from higherintelligences. 

 

How mightwe recognize such a message?

B Strong signal

B A string of a few dozen prime numbers would be decisive

B The whole message to build thetransport machine is about 50,000 pages.

 

We want tolook at a 15-minute clip from this film.

 

FILMCLIP FROM CONTACT

 

Starts withEllie Arroway=s arrival on the planet (orspaceship?) in Vega system and her experiences there.  When she returns, the powers that be on earth refuse tobelieve she actually made the trip. An interesting exercise on how one could prove the existence of a higherintelligence than our own.  Somevery strong parallels with evidence for God and for the resurrection of Jesus!

 

CONTACT: HOW THE NOVEL ENDED

 

For somereason, the book ends very differently than the film.  The hero, Ellie Arroway, comes to believe in the existenceof God because she is confronted with what seems to her (and to Sagan?)Incontrovertible evidence.

 

Ellie findsthat in the infinite run of the digits of the number Api,@ there is a place where a picture of a circle isgiven.

 

THE FILMDOESN=T END THIS WAY!

 

Whynot?  Did Sagan have secondthoughts?  Did Hollywood veto thisending?  Did Sagan back away from Athe precipice of theism@ in the last years of his life?  He comes closer to Christianity in thisnovel than in anything he wrote before or after.

 

I fear thatpart of the reason for this was that Sagan didn=t like the idea of God sending messages.  For if we seriously entertain this as apossibility, we may start looking for them.  And if we look for them, we will indeed find them, and thiswould force us to reconsider our whole worldview and lifestyle.

 

MIGHTGOD SEND SUCH A MESSAGE?

 

If Godexists, he certainly might!

 

Where wouldhe put such a message?


            Christiansclaim he put one such message in the Bible.

 

But thereis good evidence that he has also put such a message in:

B The structure of the universe itself

B Living things

 

THEUNIVERSE AND GOD=S MESSAGE

 

Severalbooks, dating back as early as 1913, but most since the mid-1980s, have pointedto a marvelous Afine-tuning@ in the structure of our universe:

B Lawrence Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment

B Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe

B John Barrow & Frank Tipler, The Anthropic CosmologicalPrinciple

B Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos

B Michael Denton, Nature=s Destiny

 

FINE-TUNINGOF THE UNIVERSE

 

There arefour known basic forces in the universe:

B Strong Nuclear Force (strength = 1)

B Electromagnetic Force (strength = 1/100)

B Weak Nuclear Force (strength = 1/100,000)

B Gravity (strength = 1/1039)

 

Asdivergent in strength as these forces are, if their strengths were only veryslightly different, the results would be disastrous!

 

THESTRONG FORCE

 

The strongforce is apparently the external appearance of the force that binds theso-called Aquarks@ together. It is the strongest we know about, and has a very short range ofinfluence, about the diameter of an atomic nucleus.  Its most obvious influence is to hold atomic nuclei together.

 

B 50% weaker, no stable elements in the universe

B 5% weaker, deuterium not stable, stars won=t burn

B 5% stronger, diproton stable, stars explode!

 

The strongforce is tuned to +/- 5% for our universe to function!

 

THE WEAKFORCE

 

The weakforce is some 100,000 times weaker than the strong force, and of even shorterrange.  It is more obscure to thenon-physicist than the other forces, but is involved in the decay of neutrons.

 


B few % weaker:

++ too little helium formed in big bang, too few heavy elements

++ heavy elements stay trapped inside stars

B few % stronger:

++ too much helium formed in big bang, too many heavyelements

++ heavy elements stay tapped inside stars

 

The weakforce must be fine-tuned to a few % to have any heavy elements (carbon andheavier) outside stars where they can be used for planets and people!

 

ELECTROMAGNETICFORCE

 

The e-mforce is very familiar to us, being involved in all our electricaldevices.  It is also what makessolid objects solid.

 

B number of + and - charges in theuniverse almost exactly equal, to better than one part in 1040

B protons and electrons aredrastically different in mass, and Afroze out@ at very different times in the history of the universe

 

If not forthis equality, electromagnetism (being much stronger) would overwhelm gravity,with the result that there would be no universe of galaxies, stars andplanets.  Electromagnetism isfine-tuned to one part in 1040!

 

GRAVITY

 

Gravity isalso very familiar, though it is the weakest of all these forces.  It is the force that is mainlyresponsible for the movement of the galaxies, stars and planets through space.

