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Francis Schaeffer wrote in 1981 in CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO chapter 3 The Destruction of Faith and Freedom:

Then there was a shift into materialistic science based on a philosophic change to the materialistic concept of final reality. This shift was based on no addition to the facts known. It was a choice, in faith, to see things that way. No clearer expression of this could be given than Carl Sagan’s arrogant statement on public television–made without any scientific proof for the statement–to 140 million viewers: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever was or ever will be.” He opened the series, COSMOS, with this essentially creedal declaration and went on to build every subsequent conclusion upon it. 

Meaning of life — Carl Sagan

June 30, 2021By Subhash Trivedi

Tags: Good Question

Carl Sagan was an American Cosmologist, Astronomer, Planetary Scientist, author, and science communicator. He wrote books on the planetary system and produced a TV series called “Cosmos – A Personal Voyage” in which he presented a series. Later Neil deGrasse Tyson continued the series and called it Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014).

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

CARL SAGAN

Carl Sagan believes the meaning of lifeis up to us. We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our wisdom and courage. He further says some 5 billion years from now, after it’s burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the sun. There will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being and they will know nothing of a place once called EARTH.

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

CARL SAGAN

The idea of the sense of self-worth comes not from anything we have done, not from anything worthy, but by an accident of birth of humiliation. The purpose is on us and we have to define it by staying humble to everyone, making equal rights for everyone, no discrimination, gender equality.

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”

CARL SAGAN

Carl Sagan pointing the dot in photo capture by Voyager 1 in space from billions of kilometers away – Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

CARL SAGAN

Having said that, If we keep our purpose small such as to be kind and humble to everyone, helping each other would make a significant difference. Don’t pursue big goals just keep it simple and be conscious of yourself.

“If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”

CARL SAGAN

What if the cosmos is all that there is?

Are you a materialist? Materialism (the philosophy) suggests that “physical matter is the only reality, and that everything-including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can all be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.”

Or perhaps you prefer the term naturalist. You believe that all can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws. Nothing has moral, spiritual, or supernatural significance.

Carl Sagan once said: “The cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be.”

Douglas Futuyma in Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, says:

“Some shrink from the conclusion that the human species was not designed, has no purpose, and is the product of mere mechanical mechanisms—but this seems to be the message of evolution.”

Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker:

“Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a mater watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.”`

Francis Crick in The Astonishing Hypothesis:

“The Astonishing Hypothesis is that you—your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”

What if all this is true? What if the cosmos and the chemicals and the particles really are all that there is, and all that we are?

“If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.”

—Francis Schaeffer in The God Who Is There

“Eventually materialist philosophy undermines the reliability of the mind itself-and hence even the basis for science. The true foundation of rationality is not found in particles and impersonal laws, but in the mind of the Creator who formed us in His image.”

—Phillip E. Johnson,
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds

If you are an atheist, a materialist, a pantheist, or a naturalist, try to answer the following 11 questions:

1. “If all of life is meaningless, and ultimately absurd , why bother to march straight forward, why stand in the queue as though life as a whole makes sense?” —Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There
2. If everyone completely passes out of existence when they die, what ultimate meaning has life? Even if a man’s life is important because of his influence on others or by his effect on the course of history, of what ultimate significance is that if there is no immortality and all other lives, events, and even history itself is ultimately meaningless?
3. Suppose the universe had never existed. Apart form God, what ultimate difference would that make?
4. In a universe without God or immortality, how is mankind ultimately different from a swarm of mosquitoes or a barnyard of pigs?
5. What viable basis exists for justice or law if man is nothing but a sophisticated, programmed machine?
6. Why does research, discovery, diplomacy, art, music, sacrifice, compassion, feelings of love, or affectionate and caring relationships mean anything if it all ultimately comes to naught anyway?
7. Without absolute morals, what ultimate difference is there between Saddam Hussein and Billy Graham?
8. If there is no immortality, why shouldn’t all things be permitted?(Dostoyevsky)
9. If morality is only a relative social construct, on what basis could or should anyone ever move to interfere with cultures that practice apartheid, female circumcision, cannibalism, or ethnic cleansing?
10. If there is no God, on what basis is there any meaning or hope for fairness, comfort, or better times?
11. Without a personal Creator-God, how are you anything other than the coincidental, purposeless miscarriage of nature, spinning round and round on a lonely planet in the blackness of space for just a little while before you and all memory of your futile, pointless, meaningless life finally blinks out forever in the endless darkness?

Sources

Many, but not all, of the preceding questions are paraphrased versions of those posed by William Lane Craig in his book Reasonable Faith, chapter 2, “The Absurdity of Life Without God.”

Author: Daryl E. Witmer of AIIA Institute.

Text Copyright © 2003, 2004, AIIA Institute, All Rights Reserved—except as noted on attached “Usage and Copyright” page that grants ChristianAnswers.Net users generous rights for putting this page to work in their homes, personal witnessing, churches and schools.

Carl Sagan, in full Carl Edward Sagan, (born November 9, 1934, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died December 20, 1996, Seattle, Washington), American astronomer and science writer. A popular and influential figure in the United States, he was controversial in scientific, political, and religious circles for his views on extraterrestrial intelligence, nuclear weapons, and religion. Sagan wrote the article “life” for the 1970 printing of the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1929–73).

Sagan attended the University of Chicago, where he earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in physics in 1955 and 1956, respectively, and a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960. From 1960 to 1962 he was a fellow in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 1962 to 1968 he worked at Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. His early work focused on the physical conditions of the planets, especially the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter. During that time he became interested in the possibility of lifebeyond Earth and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), a controversial research field he did much to advance. For example, building on earlier work by American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, he demonstrated that amino acids and nucleic acids—the building blocks of life—could be produced by exposing a mixture of simple chemicals to ultraviolet radiation. Some scientists criticized Sagan’s work, arguing that it was unreasonable to use resources for SETI, a fantasy project that was almost certainly doomed to failure.

On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Haroon Ahmed,  Jim Al-Khalili, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Sir Patrick Bateson, Simon Blackburn, Colin Blakemore, Ned Block, Pascal Boyer, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky, Brian Cox, Partha Dasgupta,  Alan Dershowitz, Frank Drake, Hubert Dreyfus, John Dunn, Bart Ehrman, Mark Elvin, Richard Ernst, Stephan Feuchtwang, Robert Foley, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Stephen Hawking, Hermann Hauser, Robert Hinde, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Caroline Humphrey, Nicholas Humphrey,  Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman, Masatoshi Koshiba,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff,  Rodolfo Llinas, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Dan McKenzie,  Mahzarin Banaji, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  P.Z.Myers,   Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff, David Parkin,  Jonathan Parry, Roger Penrose,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, VS Ramachandran, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Colin Renfrew, Alison Richard,  C.J. van Rijsbergen,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, John Sulston, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Max Tegmark, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  Martinus J. G. Veltman, Craig Venter, .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, James D. Watson, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

In  the 1st video below in the 45th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

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Francis Schaeffer’s works  are the basis for a large portion of myblog posts and they have stood the test of time. In fact, manypeople would say that many of the things he wrote in the 1960’s  were right on  in the sense he saw where our western society was heading and he knew that abortion, infanticide and youthenthansia were  moral boundaries we would be crossing  in thecoming decades because of humanism and these are the discussions we are having now!)

There is evidence that points to the fact that the Bible is historically true as Schaeffer pointed out in episode 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? There is abasis then for faith in Christ alone for our eternal hope. This linkshows how to do that.

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Francis Schaeffer with his son Franky pictured below. Francis and Edith (who passed away in 2013) opened L’ Abri in 1955 in Switzerland.

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Francis and Edith Schaeffer seen below:

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 Saganthe 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 bookLIGHT 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. 

The Cosmos According to Carl Sagan (1934-1996):
Review and Critique

MARK G. McKIM

Minister

German Street United Baptist Church
Saint John, New Brunswick
Canada E2L 3W2

From PSCF 45 (March 1993): 18-25

The writings and television appearances of Carl Sagan have done much to popularize the scientific enterprise and to fire the popular imagination. A careful examination, however, shows that Sagan is highly critical of religious frames of reference, especially the Christian one. This article sets forth Sagan’s major criticisms and maintains that he is operating from a clear world view, which itself verges on being a religion. A critique of the major points of that world view and a response to the criticisms which Sagan levels towards Christianity are also provided.

Carl Sagan’s widespread popularity, which began with the television series Cosmos and the book by the same title, should of itself provide sufficient justification for a serious consideration of the personable Cornell professor’s views, which have captured the imaginations of millions. But if additional reasons for such a consideration are needed, one can cite such factors as the continuing popularity of Dr. Sagan’s writings and his very considerable influence in shaping the views of many in the English-speaking Western world, not only through the medium of the printed word, but also by means of his frequent television appearances, in productions ranging from newsprograms to late-night American talk shows. In addition, one would hope that the benefit of historical perspective should attend any consideration of Sagan’s views today, seeing that Cosmos (both text and television series) and the acclaim and controversy they created are almost a decade old.

It is widely conceded that Sagan’s magnum opus, Cosmos, is critical toward religious frames of reference, especially the Christian one, and this perception is easily confirmed by a cursory reading of the Cosmos text.

