Was Carl Sagan an accommodationist?

May 15, 2016 • 2:31 pm

The PuffHo Religion and Science page is a real hoot—if you can stand its endless and annoying attempts to reconcile the two areas. It’s relentlessly accommodationist and invariably silly. Although the posts aren’t frequent, I saw a newer one today, which is both funny and sleazy, as it misrepresents Sagan’s views on religion.

The piece is “Listen to Carl Sagan open up about religion and the possibility of alien life,” by Carolyn Gregoire, a senior PuffHo writer. It points you to the Blank on Blank site (a production of the Public Broadcasting Service) and then to 6.5-minute audio, given below) of Sagan being interviewed by the late Studs Terkel. Here’s how PuffHo characterizes the video:

Sagan also touches on the age-old conflict between science and religion, rejecting a literal interpretation of the Bible as scientifically wrong, but noting that the two ways of thinking are ultimately about finding answers to life’s biggest questions — answers that may ultimately be less important than the questions themselves.

Well, that’s not exactly true. The fun begins at 3:29, when, after discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life, Sagan notes that both religion and science are “after the same thing” (understanding the cosmos and our origins), but that religions all contradict each other about the facts. How, then, can you know which religion makes correct claims? There’s no way, says Sagan—unless science can adjudicate their claims.  This, in fact, is one of the points of Faith Versus Fact. 

After a brief ad, Sagan talks about Einstein’s “religion,” maintaining, as I think is the case, that the physicist saw God as “little more than the sum total of the laws of the universe.”

If you can find anything in this video substantiating Gregoire’s implication that the questions are more important than the answers, let me know. (I see that trope all the time, and still don’t know what it means. I think it’s a Deepity). And of course the summary doesn’t note at all that Sagan claims a priority of science over faith in finding those answers. Nope, PuffHo isn’t allowed to say stuff like that!

To see how little Sagan really thought of religion, read The Varieties of Scientific Experience (edited by Ann Druyan), which I consider one of Sagan’s best books—and one that’s sadly neglected. There he makes no bones about the uselessness of faith.

 

20 thoughts on “Was Carl Sagan an accommodationist?”

  3. Not only does Sagan not say anything like the answers may be less important than the questions but who would say that? Maybe the religious who think they already have all the answers to those “big” questions.

  5. Glad to see you also think highly ot The Varieties of Scientific Experience. It is a wonderful series of lectures and Q and A’s. It gives you insight into Carl’s brilliant mind.

  8. this smacks of the same crap that said that Hitchens was on the verge of Faith on his deathbed. -KIA

    1. Very same thoughts came to mind. I thought Christians respected the dead, now they just speak for them? I hope this is not how they always did things. Wait. Oh shit!

      1. I thought Christians respected the dead,

        Only the “right” sort of dead people – ones who have supped the human blood.
        Anyone else is fair game, because as non-Xtians they really don’t matter.
        You can see the same attitude in -whichever- church who go around baptising people from their death certificates. Your opinion on matters while you’re alive only matters if you agree with the church ; otherwise you’ll be posthumously edited into compliance.
        I’m trying to remember which bunch of contemptible cowards it is that does that. There are so many to choose from.

  9. I can’t imagine how anyone familiar with Carl Sagan could ever imagine him to be an accommodationist. It wasn’t uncommon for an interviewer to try to draw out Sagan on the topic of religion and he was always very consistent with his response. First off, unlike myself, he wouldn’t dismiss religion as a load of crap not worth wasting time over – he’d be very careful not to say anything which would offend his interviewer or audience. Next, he would set up the context of his response: was the question about his belief in the existence (or non-existence) of a god, was it a question on the origins of the universe, or a question about the veracity of biblical claims? Finally Sagan would follow up with a remarkable narration of his point of view and why he believes it. Having seen Sagan perform in interviews over a period of about 20 years, I’d always recalled Carl Sagan as someone who’d kick religion to the ground and dance on its corpse, but always in such a way that he would not offend his audience. He was a master of presenting facts in an unapologetic fashion.

    1. Yes. Sagan lived in the pre-9/11 world in which it seemed reasonable to just ignore religious lunacy most of the time. But if you read his books, especially The Varieties of Scientific Experience, there’s no doubt where he stood on religion.

  10. Sagan was accommodatING without really being accomodationIST.

    His willingness to give the Gifford lectures AT ALL (where “The Varieties of Scientific Experience” first premiered) is a sign of the former (they are normally devoted to natural theology), as is the nonconfrontationalist tone of much of his assertions about religion.

    Incidentally, the title “Varieties of Scientific Experience” was chosen by Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan, as a riposte to one of the most famous of the set of Gifford lectures, William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience”. Since the title does not reflect the contents of the book at all, I’m not very comfortable with it.

  11. If you can find anything in this video substantiating Gregoire’s implication that the questions are more important than the answers, let me know. (I see that trope all the time, and still don’t know what it means. I think it’s a Deepity).

    From what I can tell about how it’s used, it’s basically an appeal to open-mindedness and giving intellectual credit to believers. It’s an argument from necessity: trying to take a boring logical point (that it’s technically logically possible for, say, a god of some sort to exist) and make it as respectable as better-substantiated forms of belief. After all, the truly open-minded unbeliever is still willing to ask questions and be ready to believe.

    It’s a pretty pathetic ploy for unearned credit, basically.

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