Francis Schaeffer in his book HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT (Chapter 4) asserts:
Because men have lost the objective basis for certainty of knowledge in the areas in which they are working, more and more we are going to find them manipulating science according to their own sociological or political desires rather than standing upon concrete objectivity. We are going to find increasingly what I would call sociological science, where men manipulate the scientific facts. Carl Sagan (1934-1996), professor of astronomy and space science at Cornell University, demonstrates that the concept of a manipulated science is not far-fetched. He mixes science and science fiction constantly. He is a true follower of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). The media gives him much TV prime time and much space in the press and magazine coverage, and the United State Government spent millions of dollars in the special equipment which was included in the equipment of the Mars probe–at his instigation, to give support to his obsessive certainty that life would be found on Mars, or that even large-sized life would be found there. With Carl Sagan the line concerning objective science is blurred, and the media spreads his mixture of science and science fiction out to the public as exciting fact.
Schaeffer with his wife Edith in Switzerland.
This mixing of science and science fiction had a purpose behind it. James Hubner enlightens us. James Hubner in his book LIGHT UP THE DARKNESS (pages 18-19) wrote:
Carl Sagan said this about extraterrestrial creatures, “When we know who they are, we will know who we are.” That is a remarkable statement, a remarkable religious statement. Why is it significant to know our identity? Why do humans desire to know who they are? …By asking these questions, Sagan exposed his own image-bearing soul while being completely unaware of it.
Contact is a fictional book written by a well known atheist (and strong supporter of the existence of aliens) named Carl Sagan. His main goal in writing the novel was to ridicule Christianity. It was Carl’s best shot at proving atheism was the only true belief. Within the book, Sagan discusses the relationship between science and faith. He establishes that science has all the answers without God. Hollywood discovered the story line and developed a movie out of it. The main character, Ellie Arroway, represents science. Carl Sagan wrote himself in to be her part. The antagonist, Palmer Joss, represents Sagan’s view of faith. The two characters, as well as what they represent, are constantly being compared and contrasted throughout the film. Science and faith are intertwined in each other more than Carl Sagan ever imagined.
For a writer who is so blatantly anti-Christian, Sagan is awfully familiar with the idea of General revelation. General revelation is the knowledge of God that can be seen through nature taken and interpreted from the passages in Romans 1: 19-20, which says, “[S]ince what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Throughout Contact, characters are mesmerized by the heavens. Ellie gives a compelling testimony about the aliens she sees and how spectacular all that creation is. Even Palmer talks about his general revelation experience when he looked at the stars and, “I knew I wasn’t alone…it was God.”
When any of the characters look at the stars, they can’t believe how magnificent they all are. God has made plain to these scientists his existence through the heavens and they use it as proof against him. If anything, science should make faith stronger. A Christian would see the heavens and all of creation and refer to them as general revelation as described in Romans 1.
Psalm 8 says, “You have set your glory in the heavens…when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?…” All of these things are done by Ellie. She fantasized about alien civilizations and completely misses the big picture.
Romans 1:22-25 says, “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images…They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…” This is the big picture Ellie is missing. She fails to realize that she is worshiping science.
Science is not fact, instead, it is the study of the universe. It is studied by humans and is, in turn, faulty. Science is something human created, not God created. She has general revelation, but she worships the creation and not the creator. Psalm 19:1 says, ” The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands…” According to Ellie, the heavens declare there must be aliens. Looking for aliens is not looking nearly far enough.
Ellie had been to Sunday School before, dabbling in religion as a child. She was “asked not to return” and thus turned her back on any idea of religion. Romans 1:21-23 says, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being…” Ellie became foolish by thinking that aliens were all that there was. The aliens themselves were futile in their thinking that the emptiness is only bearable with others. Even the alien she saw was in the image of her father, a mortal human. She has faith in that alien when she returns because they sent to proof with her to show everyone that she really did visit them. Everything Ellie does concerning her faith in aliens mimics the kind of faith she should have in God, basically worshiping the belief in the existence of aliens. This being when the existence of God is right before her. Sagan portrays general revelation almost perfectly, and the movie still is supposed to ridicule, not support, Christianity.
Science and Faith are related on a rocky ledge. It would be very easy to slide to one side and disregard the other. Science is the study of creation. It cannot be worshiped because without the creator it would be nothing. Faith is the same way. It’s the idea of having a creator to believe in. Without the creator, of course, faith would be nothing either.
Palmer is the only one who understands the big picture. He says, “Nothing [about science is wrong], so long as your motivation is the search for Truth.” This search for Truth is the very foundation on which his faith was built. He had a general revelation while looking at the sky, as Romans 1 describes. Ellie, or Sagan, however, does not understand that Science without Faith is meaningless. They must go together to understand what is possible about God.