In this paper a wide-ranging review and critique of Sagan’s writings will be undertaken. I intend to elucidate Sagan’s major criticisms of religion in general and Christianity in particular; to determine the major components of the Weltanschauung which stands behind Sagan’s criticisms; and to provide a brief running commentary on, or critique of, each of the components of that world view.

This paper will limit itself to four volumes published by Dr. Sagan: Cosmos,¹ undoubtedly Sagan’s best known work; his popular novel Contact;² his Pulitzer Prize-winning work The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence³ Broca’s Brain: Reflections on The Romance of Science.⁴ In addition, we will consider two particularly enlightening interviews with Sagan. The first interview was published in U.S. News & World Report⁵ in December 1980, the second in the U.S. Catholic⁶ a few months later.

Let us begin with a systematic examination of Sagan’s major criticisms of religious frames of reference. These criticisms seem to divide into four parts.

“Religion is Anti-Intellectual”

The first of these criticisms is that Dr. Sagan believes that religion (at least in its institutional Christian form) is anti-intellectual. It does not make use of the cerebral matter, believing things instead on the basis of tradition, authority and the like. Sagan writes: “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion…but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science.”⁷

This viewpoint becomes, if anything, much more pronounced in Sagan’s novel Contact. The protagonist, Ellie, clearly mouths Sagan’s own notions about religion. She says:

Around Santa Fe, the faintest glimmerings of dawn might be seen above the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. (Why should a religion, she asked herself, name its places after the blood and body, heart and pancreas of its most revered figure? And why not the brain among other prominent but uncommemorated organs?)⁸

Later, Ellie says:

Anything you don’t understand, Mr. Rankin, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to your intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.⁹

In his comments in the U.S. News & World Report interview, Sagan posited that in – the traditional approach of religion…many assertions are never challenged.”¹⁰

Richard A. Baer, Jr., adequately summarizes Sagan’s position in this way. “Science gives us reliable knowledge, [Sagan] suggests, whereas religion is connected with…narrowness of mind, and bigotry.”¹¹

In response to Professor Sagan, one must admit that some Christians have sometimes adopted anti-intellectualist, obscurantist stances. This attitude is still dominant within some forms of Protestant fundamentalism.

But Sagan overplays his hand. Historically, there have been many instances of Christians who were not by any stretch of the imagination anti-intellectualist! Was it not the Christian church which preserved and protected the remains of the ancient world’s best writings, established and nurtured some of the greatest universities in Europe and North America, and had among its adherents a number of the giants in the development of modern science?

Additionally, Sagan fails to take any notice whatsoever of the fact that the New Testament records give scant support to obscurantism. The apostle Paul held public debates about his new faith.¹²Jesus demanded the active employment of the mind!¹³ Surely it would have been reasonable for Sagan to note that obscurantism is a deviation from the intentions of primitive Christianity and its founder.

“Religion Opposes Scientific Advancement”

Sagan’s second major point of conflict with religion is the accusation that religion, especially in its institutional Christian expression, has tended to oppose the advance of scientific knowledge even to the point of persecuting scientists. Cosmosis replete with numerous examples and comments intended to prove this. With reference to Copernicus, Sagan writes:

Nicolaus Copernicus’ proposition that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the universe upset many people including the Catholic Church, which put his work on the index, and Martin Luther, who called Copernicus “an upstart astrologer…this fool¹⁴

Of Giordano Bruno, Sagan notes:

Giordano Bruno, a sixteenth century Roman Catholic scholar who held that there are an infinity of worlds and that many are inhabited, was burned at the stake in 1600 for his views.¹⁵

Sagan again simplifies history to the point of distortion and omits key points.

And, with an almost malicious glee, Sagan comments on Kepler:

He (Kepler) lived in a time when the human spirit was fettered and the mind chained; when the ecclesiastical pronouncements of a millennium or two earlier on scientific matters were considered more reliable than contemporary findings made with techniques unavailable to the ancients.¹⁶

Once again, Sagan is partly correct, but only partially. There is no question that Christians and the institutional church have sometimes acted in irrational ways toward scientists and their studies. Sagan’s examples are certainly not the only ones which could be brought forward as instances of opposition to scientific progress, persecution of scientists, or legal pressures to insure conformity. Some great scientists only avoided becoming additional examples for Sagan’s list by hiding their views from public scrutiny. Isaac Newton, for instance, had to conceal his rejection of Trinitarian teaching to keep his university post.

As Bernard Ramm notes,

Some theologians are unsympathetic with, or suspicious of, science, and fail to understand it and while being censorious of the scientist who makes amateurish remarks about theology, they themselves fail to learn a little science before they speak of the scientific issues. They view science as the work of scheming atheists, iconoclasts, or plotting infidels.¹⁷

In his discussion of this subject Sagan again simplifies history to the point of distortion and omits key points. As Dr. Clark Pinnock of McMaster University remarks:

Without wishing to deny that institutional religion has often times opposed new ideas in science in the fear that they might upset theological convictions, I think it only fair to state somewhere in the course of a long book that modern science was born on Christian soil and in connection with a Christian understanding of the world. ¹⁸

William J. O’Malley notes: “…he (Sagan) makes the scientific community sound universally and immediately tolerant…¹⁹Furthermore, O’Malley notes that Sagan fails to mention that some prominent scientists like Gregor Mendel and Copernicus were clerics!²⁰ Sagan’s treatment of the matter gives the historically inadequate impression that there has been a virtually unanimous opposition by Christians to scientists and their researches, the former being the clear villains, the latter the clear heros in the piece.

“Religion is Provincial”

Sagan’s third criticism is summarized by his comment:

Fanatical…religious…chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.²¹

In Contact, a similar strain of thought is found.

It is hard to imagine…extraterrestrials taking seriously a plea for preferential parley from representatives of one or another ideological faction.²²

What does the size of the universe and earth’s physical smallness in that universe have to do with the importance, significance, truth or falseness of views held by humans? Would a universe half or a quarter the size it is make the views held by humans more or less significant? If a view held by any given group is shown to be correct, then the size of the universe has nothing to do with the matter.

“Religion Has Suspect Origins”

Sagan’s fourth criticism may be termed his “theory of the origin of religion.” The theory bears remarkable likeness to the views expressed by Freud in his The Future of An Illusion.

In Cosmos Sagan writes:

The idea that every organism was meticulously constructed by a Great Designer provided a significance and order to nature, and an importance to human beings that we crave still. A Designer is a natural, appealing…explanation of the biological world. [Italics added.]²³

In Contact, this line of thought continues, as illustrated by this conversation between Ellie and the clergyman, Palmer:

Don’t you ever feel…lost in your universe….?

You’re not worried about being lost, Palmer. You’re worried about not being central, not the reason the universe was created…

Your religion assumes that people are children and need a bogeyman so they’ll behave. You want people to believe in God so they’ll obey the law.²⁴

Religion originates, in Sagan’s view, from a combination of wish fulfillment and attempted societal control.

“Your religion assumes that people are children
and need a bogeyman so they’ll behave. You want people to believe
in God so they’ll obey the law.”

There is no doubt that for some persons the notion of a god is wish fulfillment. One does sometimes hear Christians comment that God must exist, for if he did not, how could sense be made of life? And by such a comment is intended as nothing more or less than a wish. It is not hard to see how such a wish could be in some cases transformed into a virtual proof of God’s existence. And there can also be little doubt that there are historical examples of institutional religion being used as an oppressive means of societal control. For examples, consider 17th century Anglicanism, the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec from 1760 until the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s, the early Puritan churches of Massachusetts, or the Roman Catholic Church in Spain under Franco.

But such examples do not of themselves actually demonstrate the origin of the idea of God. As Richard Baer notes:

Throughout Cosmos Sagan presents his speculations about the origin of religion and belief in the gods (or God) as facts, with no discussion of alternative possibilities. He simply assumes that the gods (or God) is a human creation, a primitive attempt to explain natural phenomena that science later helped us to understand correctly.²⁵

Sagan’s notions about the origin of the idea of God are not encompassed by detailed historical analysis and reference to ancient texts to demonstrate the point. One is simply presented with Sagan’s view, apparently to be taken on faith. This is a most unusual proceeding for one who says:

You must be skeptical; you must ask for verification. If someone claims a thing happens in a certain way, you do the experiment to check it out, to see if, in fact, it works as claimed. You examine the internal coherence of the idea. You test its logical structure. You see how well it agrees with other things which are reliably known, and only then do you start accepting new ideas. This is standard practice in science. I wish it were more widely applied.²⁶>

Furthermore, although in Contact religion is said to – sell human beings short,”²⁷ intellectually and in terms of their abilities, one must consider whether in fact Sagan himself gives insufficient credit to humans. His theory of the origin of religion assumes that human beings want consoling notions about God even if such notions are untrue, and seems to further posit that humans can in large degree find even notions which are known or suspected to be untrue to be consoling!

 Sagan’s Religion

If one were to end the consideration of Sagan’s views at this point, the impression would be that, while more than a little irritated by conventional expressions of religious belief (notably Christian), Dr. Sagan is, however, only taking random “potshots.” Actually, while the four major criticisms outlined above do indeed have the character of isolated volleys, Sagan is operating with a discernable world view which in fact has features remarkably similar to a religion. It is important, then, to set forth the major components of this “religion.”