 

There is avery close balance between gravity and the expansion of the cosmos:

 

B weaker by 1 part in 1060:universe expands too quickly, no galaxies or stars formed

B stronger by 1 part in 1060:universe collapses too quickly, no galaxies or stars formed

 

Gravity isfine-tuned to cosmic expansion at the big bang to one part in 1060!

 

FINE-TUNEDUNIVERSE

 

Combiningthese cases gives fine-tuning to one part in 10100.  How big is 10100?  There are estimated to be 1080elementary particles (protons, electrons, etc.) in our universe, so need 1020universes to get 10100 particles.

 

So toexplain this fine-tuning by chance, we have to imagine marking one electron(say) in all the 1020 universes and then trying to find it purely byguesswork!  Would you want to stakeyour life on a chance like that? 

 

To makesuch a fine-tuned universe by chance, we something like 10100universes formed by chance in order to expect that just one of them would turnout with this level of fine-tuning.  Do we really have any evidence for another 10100 universes?

 

Besides thefour cases we examined above, Hugh Ross gives 22 more in his book Creatorand the Cosmos.  The universe gives every evidence ofbeing designed!

 

SIR FREDHOYLE ON A DESIGNED UNIVERSE

 

A far moreminor feature than the ones we have examined (the detailed spacing of nuclearenergy levels for carbon and oxygen) led former atheist Sir Fred Hoyle to makethe following statement:

 

... a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as wellas with chemistry and biology

The Universe: Past and Present Reflection, 16

 

LIFE ANDGOD=S MESSAGE

 

Livingthings are also a striking example of organized complexity.  Those who believe that the cosmos isall there is have nothing but chance and survival to explain the level of orderfound in living things:

 

B Living things are by far the mostcomplex objects yet found in the universe

B Recall Sagan=s remark about the E coli bacterium:

++ info content = 1012 bits

++ = 100 million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica

B Human beings have trillions ofcells, each of which is more complex than an E coli cells, and they are alsocoordinated

 

Sir FredHoyle and his associate Chandra Wickramasinghe spent a number of yearsinvestigating the complexity of living things.  They came to the conclusion that life could not beunderstood in a worldview where there is no mind behind the universe.

 

The chance that higher life forms might have emerged [bychance] is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through ajunk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.

Nature (12 Nov 81): 105

 

 

 


RECOGNIZINGA MESSAGE

 

If we goback to the scenario visualized by Sagan in Contact, we find a strong analogy betweenthe message we find in the DNA of living things and the radio message detectedby Ellie Arroway and her associates. Will we try to explain this away like the villain Michael Kitz in Contact?

 

B Strong signal: seen in all living things

B Decisive: the information contentis beyond the probabilistic resources of the universe

B The whole message to build an Ecoli bacterium isabout 100 million pages, but to build the Vegans= transporter was only 50 thousand pages.

 

THERELIGION OF CARL SAGAN

 

B If he was really open to the universe

B If he was really willing to consider the supernatural

 

Why didn=t Sagan respond to this sort ofevidence?

Why did hedraw back from Athe precipice of theism@?

 

Whyindeed?  Will you?

 

TheAuthor:

 

Robert C.Newman is Professor of New Testament at the Biblical Theological Seminary inHatfield, Pennsylvania, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Biblical ResearchInstitute there.

 

Dr. Newmanis a graduate of Duke University (BS) in physics, of Cornell University (PhD)in theoretical astrophysics, of Faith Theological Seminary (MDiv), and ofBiblical Theological Seminary (STM) in Old Testament.  He has taken additional graduate work in cosmic gas dynamicsat the University of Wisconsin, in religious thought at the University ofPennsylvania, in biblical geography at the Institute for Holy Land Studies (nowJerusalem University College), and in biblical hermeneutics and interpretationat Westminster Theological Seminary.

 

Dr. Newman=s publications include articles in TheAstrophysical Journal(1967-68), the book Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth (1977), contributions to TheJournal of the American Scientific Affiliation, The Genesis Debate (1986), The Evidence of Prophecy (1988), Evangelical Affirmations (1990), Evidence for Faith (1991), the article on the wordcluster Astar@ in The New International Dictionary of OldTestament Theology and Exegesis (1997), and contributions to Mere Creation (1998), Three Views on Creationand Evolution(1999) and What=s Darwin Got to Do with It?(2000).

 


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