As a young teen, I was fascinated by Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series on PBS. I was deeply interested in the solar system and our neighbouring planets, and was mesmerized as I watched his series with excitement.

Indeed, I respect Dr. Sagan's profound insights very much, and have always had - and still have - great admiration for him and his contribution to science.

I am, however, a believer in a Creator who set things in motion and is constantly guiding and caring for His creation. I would like to answer a question Carl once posed against such an idea.

In an interview by Dennis Prager (at the end of this compilation of Sagan interviews - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIUJA09l-ug), Dr. Sagan asked:

"If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why is it necessary for God to be meddling in the universe after He made it?  Why didn’t He make it right in the first place, so it would go in the direction He wanted?"

If I may, I would like to present my answer to his indeed reasonable question.

As I see it, God did do precisely as Carl suggested He should have. God did create and put into motion a great deal which has not required His meddling or intervening care - such as galaxies, solar systems, planetary systems, even systems at the molecular and atomic levels. He simply lets them function according to laws which - as I believe - He put into place, letting them exist and function without intervening.

But God wanted more than that. Such self-regulating systems do not "love Him back", so to speak. They are inanimate, without a sense of self, and incapable of relationships. Quite obviously.

Instead, God wanted a creation He could interact with, who could acknowledge Him. A creation He could care for, with the ability to love Him back. Like having children.

But it couldn't be a programmed, automatically reciprocated love, for that would not be real love given voluntarily back to God. In order to have a true relationship with beings who could genuinely love Him back, they would have to be endowed with the freedom to choose. It would be love reciprocated on the basis of choice, not forced instinct.

Thus, God gifted humankind with the ability to choose.

However, the ability to choose introduces the opportunity to make bad choices, wrong choices, detrimental choices. As a person starts life with no experience at all, there is a danger of making wrong choices due to their lack of knowledge and experience.

Hence the need for God to intervene, or meddle, to ensure humankind is taught, guided, and assisted - just like a parent teaches, guides, and helps a child as it grows.

Thus, God does not intervene because His human model is broken. He intervenes because His human model is conscious, with the ability to make choices, with the need to accumulate knowledge and wisdom as it grows, which is accompanied by the need to teach and equip them with such knowledge and wisdom.

My short, rather simplistic answer to a very profound question.

Joseph Cafariello

UPDATE:

Thank-you for all your comments, ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, the comments are turning into a religious argument, which is not the focus of my post. One person even insinuated I was harassing them.

I will thus not keep those trains of thought running, as they have deviated from my original theme. My original focus was on intervention not being a sign of having made a mistake, as Dr. Sagan had characterized, but a gesture of caring for children as they grow.

UPDATE 2:

Just one little point more I'd like to add. I have noticed science-focused people find it difficult to accept a God who had no beginning, who always existed. Yet they have no difficulty embracing the idea of a universe without a beginning, that always existed, running through a perpetual cycle of expansions and contractions.

Hi all,

I created this as a kind of modern expansion of Carl Sagan’s Encyclopedia Galactica idea from Cosmos.

I’m not trying to improve on the original or say this is better than Sagan’s version.

I just wanted to imagine what an outside civilization might write if they assessed humanity today, especially our unstable mix of intelligence, creativity, conflict and unpredictability.

What do you all think? Does it fit the spirit of the original, or does it come across too dark?

This is a reading of quotes by Carl Sagan and a timelapse of a portrait being created. What is your favorite Carl Sagan quote?

Way back when, a little more than 15 years ago, Sam Harris argued that science can determine human values (he later wrote a book arguing that view). This caused quite a debate, and for example physicist Sean Carroll argued that science can not determine morality.

This made me curious, did Carl Sagan ever write anything on what he thought about the nature of morality (meta-ethics)? I know that he did not think that science could determine moral values (he says as much in The Demon-Haunted World). But more than that?

This is different from his normative views that he often espoused, such as his cosmopolitan outlook, which many of us find inspiring.

I know that Carl Sagan's area of expertise or interest was not moral philosophy or meta-ethics, but he was not completely unfamiliar with philosophy either, at least as it related to science, and he was a keen observer of the human condition and humanity's place in the universe.

A single tear dropped down my cheek

Always seeking, never reaching :(

Out of curiosity 👀

I had always loved science. Growing up, I had books about astronomy, geology, and evolution. They were just more compelling than anything in my children's Bible.

When I was eighteen, I started checking out the science section of my local library. I remember reading Bronowski's The Ascent of Man and liking it. Then I checked out A Brief History of Time - it had a forward by some guy named Carl Sagan. The next time I went to the science section, I saw a book by Sagan called Cosmos. I skimmed it and saw it was like The Ascent of Man, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

I had never been so moved by a book before. Like I said, I had always loved science, but the idea that we're starstuff, that we're a way for the universe to know itself - that blew my mind.

That happened in 2005, and he is still my absolute favorite writer and one of my all-time favorite people.​

Lifelong religious person that organically shifted to the scientific view that until something is proven with evidence, why would I believe it?

I started watching Cosmos out of a curiosity about the origins of our universe. This was my introduction to Carl Sagan.

I decided to purchase “Demon Haunted World”. I was working through what I thought was a slow chapter - Chapter 3 “The man in the moon and the face on mars”, when I was halted by the last couple of lines.

“We humans have a talent for deceiving ourselves. Skepticism must be a component of the explorer’s toolkit, or we will lose our way. There are wonders enough out there without inventing any.”

Just want to say that I’m glad to be here.

I play an episode of Cosmos every night to fall asleep - since developing PASC long covid post viral damage in 2020. I bet I’ve watched and listened to the show more than anyone, ever.

2,281 episodes watched total

175 complete cycles

I finally got around to reading Contact - finished it a couple weeks ago - and I keep thinking about it. It’s a brilliant novel. I wish we had more fiction from Sagan, although I’m not sure what more he could give us. The way he presented the science versus religion argument throughout, respectfully and giving voice to both sides. Then he goes and turns the scientists into religious-type figures unable to prove their experience and asking the world to believe them on faith (and corroboration). Then the masterful concept of an artist’s signature in pi, explaining how evidence of a creator could actually work, presenting the concept of science and mathematics as the pathway towards proof. Finally Ellie’s realization she wasted much of her life pushing away loving relationships - the most important thing in this life - in search for extraterrestrial life.

The whole thing is just powerful, moving, educational, quintessential Sagan. I loved it and think it’s a novel I’ll re-read many times.

When I feel overwhelmed by how truly shitty so many humans are I seek out Carl Sagan becayluse everything about him, his voice, his expressions, his calmness and rationality, his humanity and scientific thinking, his intelligence and creativity, his morality and ethics calm me right down.

He was and still is a huge positive good for the entire planet and people like him need to be our national leaders, not trashy criminal no class scum bags.

Nice nod to Pale Blue Dot. Cosmos-like music was a good touch.

These editions are beautiful. Had no idea they existed until recently and been looking out for them on eBay. Are any of Carl’s other books available in this format?

I listen to him reading from the book once a week at least. I even forced my son to listen to it when he was younger. Tried to get him to read the book but he’s more into manga. But it’s clear he grew into the type of person that finds Sagans words uplifting.