In considering the existence of a virtual religion (or at the very least the existence of a clear world view), it seems appropriate to be guided by the use of the traditional theological terminology and categories, chiefly because they seem to apply so well!

Sagan’s Ultimate Concern

Every world view has some concept of what Paul Tillich called “ultimate concern.” Sagan rejects the usual religious “ultimate concern” (God), saying:

To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.²⁸

Sagan’s belief is that the evidence for the existence of God, particularly the Christian God, is insufficient, as evidenced from Contact:

…if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job. And he hardly had to confine himself to writings. Why isn’t there a monster crucifix orbiting the Earth? Why isn’t the surface of the Moon covered with the Ten Commandments? Why should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?²⁹

In Cosmos, Sagan goes even further and turns the universe into his “ultimate concern.”

In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decided this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed.³⁰

And, in a statement which echoes the prologue to John’s gospel, Dr. Sagan claims, “The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”³¹

Richard A. Baer, Jr., summarizes like this: “Sagan presents much more than science…He also shares his religious testimony, his witness to a strange and beautiful cosmos that for him is the ultimate reality.”³²

In a statement which echoes the prologue to John’s gospel,
Dr. Sagan claims, “The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was,
or ever will be.”

A Christian response to Dr. Sagan, of course, must reject his “ultimate concern” as not being identifiable with God. But additionally, one can wonder about Sagan’s apparent failure to deal with certain historical issues. While Sagan paints his reasons for rejecting a traditional “ultimate concern” (i.e. God) on an immense canvas- the whole universe- he apparently does not deal with the more mundane history of humankind, which might furnish the evidence he says is lacking. Indeed, Dr. Sagan is convinced that the universe is a closed system, so to speak, that in point of fact “…we live in [a]…universe, where things change…according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature”³³ This being the case, it is not surprising to be informed that:

The gods don’t drop in on us to fix things up when we’ve botched it. You look at human history and it’s clear we’ve been on our own.³⁴

Sagan fails to address the fact that the Christian assertion is precisely that God did intervene dramatically, clearly, and bodily, in human history, and that its primary contention is that we have not – been on our own.”³⁵

Sagan’s Anthropology

Sagan’s world view is also replete with an anthropology which defines the human in these terms:

I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea…demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we are.³⁶

Sagan provides this definition of “human” in an utterly materialist and reductionist fashion, and puts it forward for acceptance without any serious consideration of other definitions, and without suggesting any reasons for accepting the posited definition.

But there is considerably more to Sagan’s anthropology than this definition of a human. The question of what constitutes the essence of a human being has a long history of discussion among theologians, philosophers, ethicists, and, more recently, with the advances in medical technology, among politicians and even average citizens.

Sagan in one deft stroke defines from his perspective what constitutes our humanity. He writes: “The cortex regulates our conscious lives. It is the distinction of our species, the seat of our humanity.”³⁷ In The Dragons of Eden, Sagan says something quite similar: “This essential human quality, I believe, can only be our intelligence. If so, the particular sanctity of human life can be identified with the development and functioning of the neo-cortex.” ³⁸ In The Dragons of Eden, Sagan takes this view, found in brief form also in Cosmos, to its logical extreme. Regarding the abortion issue, he writes:

The key practical question is to determine when a fetus becomes human. This in turn rests on what we mean by human…The reason we prohibit the killing of human beings must be because of some quality human beings possess, a quality we especially prize, that few or no other organisms on earth enjoy…This essential human quality, I believe, can only be our intelligence. If so, the particular sanctity of human life can be identified with the development and functioning of the neo-cortex…We might set the transition to humanity at the time when neo-cortical activity begins . . .³⁹

The reader is faced with a view which is reductionist in the extreme:
humanity is reduced to a biological/chemical level.

At first glance, Sagan’s opinion is exceedingly attractive. It apparently would put a swift and decisive end to agonizing over when life exists- and when it does not.

Several points, however, should be made. To begin with, the reader is once again faced with a view which is reductionist in the extreme. Humanity is reduced to a biological/chemical level. In addition, Sagan does not offer further support for his position. Finally, it should be made clear at this point that a theology developed with a traditional respect for the Scriptures must reject Sagan’s view outright.

It is true that traditional Roman Catholic theology has often posited that the essence of the human being (i.e., that which makes a being human) is the reasoning capacity. It is also true that such a view is not unknown in Protestant circles. It is to be noted, however, that Roman Catholic thought seems to be moving away from such a position,⁴⁰ and that a strong case can be made that the true essence of humanity is not a matter of intellect.

The whole thrust of the biblical witness seems instead to be that the Imago Dei consists to a large degree in the human potential to have a unique relationship with the Creator, a relationship which is personal, constituted by an offering by God of love, and human acceptance and reciprocation of that love, and a relationship in which the human finds true humanity and ultimate freedom in complete dependence upon God. This view is very well articulated by Emil Brunner, who wrote:

True humanity does not spring from the full development of human potentialities, but it arises through the reception, the perception, and the acceptance of the love of God, and it develops and is preserved by “abiding” in communion with the God who reveals himself in Love.⁴¹

While it is true that the image was marred at the Fall, it cannot be said to have been lost, or else Scripture would be in error in continuing to refer to humans as human. Thus, the biblical thrust is that the image of God consists of the potential to have a unique relationship with God and the realization of that relationship. But though humanity lost the relationship, and in a sense “full” or “true” humanity at the Fall, the potential for the relationship, and the claim to still be human, remains. This potential must be said to exist in all the offspring resulting from human mating, no matter how limited intellectually, physically, or otherwise such offspring may be.

Sagan’s Ethic and Soteriology

As world views normally contain some notions about right and wrong behavior, variously termed “ethics,” “morality,” and so forth, it is not surprising to find such an element in Sagan’s world view. Sagan’s ethic centers on one “commandment” which appears several times in Cosmos. Sagan writes, “Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to the Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.” [Emphasis added.]⁴² As Norman L. Geisler summarizes:

So the Cosmos has created man in its own image, endowed him with life, and sustains his very existence. For all of this man has a moral obligation to perpetuate life in the Cosmos.⁴³

This ethical imperative to survive is so closely tied to Sagan’s soteriology that the two should be placed together for purposes of commentary.

Throughout Cosmos, but particularly in its last chapter, Sagan argues that the great threat facing humankind is its own self-destruction, most likely through nuclear warfare, and that it is from such a threat that mankind needs “salvation.”⁴⁴

And how is such “salvation” to be accomplished? Dr. Sagan describes the human dilemma and his rather unique solution:

There are some who look on our global problems here on earth- at our vast national antagonisms, our nuclear arsenals, our growing populations, the disparity between the poor and the affluent, shortages of food and resources, and our inadvertent alterations of the natural environment- and conclude that we live in a system that has suddenly become unstable, a system that is destined soon to collapse. There are others who believe that our problems are soluble, that humanity is still in its childhood, that one day soon we will grow up. The receipt of a single message from space would show that it is possible to live through a technological adolescence; the transmitting civilization, after all, has survived. Such knowledge, it seems to me, might be worth a great price….⁴⁵

But, in case there is no response from space, Sagan notes:

And what if we make a long-term dedicated search for extraterrestrial intelligence and fail? Even then we surely will not have wasted our time…For if intelligent life is scarce or absent elsewhere, we will have learned something significant about the rarity and value of our culture and our biological patrimony . . .⁴⁶

Given Sagan’s “ultimate concern” and anthropology, his soteriology and ethic do make some sense. But what if humans are more than Sagan defines them as, and what if his “ultimate concern” is incorrect? Neither assumption was adequately defended by Sagan, leaving the ethic and soteriology presented by him resting on shaky ground.

Sagan’s Worship

The last major element in Sagan’s world view can be termed the component of worship, the experience of the numinous. Sagan speaks of this when he says:

It is very hard to look at the beauty, intricacy, and subtlety of nature without feeling awe. I don’t think even the word reverence is too strong.⁴⁷

But experiences of the numinous are limited indeed.

She asked Eda if he had ever had a transforming religious experience. “Yes,” he said.

“When?” Sometimes you had to encourage him to talk.

“When I first picked up Euclid. Also when I first understood Newtonian gravitation. And Maxwell’s equations, and general relativity. And during my work on superunification. I have been fortunate enough to have had many religious experiences.”

“No,” she returned. “You know what I mean. Apart from science.”

