CARL SAGAN - A Way of Thinking

It is not that pseudoscience and superstition and new age so called beliefs and fundamentalist zealotry are something new. They've been with us for as long as we've been human. But we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers. Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates. That's right and if we don't understand it by we I mean the general public if it's something that - 'Oh, I'm not good at that. I don't know anything about it.' then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in? - What's the danger of all this? - - I mean this is not the thing... - It is two kinds of things. One is what I just talked about that we've arranged the society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustable mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is gonna blow up in our faces. And the second reason that I'm worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of the human fallability. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true. To be skeptical of those in authority then we are up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious, who comes ambling along. It is a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn't enough he said to inshrine some rights in a constitution or bill of rights. The people had to be educated and they have to practice their skepticism and education. Otherwise we don't run the government. The government runs us. You see, people read stock market quotations and financial pages. Look how complex that is. People are able to look at sports statistics. Look how many people can do that. Understanding science is not more difficult than that. It doesn't involve greater intellectual activities. But the thing about science is first of all it's after what the universe really is and not what makes us feel better. And a lot of the competing doctrines are after what feels good. And not what, what... - True - - Science does not prove religion. Because religion is faith-based. - Let's look a little more deeply into that. What is faith? It is believe in the absence of evidence. Now, I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe, but for me believing when there is no compelling evidence is a mistake. The idea is to withhold believe until there is compelling evidence. And if the universe does not comply with our predispositions Okay, then we have the wrenching obligation to accommodate to the way the universe is. So who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us? Or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book? I lost both my parents about 12 and 15 years ago I had a great relationship with them I really miss them. I would love to believe they are spirits who are around somewhere. And I'd give almost anything to spend five minutes a year with them. - Do you hear their voices ever? - Sometimes, about six or eight times since their death have verdict?? 'Carl!' just in the voice of my father or my mother. Now, I don't think that it means that they are in the next room. I think it means that I've had an auditory hallucination about it. I was with them so long. I heard their voices so often. Why shouldn't I be able to make a vivid recollection. - This is what is interesting about this for me - - You convince me long time ago that it was arrogant for me or anyone else - - to believe there wasn't life outside of our... - To exclude the possibility - to exclude the possibility was an arrogance of intellect that we should not ??? - - You couldn't prove. You didn't know it was there. But the arrogance... Wait, we don't know if He is there We don't know if He is not there. Let's look! - and if you take that, why can't you say there is alot we don't know? I say that. Here watch, there is a lot that we don't know. That's what I believe. But that does not mean that every fraudulent claim has to be accepted. We demand the most rigorous standards of evidence especially on what is important to us. So if some guy comes up to me a channeller or a medium: 'I can put you in touch with your parents' Well because I want so terribly to believe that I know I have to need to reach in for added reserves of skepticism because I'm likely to be fooled and much more minor, to have my money taken. - You are living with myelodysplasia - Or I have been - And just share with us because of your sense of language - - and sense of understanding and being afflicted in perspective - - what do you think about it and what does it do for you too? - I didn't have any near death experiences. I didn't have a religious conversion. - but you thought about what it would be to die - Certainly and what it would be like for my family. And in what I think about what it would be like for me because I don't think it is likely that there is anything you think about after you're dead. - That's it - A long dreamless sleep. I'd love to believe the opposite but I don't have any evidence. But one thing that it has done is to enhance my sense of appreciation for the beauty of life and of the universe and the sheer joy of being alive. - You've had a healthy portion of that before this but even you it happens to - - appreciation - Every moment every inanimate object And to say nothing about the exquisite complexity of living beings. You imagine missing it all and suddenly it is so much more precious. Subtitles by the Amara.org community

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,873,758

Rating: 4.9377794 out of 5

Keywords: Carl Sagan (Academic), Ann Druyan, Brian Cox (Academic), Jacob Bronowski (Author), Lawrence M. Krauss (Academic), Sean M. Carroll (Academic), Neil Turok, Richard Feynman (Academic), Richard Dawkins (Academic), Ken Robinson (Author), Jacque Fresco (Author), Peter Joseph (Film Director), Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sam Harris (Author), Science, Life, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (TV Program), Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Id: J1cNaFG1VII

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 16 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/onwisconsin1]

I've watched this a bunch of times before you posted it. Someone posted it a while ago. But it's good to have it back up everyso often. It's gives me shivers everytime. His final interview, and he sums up his ideology and love of science and the world in such an amazing way. Thank you Carl.

[u/ayeke]

Carl Sagan is my inspiraation. I love science, what a miserable place world would be without science.

[u/limeblast]

😍