Sagan unknowingly shows his ignorance by contradicting himself. His goal was to ridicule faith, but his character of faith seems to be more rational than the others. He portrays faith as inconclusive, whereas, his character of Ellie is the one changing sides. Ellie is the one who is supposed to be all science but her dialogue becomes faith-like, similar to Palmer’s. Ellie, science, and Palmer, faith, are constantly meeting and separating and meeting again. If science was completely unrelated to faith, the two shouldn’t meet at all. They find common ground at the end of the movie, but they shouldn’t with Sagan’s philosophy. Sagan contradicts himself again with his beloved aliens, as well. They don’t know who was there before them, who created the ‘transit system’ or who created the creator of the machine was. This sounds remarkably God-like, but Sagan doesn’t believe in God.
Science without faith would not fill a person with awe as Ellie says it would. “I wish that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe and humility and hope…” Science does not make a person humble. It does quite the opposite. Science with faith, on the other hand, would make someone hopeful in the power of God, humble because only God is that magnificent and full of awe because only God can do such great things. Aliens don’t make people feel insignificant; God does.
Ellie is constantly searching for meaning within science. In Palmer’s book, he says, “Ironically, the thing that people are the most hungry for…meaning…is the one thing that science hasn’t been able to give them.” Science cannot offer meaning, only God can do that. Ellie thinks that, “[S]cience simply revealed that he [God] never existed in the first place?” Palmer changes the subject because Sagan didn’t want faith to have any answers. Really, though, Ellie just missed the whole idea of science. Ellie is willing to give her life to the discovery of aliens, all for the sake of finding meaning. Meaning cannot be supplied through science, but with the help of science through faith, truth and meaning can be found.
Things don’t work out for Ellie when faith isn’t in her life. She loses her funding, and finds direction, but never resorts back to faith. It is faith that tries to work its way back into her life. Palmer doesn’t want to lose Ellie, and without realizing it, Sagan contradicted himself again because
science and faith belong together, and he had the characters play that out.
The characters never seem satisfied with simply science. When Ellie is talking to the alien, Sagan’s ideas show through. The alien refers to the human race as ‘lost’. Sagan thinks that the existence in aliens will love the problem. Aliens won’t solve the problem. Science alone won’t solve the problem. The characters that represent science are in a search that wont be fulfilled. Palmer isn’t searching for meaning because he found his in faith. Ellie finds her faith in science and, more importantly, aliens. Without her faith, her testimony would be nothing. There was the acknowledgement that faith must be present to find fulfillment and meaning.
It is easy to confuse the lines between science and faith. Faith is a belief in something bigger, something that cannot be proved with evidence, but has already been made evident to humanity. Science, according to Sagan, is the idea that all that exists is what can be seen and proved. The distinction between the two must be made. They fill in each others gaps. They are incomplete without each other. It is easy separate them because it is easy to not understand how related and interwoven they are. The process of understanding is key.
I have written a lot in the past about Carl Sagan on my blog and over and over again these posts have been some of my most popular because I believe Carl Sagan did a great job of articulating the naturalistic view that the world is a result of nothing more than impersonal matter, time and chance. Christians like me have to challenge those who hold this view and that is why I took it upon myself to read many of Sagan’s books and to watch his film series Cosmos.
On December 5, 1995, I got a letter back from Carl Sagan and I was very impressed that he took time to answer several of my questions and to respond to some of the points that I had made in my previous letters. I had been reading lots of his books and watching him on TV since 1980 and my writing today is a result of that correspondence. It is my conclusion that Carl Sagan died an unfulfilled man on December 20, 1996 with many of the big questions he had going unanswered.
Much of Carl Sagan’s aspirations and thoughts were revealed to a mass audience of movie goers just a few months after his death. The movie “CONTACT” with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey is a fictional story written by Sagan about the SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI). Sagan visited the set while it was filming and it was released on July 11, 1997 after his unfortunate death.
The movie CONTACT got me thinking about Sagan’s life long hope to find a higher life form out in the universe and I was reminded of Dr. Donald E. Tarter of NASA who wrote me in a letter a year or so earlier and stated, “I am not a theist. I simply and honestly do not know the answer to the great questions…This brings me to why I am interested in the SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI)…Let me assure you, one of the first questions I would want to ask another intelligence if one were discovered is, DO YOU BELIEVE IN OR HAVE EVIDENCE OF A SUPREME INTELLIGENCE?”