“Never,” he replied instantly.⁴⁸

This all leads to the conclusion that:

If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the Sun and stars? Hidden within every astronomical investigation, sometimes so deeply buried that the researcher himself is unaware of its presence, lies a kernel of awe.⁴⁹

A comment by Dr. Clark Pinnock provides a pointed rejoinder:

…[W]hy would anyone celebrate nature if in fact it is the product of blind chance and part of a pointless process? Sagan appears to think that people ought to imitate his own loyalty to evolution and reverence for life. But why should they do such an irrational thing? Surely a more sensible response to the cosmos as Sagan presents it would be to adopt a nihilistic outlook and try to derive as much pleasure from life as possible before it is snuffed out.⁵⁰

An Appropriate Response to Sagan: A Mission of the Church

Sagan’s works are replete with criticisms of Christians and institutional Christianity. These criticisms are not entirely invalid, but they frequently paint only a partial and therefore distorted picture, and rarely, if ever, distinguish between the intentions of Christianity’s founder and the way things have sometimes been worked out in a manner not in accord with those intentions. This is akin to arguing that the scientific method is invalidated, because some scientists have used its premises to develop terrifying weapons of mass destruction! But in addition, Sagan is operating with, and promoting the acceptance of, a discernable world view, which is in large part opposed to the Christian world view. In fact, as Baer says:

Throughout Cosmos Sagan goes far beyond the traditional descriptive and interpretive role of science. His presentation involves a host of metaphysical and value statements that are not a part of science as ordinarily understood and practiced…He transforms a very fruitful method for understanding the world into an all embracing metaphysic or world view.⁵¹

Much of Sagan’s writing propagates his particular world view and attacks other views as much as it popularizes science. Because of this fact, the church needs to make a clear and adequate answer to Sagan. This reply should consist of a careful analysis and a response which meets Sagan’s position on the grounds of scientific history, and provides clear, adequately supported philosophic positions. Since Sagan’s views are so well known, and since they are not ill-representative of a philosophy which pervades much of contemporary Western society, a response to Sagan constitutes an important part of the mission of the church.

©1993

 NOTES

¹ Carl Sagan, Cosmos, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985).

² Carl Sagan, Contact, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).

³ Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, (New York: Random House, 1977).

⁴ Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain: Reflections On The Romance Of Science, (New York: Random House, 1979).

⁵ Carl Sagan, “A Conversation with Carl Sagan – Science and Religion ‘Similar Objective, Different Methods,’” interview by Alvin P. Sanopp, U.S. News & World Report (December 1, 1980), 62, 63.

⁶ Carl Sagan, “God and Carl Sagan: Is The Cosmos Big Enough for Both of Them? Edward Wakin interviews Carl Sagan,” interview by Edward Wakin, U.S. Catholic, No. 5 (May 1981), 19-24.

⁷ Cosmos, 74.

⁸ Contact, 61.

⁹ Ibid., 172

¹⁰ U.S. News & World Report, 62.

¹¹ Richard A. Baer, Jr., “Cosmos, Cosmologies and the Public Schools,” This World, No. 5 (Spring/Summer 1983), 7.

¹² For examples, see Acts 17: 16-34, 19: 8-10.

¹³ For examples, see Matthew 22:37 and parallel passages Mark 12:30 and Luke 10:27.

¹⁴ Cosmos, 39-41.

¹⁵ Ibid., 70.

¹⁶ Ibid., 41.

¹⁷ Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture, rpt., (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978), 36.

¹⁸ Clark Pinnock, “Sagan’s Humanist Metaphysic: Fantasy, Not Fact,” Christianity Today, (November 6, 1981), 98.

¹⁹ William J. O’Malley, “Carl Sagan’s Gospel of Scientism,” America, (February 7, 1981), 96.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Cosmos, 264.

²² Contact, 265.

²³ Cosmos, 18.

²⁴ Contact, 254.

²⁵ Baer,” Cosmos, “Cosmologies and the Public Schools,” 8.

²⁶ U.S. Catholic, 24.

²⁷ Contact, 254.

²⁸ U.S. Catholic, 20.

²⁹ Contact, 170.

³⁰ Cosmos, 212.

³¹ Ibid., 1.

³² Baer, “Cosmos, “Cosmologies and the Public Schools,” 6.

³³ Cosmos, 32. Sagan here seems to be using the model of the Newtonian universe, which is somewhat too rigid, and should be modified according to the theories of Einstein. Nevertheless, since Sagan apparently is dealing with this model, this is the model to which we will respond. For a more popular exposition of the notion of randomness in the universe, particularly on the micro level, consult A.R. Peacocke’s Creation and The World of Science.

³⁴ Contact, 287.

³⁵ Ibid.

³⁶ Cosmos, 105.

³⁷ Cosmos, 229.

³⁸ The Dragons of Eden, 197.

³⁹ The Dragons of Eden, 196, 197.

⁴⁰ The reader is referred to the document Gaudim et Spes(Pastoral Constitution on the Church In The Modern World) promulgated on December 7, 1965, by the Second Vatican Council, especially Chapter I, sections 12 – 17.

⁴¹ Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, Vol. II of Dogmatics, trans, Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, n.d.), 59.

⁴² Cosmos, 286.

⁴³ Norman L. Geisler, Cosmos: Carl Sagan’s Religion for the Scientific Mind (Dallas: Quest Publication, 1983), 31.

⁴⁴ Cosmos, especially the last chapter, “Who Speaks for Earth?”

⁴⁵ Broca’s Brain: Reflections On The Romance Of Science, 275.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 277.

⁴⁷ U.S. Catholic, 19.

⁴⁸ Contact, 315.

⁴⁹ Cosmos, 199.

⁵⁰ Pinnock, 99.

⁵¹ Baer, Cosmos, Cosmologies, and the Public Schools,” 6.

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.

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?

____________

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.”

Dr Sagan deep down knows that we are special so he could not avoid putting the word “precious” in there. Francis Schaeffersaid 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)

__________________________________________

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.”

1. Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
2. 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.”)
3. 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. ).
4. 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).
5. 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

_______________

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

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.

On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Haroon Ahmed,  Jim Al-Khalili, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Sir Patrick Bateson, Simon Blackburn, Colin Blakemore, Ned Block, Pascal Boyer, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky, Brian Cox, Partha Dasgupta,  Alan Dershowitz, Frank Drake, Hubert Dreyfus, John Dunn, Bart Ehrman, Mark Elvin, Richard Ernst, Stephan Feuchtwang, Robert Foley, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Stephen Hawking, Hermann Hauser, Robert Hinde, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Caroline Humphrey, Nicholas Humphrey,  Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman, Masatoshi Koshiba,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff,  Rodolfo Llinas, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Dan McKenzie,  Mahzarin Banaji, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  P.Z.Myers,   Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff, David Parkin,  Jonathan Parry, Roger Penrose,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, VS Ramachandran, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Colin Renfrew, Alison Richard,  C.J. van Rijsbergen,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, John Sulston, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Max Tegmark, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  Martinus J. G. Veltman, Craig Venter, .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, James D. Watson, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

In  the 1st video below in the 45th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them.
Carl Sagan. Credit: NASA

Carl Edward Sagan (/ˈseɪɡən/; SAY-gən; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect.^[3]

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

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Carl Sagan
Sagan in 1980
Born	Carl Edward Sagan November 9, 1934 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	December 20, 1996(aged 62) Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Resting place	Lake View Cemetery (Ithaca, New York)
Alma mater	University of Chicago (BA, BS, MS, PhD)
Known for	Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Cosmos: A Personal Voyage Cosmos Voyager Golden Record Pioneer plaque The Dragons of Eden Contact Pale Blue Dot The Demon-Haunted World
Spouse(s)	Lynn Margulis ​ ​ (m. 1957; div. 1965)​ Linda Salzman ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1981)​ Ann Druyan ​ (m. 1981)​
Children	5, including Sasha, Dorion and Nick
Awards	Klumpke-Roberts Award(1974) NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal(1977) Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1978) Oersted Medal (1990) Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science (1993) National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (1994)

On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Haroon Ahmed,  Jim Al-Khalili, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Sir Patrick Bateson, Simon Blackburn, Colin Blakemore, Ned Block, Pascal Boyer, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky, Brian Cox, Partha Dasgupta,  Alan Dershowitz, Frank Drake, Hubert Dreyfus, John Dunn, Bart Ehrman, Mark Elvin, Richard Ernst, Stephan Feuchtwang, Robert Foley, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Stephen Hawking, Hermann Hauser, Robert Hinde, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Caroline Humphrey, Nicholas Humphrey,  Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman, Masatoshi Koshiba,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff,  Rodolfo Llinas, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Dan McKenzie,  Mahzarin Banaji, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  P.Z.Myers,   Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff, David Parkin,  Jonathan Parry, Roger Penrose,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, VS Ramachandran, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Colin Renfrew, Alison Richard,  C.J. van Rijsbergen,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, John Sulston, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Max Tegmark, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  Martinus J. G. Veltman, Craig Venter, .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, James D. Watson, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

In  the 1st video below in the 45th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

__

__

—

How Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Greenberg, one of the most respected and honored commentators in America, changed his mind about abortion and endorses now the pro-life view. Paul is the editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. This article below is from April 11, 2011.

The Doctor Who Saw What He Did

• Paul Greenberg

The good doctor could have stepped out of a Louis Auchincloss short story. A fashionable but conscientious professional on the Upper West Side, his ideas, like his Brooks Brothers suits, were tailored to fit in. His ideals were those of the enlightened, modern urban America of his time, which was the mid- to late 20th century. And he was always doing what he could to further them.

The doctor’s political, medical and social convictions were much what one would have expected of a New York liberal, as clear as his curriculum vitae. The son of a secular Jewish ob/gyn, he would follow his prominent father’s footsteps, graduate from McGill Medical College in Montreal, and start his practice in Manhattan. He was a quick study, whether absorbing the latest medical knowledge or political trend. Especially when it came to abortion.

Having no convictions about the sacredness of human life, he was defenseless against its growing and increasingly legal appeal. Indeed, he was soon a leader in Pro-Choice ranks.

