What do you think about this quote?

Question

'In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than out prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way... A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.' - Carl Sagan

Eyeoftheneedle: that's the coolest avatar I've seen in a while!

Answer 1

Sagan said,

"As far as I know, India is the only ancient religious tradition on the Earth which talks about the right time scale. In the West, people have the sense that what is natural is for the universe to be a few thousand years old, and that it is billions of years is mind-reeling, and no one can understand it. The Hindu concept is very clear. Here is a great world culture which has always talked about billions of years."

"The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still."

There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who, after a Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him - until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the great cosmic dream.

Carl Sagan further says: " The most elegant and sublime of these is a representation of the creation of the universe at the beginning of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as the cosmic dance of Lord Shiva. The god, called in this manifestation Nataraja, the Dance King. In the upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of creation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame, a reminder that the universe, now newly created, with billions of years from now will be utterly destroyed."

These profound and lovely images are, I like to imagine, a kind of premonition of modern astronomical ideas."

(source: Cosmos - By Carl Sagan p. 213-214).


The transcendence of time is the aim of every Indian spiritual tradition. Time is often presented as an eternal wheel that binds the soul to a mortal existence of ignorance and suffering. "Release" from time's fateful wheel is termed Moksha, and an advanced ascetic may be called Kala-attita (' he who has transcended time').

Hindus believe that the universe is without a beginning (anadi= beginning-less) or an end (ananta = end-less). Rather the universe is projected in cycles.

"...........the Indian mind was better prepared for the chronological mutations of Darwinian evolution and astrophysics."

- Guy Sorman

The Laya Yoga Samhita stated that just as the beams of sunlight entering a room reveal the presence of innumberable motes, so infinite space is filled with countless brahmandas (solar systems). The atomic structure of matter was discussed in the ancient Vaisesika treatises. And in the Yoga Vashista it was stated, in a passage very similar to the foregoing: "There are vast worlds all placed way within the hollows of each atom, multifarious as the motes in a sunbeam."

Science and religion do not oppose each other, not in India.

"Hinduism is a process - for this reason, Hinduism must be studied not as a fixed body of doctrine, but as a developing tradition that has changed considerably throughout the centuries and which is still changing in a creative direction. Everything in India makes sense in the light of the changing process. Nothing makes sense without it. Hinduism is still a living, changing process and must be seen as such."

- Thomas Berry

Between Carl Sagan and Berry, I think I dont need to wait for this new religion. We will make adjustments when we will need it. ;).

Answer 2

As a christian...

Bible writers had an exceedingly limited understanding of science and the universe. I, on the other hand do find myself rather awestruck at it and what science has learned about it. I do not believe most Christians, though, say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." They don't because, for one, it's simply not true--every believer I know finds the complexity and wonder of the universe to strengthen their faith in a God who is above all things.

Second, no Christian believes, as the quote implies, that the kind of God we want is the kind of God they will believe in. God is God and He is who He will be. I have nothing to do with that. So many humanists are so stuck in the mindset they have that religion is invented by humans, they seem to think that a religion would simply choose to change itself at will--"Why is it so behind the times"--"Why don't you believe such-and-such yet?" But God does not change, so we do and cannot change Him.

Answer 3

You know, I am an unbeliever, fan of planetology (exact science that studies any kind of planets).

Those Sagan's words seem gratuitous, in my view.

Modern planetologists are more intelligent & rooted than Carl Sagan: this is what I think about this quote.

And I also think that Sagan was agnostic. Most of anti-theists claim they are atheists, but actually, they do have a faith they feel frustrated with.

Sagan wasn't a true atheist.

Answer 4

A millennium before Europeans were wiling to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions.

- Carl Sagan

Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way.

-Romain Rolland

Answer 5

It's a good quote. It took some thinking and some guts to put it out there.

Answer 6

All religion is based on one principal: Faith.
Science is completely ill-equipped to deal with what it can not detect, but only for hypothesis based on the known. Faith is inexplicable understanding of something that can not be known.
Science can give me a device that can tell me within a few centimeters where I am standing on the earth, but it can not tell me my purpose there. However, I can have faith that I have a purpose, and then believe that purpose was given to me by a higher power. No devise, no scientific hypothesis can give me this. If science is limit to my understanding all that exists of me is a spot on the globe that is occupied by a few little atoms of mostly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. I can not live in a world with this as my end all and be all.

How could the application of science “draw forth reserves of reverence” for the undetectable? How is science providing answers to the grander questions of purpose? It can not do these things. Faith and science are two are diametrically opposed modes of thought that exist side by side and should not interact.

I say let the two define the world separately. Let science tell me of my composition and let Faith tell me my purpose. The two ideas can give me power to accomplish great things.

Answer 7

I think the author of that comment did not know the Christian faith nor the awesome greatness attributed by it to the Living God.


Hebrews 11
1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.
3By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Hebrews 1
10He also says,
"In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
11They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
12You will roll them up like a robe;
like a garment they will be changed.
But you remain the same,
and your years will never end."

Answer 8

In my opinion, many religious people who believe in an all-powerful and perfect God don't really like to think about creation other than what's on earth.

The rest of the universe is a chaotic and destructive place. You have empty and lifeless plantes, black holes, supernovas, asteroid belts made up of fragments of destroyed planets, deadly radiation and gas clouds... the list goes on. And they can't use the excuse of sin or Satan to explain why a perfect God made such an imperfect universe.

Answer 9

It raaks!...CS had a Phenomenal gift of communication!

to jim: I like Aquinas when in the Cathedral of Notre Dames .. after an epiphany .. and regarding his 'Summum Bonum Gentile' et al .. he said , "All my works, just chaff!"

Answer 10

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