Rice Broocks in his book GOD’S NOT DEAD noted:
Astronomer Carl Sagan was a prolific writer and trustee of the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) founded in 1984 to scan the universe for any signs of life beyond earth. Sagan’s best-selling work COSMOS also became an award-winning television series explaining the wonders of the universe and exporting the belief not in an intelligent Creator but in potential intelligent aliens. He believed somehow that by knowing who they are, we would discover who we as humans really are. “The very thought of there being other beings different from all of us can have a very useful cohering role for the human species” (quoted from you tube clip “Carl Sagan appears on CBC to discuss the importance of SETI [Carl Sagan Archives]” at the 7 minute mark, Oct 1988 ). Sagan reasoning? If aliens could have contacted us, knowing how impossible it is for us to reach them, they would have the answers we seek to our ultimate questions. This thought process shows the desperate need we have as humans for answers to the great questions of our existence. Does life have any ultimate meaning and purpose? Do we as humans have any more value than the other animals? Is there a purpose to the universe, or more specifically, to our individual lives?
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Carl Sagan had to live in the world that God made with the conscience that God gave him. This created a tension. As you know the movie CONTACT was written by Carl Sagan and it was about Dr. Arroway’s SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI) program and her desire to make contact with aliens and ask them questions. It is my view that Sagan should have examined more closely the accuracy of the Bible and it’s fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament in particular before chasing after aliens from other planets for answers. Sagan himself had written,”Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death…If some good evidence for life after death was announced, I’d be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere antedote”(pp 203-204, The DemonHaunted World, 1995).
Sagan said he had taken a look at Old Testament prophecy and it did not impress him because it was too vague. He had taken a look at Christ’s life in the gospels, but said it was unrealistic for God to send a man to communicate for God. Instead, Sagan suggested that God could have written a mathematical formula in the Bible or put a cross in the sky. However, what happens at the conclusion of the movie CONTACT? This is Sagan’s last message to the world in the form of the movie that appeared shortly after his death. Dr Arroway (Jodie Foster) who is a young atheistic scientist who meets with an alien and this alien takes the form of Dr. Arroway’s father. The alien tells her that they thought this would make it easier for her. In fact, he meets her on a beach that resembles a beach that she grew up near so she would also be comfortable with the surroundings. Carl Sagan when writing this script chose to put the alien in human form so Dr. Arroway could relate to the alien.Christ chose to take our form and come into our world too and still many make up excuses for not believing.
Lastly, Carl Sagan could not rid himself of the “mannishness of man.” Those who have read Francis Schaeffer’s many books know exactly what I am talking about. We are made in God’s image and we are living in God’s world. Therefore, we can not totally suppress the objective truths of our unique humanity. In my letter of Jan 10, 1996 to Dr. Sagan, I really camped out on this point a long time because I had read Sagan’s book SHADOWS OF FORGOTTON ANCESTORS and in it Sagan attempts to totally debunk the idea that we are any way special. However, what does Dr. Sagan have Dr. Arroway say at the end of the movie CONTACT when she is testifying before Congress about the alien that communicated with her? See if you can pick out the one illogical word in her statement: “I was given a vision how tiny, insignificant, rare and precious we all are. We belong to something that is greater than ourselves and none of us are alone.”
“Contact” Theatrical Trailer (1997)
Contact (movie) Jodie Foster Speech
Contact – Talking With Hadden – Finding The Key
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Dr Sagan deep down knows that we are special so he could not avoid putting the word “precious” in there. Francis Schaeffer said unbelievers are put in a place of tension when they have to live in the world that God has made because deep down they know they are special because God has put that knowledge in their hearts.We are not the result of survival of the fittest and headed back to the dirt forevermore. This is what Schaeffer calls “taking the roof off” of the unbeliever’s worldview and showing the inconsistency that exists.
In several of my letters to Sagan I quoted this passage below:
Romans 1:17-22 (Amplified Bible)
17For in the Gospel a righteousness which God ascribes is revealed, both springing from faith and leading to faith [disclosed through the way of faith that arouses to more faith]. As it is written, The man who through faith is just and upright shall live and shall live by faith.(A)
18For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative.
19For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them.
20For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification],(B)
21Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. But instead they became futile and [a]godless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened.
22Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves].
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Can a man or a woman find lasting meaning without God? Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “under the sun” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”
Let me show you some inescapable conclusions if you choose to live without God in the picture. Solomon came to these same conclusions when he looked at life “under the sun.”
Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
Chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13 “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.”)
Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1; “Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed—
and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors— and they have no comforter.” 7:15 “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness. ).
Nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including knowledge (1:16-18), ladies and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and great building projects (2:4-6, 18-20).
There is no ultimate lasting meaning in life. (1:2)
By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture in the final chapter of the book in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14:
13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil
In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had and that “all was meaningless.” I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that.
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
You can hear Kerry Livgren’s story from this youtube link:
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