By his own count, Bernard Nathanson, M.D., was responsible for some 75,000 abortions — without a twinge of conscience intervening. Not back then. Not when he picketed a New York City hospital in his campaign for the legalization of abortion in New York state. Preaching what he practiced, Dr. Nathanson became a tireless spokesman for NARAL, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws.

As director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health in Manhattan, where he routinely performed abortions and taught others to do the same, Dr. Nathanson knew of what he spoke. And never grew tired of rationalizing it. He wasn’t destroying human life but just “an undifferentiated mass of cells.” He was performing a social service, really. He was on a humanitarian mission.

Then something happened. The something was quite specific — the newest EKG and ultrasound imagery. Always a follower of the latest scientific evidence, he couldn’t deny what he was seeing. Political theory is one thing, but facts are facts.

By 1974, soon after Roe v. Wade had opened the way to his dream of abortion-on-demand, his eyes were opened. Literally. As he put it, “There is no longer any serious doubt in my mind that human life exists within the womb from the very onset of pregnancy.” He changed his beliefs and his ways — and sides.

I can identify. When Roe v. Wade was first pronounced, I welcomed it. As a young editorial writer in Pine Bluff, Ark., I believed the court’s assurances that its ruling was not blanket permission for abortion, but a carefully crafted, limited decision applicable only in some exceptional cases. Which was all a lot of hooey, but I swallowed it, and regurgitated it in editorials.

The right to life need not be fully respected from conception on, I explained, but grew with each stage of fetal development until a full human being was formed. I went into all this in an extended debate in the columns of the Pine Bluff Commercial with a young Baptist minister in town named Mike Huckabee.

Yes, I’d been taught by Mary Warters in her biology and genetics courses at Centenary that human life was one unbroken cycle from life to death, and the code to its development was present from its microscopic origins. But I wanted to believe human rights developed differently, especially the right to life. My reasons were compassionate. Who would not want to spare mothers carrying the deformed? Why not just allow physicians to eliminate the deformity? I hadn’t yet come across Flannery O’Connor’s warning that tenderness leads to the gas chambers.

Then something happened. I noticed that the number of abortions in the country had begun to mount year by year — into the millions. Perfectly healthy babies were being aborted for socio-economic reasons. Among ethnic groups, the highest proportions of abortions were being performed on black women. (Last I checked, 37 percent of American abortions were being done on African-American women, though they make up less than 13 percent of the U.S. population.)

Eugenics was showing its true face again. And it wasn’t pretty.

Abortion was even being touted as a preventative for poverty. All you had to do, after all, was eliminate the poor. They were, in the phrase of the advanced, Darwinian thinkers of the last century, surplus population.

With a little verbal manipulation, any crime can be rationalized, even promoted. Verbicide precedes homicide. The trick is to speak of fetuses, not unborn children. So long as the victims are a faceless abstraction, anything can be done to them. Just don’t look too closely at those sonograms. We are indeed strangely and wondrously made.

By now the toll has reached some 50 million aborted babies in America since 1973. That is not an abstract theory. It is fact, and facts are stubborn things. Some carry their own imperatives with them. And so, like Dr. Nathanson, I changed my mind, and changed sides.

There is something about simple human dignity, whether the issue is civil rights in the 1960s or abortion and euthanasia today, that in the end will not be denied. And it keeps asking: Whose side are you on? Life or death?

Long before he died the other day at 84, Bernard Nathanson had chosen life. He became as ardent an advocate for life as he had once been for death. He wrote books and produced a film, “The Silent Scream,” laying out the case for the unborn, and for humanity. He would join the Catholic Church in 1996 and continue to practice medicine as chief of obstetrical services at Saint Luke’s-Roosevelt hospital in Manhattan.

“I have such heavy moral baggage to drag into the next world,” he told the Washington Times in 1996. But he also had sought to redeem himself. He could not have been expected to do other than he did in his younger years, given his appetite for fashionable ideas. He was, after all, only human. Which is no small or simple thing.

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Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:

Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)

I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968.

Francis Schaeffer when he was a young pastor in St. Louis pictured above.

Francis Schaeffer and Adrian Rogers

(both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer mentioned Carl Sagan in their books and that prompted me to write Sagan and expose him to their views.

Carl Sagan pictured below:

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Francis Schaeffer

I mentioned earlier that I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan. In his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above

 “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”

by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.

Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.

In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.

Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?

We believe that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question. But they are reluctant to raise it because it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth … ? Once we acknowledge that the state can interfere at any time in the pregnancy, doesn’t it follow that the state can interfere at all times?

Abortion and the slippery slope argument above

This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

And yet, by consensus, all of us think it proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government’s business. If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong.

If we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, is there not a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect? And isn’t that dismissal the hallmark of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism? Shouldn’t those dedicated to fighting such injustices be scrupulously careful not to embrace another?

Adrian Rogers’ sermon on animal rights refutes Sagan here

There is no right to life in any society on Earth today, nor has there been at any former time… : We raise farm animals for slaughter; destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; kill deer and elk for sport, leopards for the pelts, and whales for fertilizer; entrap dolphins, gasping and writhing, in great tuna nets; club seal pups to death; and render a species extinct every day. All these beasts and vegetables are as alive as we. What is (allegedly) protected is not life, but human life.

Genesis 3 defines being human

And even with that protection, casual murder is an urban commonplace, and we wage “conventional” wars with tolls so terrible that we are, most of us, afraid to consider them very deeply… That protection, that right to life, eludes the 40,000 children under five who die on our planet each day from preventable starvation, dehydration, disease, and neglect.

Those who assert a “right to life” are for (at most) not just any kind of life, but for–particularly and uniquely—human life. So they too, like pro-choicers, must decide what distinguishes a human being from other animals and when, during gestation, the uniquely human qualities–whatever they are–emerge.

The Bible talks about the differences between humans and animals

Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Every human sperm and egg is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alive. They are not human beings, of course. However, it could be argued that neither is a fertilized egg.

In some animals, an egg develops into a healthy adult without benefit of a sperm cell. But not, so far as we know, among humans. A sperm and an unfertilized egg jointly comprise the full genetic blueprint for a human being. Under certain circumstances, after fertilization, they can develop into a baby. But most fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried. Development into a baby is by no means guaranteed. Neither a sperm and egg separately, nor a fertilized egg, is more than a potential baby or a potential adult. So if a sperm and egg are as human as the fertilized egg produced by their union, and if it is murder to destroy a fertilized egg–despite the fact that it’s only potentially a baby–why isn’t it murder to destroy a sperm or an egg?

Hundreds of millions of sperm cells (top speed with tails lashing: five inches per hour) are produced in an average human ejaculation. A healthy young man can produce in a week or two enough spermatozoa to double the human population of the Earth. So is masturbation mass murder? How about nocturnal emissions or just plain sex? When the unfertilized egg is expelled each month, has someone died? Should we mourn all those spontaneous miscarriages? Many lower animals can be grown in a laboratory from a single body cell. Human cells can be cloned… In light of such cloning technology, would we be committing mass murder by destroying any potentially clonable cells? By shedding a drop of blood?

All human sperm and eggs are genetic halves of “potential” human beings. Should heroic efforts be made to save and preserve all of them, everywhere, because of this “potential”? Is failure to do so immoral or criminal? Of course, there’s a difference between taking a life and failing to save it. And there’s a big difference between the probability of survival of a sperm cell and that of a fertilized egg. But the absurdity of a corps of high-minded semen-preservers moves us to wonder whether a fertilized egg’s mere “potential” to become a baby really does make destroying it murder.

Opponents of abortion worry that, once abortion is permissible immediately after conception, no argument will restrict it at any later time in the pregnancy. Then, they fear, one day it will be permissible to murder a fetus that is unambiguously a human being. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers (at least some of them) are pushed toward absolutist positions by parallel fears of the slippery slope.

Another slippery slope is reached by those pro-lifers who are willing to make an exception in the agonizing case of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. But why should the right to live depend on the circumstances of conception? If the same child were to result, can the state ordain life for the offspring of a lawful union but death for one conceived by force or coercion? How can this be just? And if exceptions are extended to such a fetus, why should they be withheld from any other fetus? This is part of the reason some pro-lifers adopt what many others consider the outrageous posture of opposing abortions under any and all circumstances–only excepting, perhaps, when the life of the mother is in danger.

By far the most common reason for abortion worldwide is birth control. So shouldn’t opponents of abortion be handing out contraceptives and teaching school children how to use them? That would be an effective way to reduce the number of abortions. Instead, the United States is far behind other nations in the development of safe and effective methods of birth control–and, in many cases, opposition to such research (and to sex education) has come from the same people who oppose abortions.continue on to Part 3

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The attempt to find an ethically sound and unambiguous judgment on when, if ever, abortion is permissible has deep historical roots. Often, especially in Christian tradition, such attempts were connected with the question of when the soul enters the body–a matter not readily amenable to scientific investigation and an issue of controversy even among learned theologians. Ensoulment has been asserted to occur in the sperm before conception, at conception, at the time of “quickening” (when the mother is first able to feel the fetus stirring within her), and at birth. Or even later.

Different religions have different teachings. Among hunter-gatherers, there are usually no prohibitions against abortion, and it was common in ancient Greece and Rome. In contrast, the more severe Assyrians impaled women on stakes for attempting abortion. The Jewish Talmud teaches that the fetus is not a person and has no rights. The Old and New Testaments–rich in astonishingly detailed prohibitions on dress, diet, and permissible words–contain not a word specifically prohibiting abortion. The only passage that’s remotely relevant (Exodus 21:22) decrees that if there’s a fight and a woman bystander should accidentally be injured and made to miscarry, the assailant must pay a fine.

Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas considered early-term abortion to be homicide (the latter on the grounds that the embryo doesn’t look human). This view was embraced by the Church in the Council of Vienne in 1312, and has never been repudiated. The Catholic Church’s first and long-standing collection of canon law (according to the leading historian of the Church’s teaching on abortion, John Connery, S.J.) held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was already “formed”–roughly, the end of the first trimester.

But when sperm cells were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. An old idea of the homunculus was resuscitated–in which within each sperm cell was a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum. In part through this misinterpretation of scientific data, in 1869 abortion at any time for any reason became grounds for excommunication. It is surprising to most Catholics and others to discover that the date was not much earlier.

From colonial times to the nineteenth century, the choice in the United States was the woman’s until “quickening.” An abortion in the first or even second trimester was at worst a misdemeanor. Convictions were rarely sought and almost impossible to obtain, because they depended entirely on the woman’s own testimony of whether she had felt quickening, and because of the jury’s distaste for prosecuting a woman for exercising her right to choose. In 1800 there was not, so far as is known, a single statute in the United States concerning abortion. Advertisements for drugs to induce abortion could be found in virtually every newspaper and even in many church publications–although the language used was suitably euphemistic, if widely understood.

But by 1900, abortion had been banned at any time in pregnancy by every state in the Union, except when necessary to save the woman’s life. What happened to bring about so striking a reversal? Religion had little to do with it.Drastic economic and social conversions were turning this country from an agrarian to an urban-industrial society. America was in the process of changing from having one of the highest birthrates in the world to one of the lowest. Abortion certainly played a role and stimulated forces to suppress it.

One of the most significant of these forces was the medical profession. Up to the mid-nineteenth century, medicine was an uncertified, unsupervised business. Anyone could hang up a shingle and call himself (or herself) a doctor. With the rise of a new, university-educated medical elite, anxious to enhance the status and influence of physicians, the American Medical Association was formed. In its first decade, the AMA began lobbying against abortions performed by anyone except licensed physicians. New knowledge of embryology, the physicians said, had shown the fetus to be human even before quickening.

Their assault on abortion was motivated not by concern for the health of the woman but, they claimed, for the welfare of the fetus. You had to be a physician to know when abortion was morally justified, because the question depended on scientific and medical facts understood only by physicians. At the same time, women were effectively excluded from the medical schools, where such arcane knowledge could be acquired. So, as things worked out, women had almost nothing to say about terminating their own pregnancies. It was also up to the physician to decide if the pregnancy posed a threat to the woman, and it was entirely at his discretion to determine what was and was not a threat. For the rich woman, the threat might be a threat to her emotional tranquillity or even to her lifestyle. The poor woman was often forced to resort to the back alley or the coat hanger.

This was the law until the 1960s, when a coalition of individuals and organizations, the AMA now among them, sought to overturn it and to reinstate the more traditional values that were to be embodied in Roe v. Wade.continue on to Part 4

If you deliberately kill a human being, it’s called murder. If you deliberately kill a chimpanzee–biologically, our closest relative, sharing 99.6 percent of our active genes–whatever else it is, it’s not murder. To date, murder uniquely applies to killing human beings. Therefore, the question of when personhood (or, if we like, ensoulment) arises is key to the abortion debate. When does the fetus become human? When do distinct and characteristic human qualities emerge?

Section 8 Sperm journey to becoming Human

We recognize that specifying a precise moment will overlook individual differences. Therefore, if we must draw a line, it ought to be drawn conservatively–that is, on the early side. There are people who object to having to set some numerical limit, and we share their disquiet; but if there is to be a law on this matter, and it is to effect some useful compromise between the two absolutist positions, it must specify, at least roughly, a time of transition to personhood.

Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two become four, and so on—an exponentiation of base-2 arithmetic. By the tenth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from capillaries. It bathes itself in maternal blood, from which it extracts oxygen and nutrients. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus.By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm.By the end of the fourth week, it’s about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It’s recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception.By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear—on their way to becoming arms and legs.By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be.By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike.By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation.By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month.By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later.

So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli–again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air?

The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they’re arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely humancharacteristics–apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn’t stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.

Sagan’s conclusion based on arbitrary choice of the presence of thought by unborn baby

Other animals have advantages over us–in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought–characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That’s how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.

Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain–principally in the top layers of the convoluted “gray matter” called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn’t begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy–the sixth month.

By placing harmless electrodes on a subject’s head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy–near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this–however alive and active they may be–lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.

Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we’ve rejected the extremes of “always” and “never,” and this puts us–like it or not–on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.

It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help… If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973–although for completely different reasons.

Its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. It allows states to forbid abortion in the third trimester, except when there’s a serious threat to the life or health of the woman. In the 1989 Webster decision, the Supreme Court declined explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade but in effect invited the 50 state legislatures to decide for themselves.

What was the reasoning in Roe v. Wade? There was no legal weight given to what happens to the children once they are born, or to the family. Instead, a woman’s right to reproductive freedom is protected, the court ruled, by constitutional guarantees of privacy. But that right is not unqualified. The woman’s guarantee of privacy and the fetus’s right to life must be weighed–and when the court did the weighing’ priority was given to privacy in the first trimester and to life in the third. The transition was decided not from any of the considerations we have been dealing with so far…–not when “ensoulment” occurs, not when the fetus takes on sufficient human characteristics to be protected by laws against murder. Instead, the criterion adopted was whether the fetus could live outside the mother. This is called “viability” and depends in part on the ability to breathe. The lungs are simply not developed, and the fetus cannot breathe–no matter how advanced an artificial lung it might be placed in—until about the 24th week, near the start of the sixth month. This is why Roe v. Wade permits the states to prohibit abortions in the last trimester. It’s a very pragmatic criterion.

If the fetus at a certain stage of gestation would be viable outside the womb, the argument goes, then the right of the fetus to life overrides the right of the woman to privacy. But just what does “viable” mean? Even a full-term newborn is not viable without a great deal of care and love. There was a time before incubators, only a few decades ago, when babies in their seventh month were unlikely to be viable. Would aborting in the seventh month have been permissible then? After the invention of incubators, did aborting pregnancies in the seventh month suddenly become immoral? What happens if, in the future, a new technology develops so that an artificial womb can sustain a fetus even before the sixth month by delivering oxygen and nutrients through the blood–as the mother does through the placenta and into the fetal blood system? We grant that this technology is unlikely to be developed soon or become available to many. But if it were available, does it then become immoral to abort earlier than the sixth month, when previously it was moral? A morality that depends on, and changes with, technology is a fragile morality; for some, it is also an unacceptable morality.

And why, exactly, should breathing (or kidney function, or the ability to resist disease) justify legal protection? If a fetus can be shown to think and feel but not be able to breathe, would it be all right to kill it? Do we value breathing more than thinking and feeling? Viability arguments cannot, it seems to us, coherently determine when abortions are permissible. Some other criterion is needed. Again, we offer for consideration the earliest onset of human thinking as that criterion.

Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester–except in cases of grave medical necessity–it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life.What do you think? What have others said about Carl Sagan’s thoughts on 

END OF SAGAN’S ARTICLE

Carl Sagan with his wife Ann in the 1990’s

I grew up in Memphis as a member of Bellevue Baptist Church under our pastor Adrian Rogers and attended ECS High School where the books and films of Francis Schaeffer were taught. Both men dealt with current issues in the culture such as the film series COSMOS by Carl Sagan. I personally read several of Sagan’s books.  (Francis and Edith Schaeffer pictured below in their home at L’ Abri in Switzerland where Francis  taught students for 3 decades.

630 × 414Images may be subject to copyright.

Carl Sagan, in full Carl Edward Sagan, (born November 9, 1934, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died December 20, 1996, Seattle, Washington), American astronomer and science writer. A popular and influential figure in the United States, he was controversial in scientific, political, and religious circles for his views on extraterrestrial intelligence, nuclear weapons, and religion. Sagan wrote the article “life” for the 1970 printing of the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1929–73).

Sagan attended the University of Chicago, where he earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in physics in 1955 and 1956, respectively, and a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960. From 1960 to 1962 he was a fellow in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 1962 to 1968 he worked at Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. His early work focused on the physical conditions of the planets, especially the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter. During that time he became interested in the possibility of lifebeyond Earth and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), a controversial research field he did much to advance. For example, building on earlier work by American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, he demonstrated that amino acids and nucleic acids—the building blocks of life—could be produced by exposing a mixture of simple chemicals to ultraviolet radiation. Some scientists criticized Sagan’s work, arguing that it was unreasonable to use resources for SETI, a fantasy project that was almost certainly doomed to failure.

On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Haroon Ahmed,  Jim Al-Khalili, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Sir Patrick Bateson, Simon Blackburn, Colin Blakemore, Ned Block, Pascal Boyer, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky, Brian Cox, Partha Dasgupta,  Alan Dershowitz, Frank Drake, Hubert Dreyfus, John Dunn, Bart Ehrman, Mark Elvin, Richard Ernst, Stephan Feuchtwang, Robert Foley, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Stephen Hawking, Hermann Hauser, Robert Hinde, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Caroline Humphrey, Nicholas Humphrey,  Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman, Masatoshi Koshiba,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff,  Rodolfo Llinas, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Dan McKenzie,  Mahzarin Banaji, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  P.Z.Myers,   Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff, David Parkin,  Jonathan Parry, Roger Penrose,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, VS Ramachandran, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Colin Renfrew, Alison Richard,  C.J. van Rijsbergen,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, John Sulston, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Max Tegmark, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  Martinus J. G. Veltman, Craig Venter, .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, James D. Watson, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

In  the 1st video below in the 45th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

__

__

—

Carl Sagan
Sagan in 1980
Born	Carl Edward Sagan November 9, 1934 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	December 20, 1996(aged 62) Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Resting place	Lake View Cemetery (Ithaca, New York)
Alma mater	University of Chicago (BA, BS, MS, PhD)
Known for	Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Cosmos: A Personal Voyage Cosmos Voyager Golden Record Pioneer plaque The Dragons of Eden Contact Pale Blue Dot The Demon-Haunted World
Spouse(s)	Lynn Margulis ​ ​ (m. 1957; div. 1965)​ Linda Salzman ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1981)​ Ann Druyan ​ (m. 1981)​
Children	5, including Sasha, Dorion and Nick
Awards	Klumpke-Roberts Award(1974) NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal(1977) Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1978) Oersted Medal (1990) Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science (1993) National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (1994)

On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Haroon Ahmed,  Jim Al-Khalili, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Sir Patrick Bateson, Simon Blackburn, Colin Blakemore, Ned Block, Pascal Boyer, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky, Brian Cox, Partha Dasgupta,  Alan Dershowitz, Frank Drake, Hubert Dreyfus, John Dunn, Bart Ehrman, Mark Elvin, Richard Ernst, Stephan Feuchtwang, Robert Foley, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Stephen Hawking, Hermann Hauser, Robert Hinde, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Caroline Humphrey, Nicholas Humphrey,  Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman, Masatoshi Koshiba,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff,  Rodolfo Llinas, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Dan McKenzie,  Mahzarin Banaji, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  P.Z.Myers,   Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff, David Parkin,  Jonathan Parry, Roger Penrose,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, VS Ramachandran, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees, Colin Renfrew, Alison Richard,  C.J. van Rijsbergen,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, John Sulston, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Max Tegmark, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  Martinus J. G. Veltman, Craig Venter, .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, James D. Watson, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

In  the 1st video below in the 45th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

–

CARL SAGAN interview with Charlie Rose:

“…faith is belief in the absence of evidence. To believe in the absence of evidence, in my opinion, is a mistake. The idea is to hold belief until there is compelling evidence. If the Universe does not comply with our previous propositions, then we have to change…Religion deals with history poetry, great literature, ethics, morals, compassion…where religion gets into trouble is when it pretends to know something about science,”

I would respond that there is evidence that Christianity is true.In 1838 American biblical scholar Edward Robinson shook up the archaeological world by discovering Hezekiah’s Tunnel mentioned in the Bible. There is meaning in life available to anyone who will put their faith in Christ, and peace can’t be found in a Guru. Why not take a few minutes and just read the short chapter of Psalms 22 that was written hundreds of years before the Romans even invented the practice of Crucifixion. 1000 years BC the Jews had the practice of stoning people but we read in this chapter a graphic description of Christ dying on the cross.

Carl Sagan was the Humanist of the year in 1981 and he made moral decisions based on moral relativism. No wonder he started off his article on abortion with a statement like this:

The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions

(Francis Schaeffer pictured below)

Francis Schaeffer noted:

With
nothing higher than human opinion upon which to
base judgments and with ethics equaling no ethics,
the justification for seeing crime and cruelty as
disturbing is destroyed.  The very word _crime_ and
even the word _cruelty_ lose meaning.  There is no
final reason on which to forbid anything– “If
nothing is forbidden, then anything is possible.”

If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then
stands in the way of inhumanity.  There is no good
reason why mankind should be perceived as special.
Human life is cheapened.  We can see this in many
of the major issues being debated in our society
today:  abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase
of child abuse and violence of all kinds,

(Edward O. Wilson in 1944 pictured below)

Enter in Dr. Edward O. Wilson of Harvard, who was raised as a Southern Baptist like I was, but unlike me he left the faith and became a humanist like Sagan. I have actually read several of Wilson’s books and he does include several stories from his youth in Alabama. It is obvious that he is a very brilliant writer, but the evidence I have examined shows that the Bible is accurate about our origin and not evolution.

(Edward O. Wilson pictured in 1971)

Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology., 

(Edward O. Wilson pictured below)

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[This book THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE by Edward O. Wilson is one of the best books I have ever read by an Humanist and I have read many books by Humanists over the years as I interacted with them. Many of these scholars have taken the time to respond back to me in the last 20 years and some of the names  included are   Francisco J. Ayala (1934-),Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-2017),   Glenn Branch, Matt Cartmill (1943-) , Bette Chambers (1930-), Brian Charlesworth (1945-),  Noam Chomsky (1928-  ), Ray T. Cragun (1976-), Michael A. Crawford (1938-), Daniel Dennett (1942- ), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), Milton Fingerman (1928-), Douglas J. Futuyma (1942- ),Sol Gordon (1923-2008),  Geoff Harcourt (1931-),  Roald Hoffmann (1937-), Gerald Holton (1922-),  John Hospers (1918-2011), Thomas H. Jukes (1906-1999), Christof Koch (1956-  ), Melvin Konner (1946- ), Herbert Kroemer (1928-), Harry Kroto (1939-),  Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Alan Macfarlane (1941-),  Michael Martin (1932-2015),  Marty E. Martin (1928-), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), James Terry McCollum (1936-), Ernest Mayr (1904-2005),  Mary Morain (1911-1999), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010), Kevin Padian (1951-), Steven Pinker, (1954-  ), Martin Rees (1942-), Richard Rubenstein (1924-),   Carl Sagan (1934-1996),  Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), John J. Shea (1969-), Quentin Skinner (1940- ), Warren Allen Smith (1921-), Elliott Sober (1948-), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), Gordon Stein (1941-1996) ,  Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996),  Renate Vambery (1916-2005),  George Wald (1906-1997),  Edward O. Wilson (1929-), and Lewis Wolpert (1929), ]

-Here is a longer passage from the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?:

289-291 (ft note 6 0n page 504)

In sociological law, with the Christian consensus
gone, the courts or some other part of government
arbitrarily make the law.  In the concept of genetic
engineering, with the uniqueness of people as made
in the image of God thrown away, mankind itself is
in danger of being made over arbitrarily into the
image of what some people think mankind ought to
be.  This will overwhelmingly be the case if such
concepts as what has been called “sociobiology” are
widely accepted.

According to these concepts, people do what they do
because of the makeup of the genes, and the genes
(in some mysterious way) know what is best for
keeping the gene pool of the species flourishing.
Regardless of what you think your reasons are for
unselfishness, say the sociobiologists, in reality you
are only doing what your genes know is best to keep
your gene configuration alive and flourishing into

the future.  This happens because evolution has
produced organisms that automatically follow a
mathematical logic:  they calculate the genetic costs
or benefits of helping those who bear many of the
same genes and act to preserve their own image.
Thus, the reason why parents help their children live
is that the genes of the parents make them act to
preserve the future existence of like genetic forms.5

No one tells us how the genes got started doing this.
The how is not known.  And even if the _how_ were
demonstrated, the _why_ would still be in total
darkness.  Yet with neither the _how_ nor the _why_
known, everything human is abandoned.  Maternal
love, friendships, law, and morals are all explained
away.  Those who hold the sociobiological view
believe that conflict both in the family and with
outsiders is the essence of life.  This serves as a
chilling reminder of Hitler’s Germany, which was
built on the social conclusions logically drawn from
the Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest.

Professor and Curator of Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University Edward O Wilson

(Page 290)

Harvard zoologist Edward O. Wilson, who wrote
_Sociobiology:  The New Synthesis_, says on page
562:  “We may find that there is an overestimation
of the nature of our deepest yearnings.”  He calls for
“ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of
the philosophers and biologized.”6

[The Social Conquest of Earth is another book I read from Edward O. Wilson and I liked the way he used Paul Gauguin’s famous 3 questions. I actually went to Boston to see the famous painting and I blogged about it in several posts such as FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 3 PAUL GAUGUIN’S 3 QUESTIONS: “Where do we come from? What art we? Where are we going? and his conclusion was a suicide attempt” (Feature on artist Mike Kelley Part A and RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Part 148 K , PAUSING to look at the life of Nicolaas “Nico” Bloembergen, Physicist, Harvard, 3-11-20 to 9-5-17 (Visiting Bloembergen’s Harvard Campus in 2017!!!) This second post tells about
when I visited the Harvard campus and handed out some CD’s of Adrian Rogers sermon on Evolution, (a portion of the CD was a sermon by Bill Elliff ), and the following info seen below. I also enjoyed walking through The Museum of Comparative Zoology.
I had the unique opportunity to spend a large portion of 8-27-17 visiting the Harvard campus. I was glad to get the opportunity to actually tag along with several tours of the campus conducted by current students for the parents of incoming freshmen and their children. This led to opportunities to pass out CD’s and this paperwork you see at this link concerning my past correspondence with famous atheists (many of them Harvard professors of the past and present). ]

The humanistic philosophers tried to make ethics
independent of biblical teaching; the present tragic
result is the loss of humanness on every level.  Now,
Wilson argues, ethics and behavior patterns should
be made independent of these humanistic
philosophers and put into the realm of the purely
mechanical, where ethics reflect only genes fighting
for survival.  This makes ethics equal no ethics.

Time said of sociobiology, “Indeed, few academic
theories have spread so fast with so little hard
proof.”  Why has it spread so fast with no hard
proof?  That is easy to explain:  We have been
prepared for it by all the humanistic materialism of
past years.  A constant barrage of authoritative,
though unproven, statements comes from every side,
and gradually people accept themselves and others
as only machinelike things.  If man is only a product
of chance in an impersonal universe, and that is all
there is, this teaching is a logical extension of that
fact.7

To summarize:  On the one hand, the idea that
mankind is only a collection of the genes which
make up the DNA patterns has naturally led to the
concept of remaking all of humanity with the use of
genetic engineering.  On the other hand, it has led to
the crime and cruelty that now disturb the very
people whose teaching produces the crime and
cruelty in the first place.  Many of these people do

not face the conclusion of their own teaching.  With
nothing higher than human opinion upon which to
base judgments and with ethics equaling no ethics,
the justification for seeing crime and cruelty as
disturbing is destroyed.  The very word _crime_ and
even the word _cruelty_ lose meaning.  There is no
final reason on which to forbid anything– “If
nothing is forbidden, then anything is possible.”

If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then
stands in the way of inhumanity.  There is no good
reason why mankind should be perceived as special.
Human life is cheapened.  We can see this in many
of the major issues being debated in our society
today:  abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase
of child abuse and violence of all kinds,
pornography (and its particular kinds of violence as
evidenced in sadomasochism), the routine torture of
political prisoners in many parts of the world, the
crime explosion, and the random violence which
surrounds us.

(Page 291)

In Communist countries, where materialism and
humanistic thinking have been dominant for over
several generations, a low view of people has been
standard for years.  This is apparent not only in the
early legislation about abortion but also in the
thousands of political prisoners who have been
systematically oppressed, tortured, and killed as part
of the very fabric of Communism.  Now, however,
as humanism dominates the West, we have a low
view of mankind in the West as well.

_________________________

I am taking time over the next few weeks to take time to look at the work of Francis Schaeffer who died almost exactly 35 years ago today. Francis Schaeffer lived from January 30, 1912 to May 15, 1984 and on May 15, 1994 the 10th anniversary of his passing, I wrote 250 skeptics in academia and sent them a lengthy letter filled with his quotes from various intellectuals on the meaning of life if God was not in the picture. I also included the message by Francis Schaeffer on Ecclesiastes which were conclusions of King Solomon on the same subject and I also told about the musings of three men on the world around them, Carl Sagan in his film Cosmos, Francis Schaeffer in his experience in the 1930’s while on the beach observing an eclipse, and King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Then I posed to these academics the question, “Is there a lasting meaning to our lives without God in the picture?”

Francis Schaeffer talked quite a lot about the works of Carl Sagan and that is why I think Carl Sagan took the time to write me back.

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_

_

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:

Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)

I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968.

Francis Schaeffer when he was a young pastor in St. Louis pictured above.

Francis Schaeffer and Adrian Rogers

(both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer mentioned Carl Sagan in their books and that prompted me to write Sagan and expose him to their views.

Carl Sagan pictured below:

_________

Francis Schaeffer

I mentioned earlier that I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan. In his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above

 “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”

by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.

Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.

In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.

Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?

We believe that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question. But they are reluctant to raise it because it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth … ? Once we acknowledge that the state can interfere at any time in the pregnancy, doesn’t it follow that the state can interfere at all times?

Abortion and the slippery slope argument above

This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

And yet, by consensus, all of us think it proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government’s business. If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong.

If we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, is there not a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect? And isn’t that dismissal the hallmark of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism? Shouldn’t those dedicated to fighting such injustices be scrupulously careful not to embrace another?

(Adrian Rogers pictured above in his youth)

Adrian Rogers’ sermon on animal rights refutes Sagan here

There is no right to life in any society on Earth today, nor has there been at any former time… : We raise farm animals for slaughter; destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; kill deer and elk for sport, leopards for the pelts, and whales for fertilizer; entrap dolphins, gasping and writhing, in great tuna nets; club seal pups to death; and render a species extinct every day. All these beasts and vegetables are as alive as we. What is (allegedly) protected is not life, but human life.

Genesis 3 defines being human

And even with that protection, casual murder is an urban commonplace, and we wage “conventional” wars with tolls so terrible that we are, most of us, afraid to consider them very deeply… That protection, that right to life, eludes the 40,000 children under five who die on our planet each day from preventable starvation, dehydration, disease, and neglect.

Those who assert a “right to life” are for (at most) not just any kind of life, but for–particularly and uniquely—human life. So they too, like pro-choicers, must decide what distinguishes a human being from other animals and when, during gestation, the uniquely human qualities–whatever they are–emerge.

The Bible talks about the differences between humans and animals

Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Every human sperm and egg is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alive. They are not human beings, of course. However, it could be argued that neither is a fertilized egg.

In some animals, an egg develops into a healthy adult without benefit of a sperm cell. But not, so far as we know, among humans. A sperm and an unfertilized egg jointly comprise the full genetic blueprint for a human being. Under certain circumstances, after fertilization, they can develop into a baby. But most fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried. Development into a baby is by no means guaranteed. Neither a sperm and egg separately, nor a fertilized egg, is more than a potential baby or a potential adult. So if a sperm and egg are as human as the fertilized egg produced by their union, and if it is murder to destroy a fertilized egg–despite the fact that it’s only potentially a baby–why isn’t it murder to destroy a sperm or an egg?

Hundreds of millions of sperm cells (top speed with tails lashing: five inches per hour) are produced in an average human ejaculation. A healthy young man can produce in a week or two enough spermatozoa to double the human population of the Earth. So is masturbation mass murder? How about nocturnal emissions or just plain sex? When the unfertilized egg is expelled each month, has someone died? Should we mourn all those spontaneous miscarriages? Many lower animals can be grown in a laboratory from a single body cell. Human cells can be cloned… In light of such cloning technology, would we be committing mass murder by destroying any potentially clonable cells? By shedding a drop of blood?

All human sperm and eggs are genetic halves of “potential” human beings. Should heroic efforts be made to save and preserve all of them, everywhere, because of this “potential”? Is failure to do so immoral or criminal? Of course, there’s a difference between taking a life and failing to save it. And there’s a big difference between the probability of survival of a sperm cell and that of a fertilized egg. But the absurdity of a corps of high-minded semen-preservers moves us to wonder whether a fertilized egg’s mere “potential” to become a baby really does make destroying it murder.

Opponents of abortion worry that, once abortion is permissible immediately after conception, no argument will restrict it at any later time in the pregnancy. Then, they fear, one day it will be permissible to murder a fetus that is unambiguously a human being. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers (at least some of them) are pushed toward absolutist positions by parallel fears of the slippery slope.

(Gerard Kuiper and Carl Sagan)

Another slippery slope is reached by those pro-lifers who are willing to make an exception in the agonizing case of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. But why should the right to live depend on the circumstances of conception? If the same child were to result, can the state ordain life for the offspring of a lawful union but death for one conceived by force or coercion? How can this be just? And if exceptions are extended to such a fetus, why should they be withheld from any other fetus? This is part of the reason some pro-lifers adopt what many others consider the outrageous posture of opposing abortions under any and all circumstances–only excepting, perhaps, when the life of the mother is in danger.

By far the most common reason for abortion worldwide is birth control. So shouldn’t opponents of abortion be handing out contraceptives and teaching school children how to use them? That would be an effective way to reduce the number of abortions. Instead, the United States is far behind other nations in the development of safe and effective methods of birth control–and, in many cases, opposition to such research (and to sex education) has come from the same people who oppose abortions.continue on to Part 3

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The attempt to find an ethically sound and unambiguous judgment on when, if ever, abortion is permissible has deep historical roots. Often, especially in Christian tradition, such attempts were connected with the question of when the soul enters the body–a matter not readily amenable to scientific investigation and an issue of controversy even among learned theologians. Ensoulment has been asserted to occur in the sperm before conception, at conception, at the time of “quickening” (when the mother is first able to feel the fetus stirring within her), and at birth. Or even later.

Different religions have different teachings. Among hunter-gatherers, there are usually no prohibitions against abortion, and it was common in ancient Greece and Rome. In contrast, the more severe Assyrians impaled women on stakes for attempting abortion. The Jewish Talmud teaches that the fetus is not a person and has no rights. The Old and New Testaments–rich in astonishingly detailed prohibitions on dress, diet, and permissible words–contain not a word specifically prohibiting abortion. The only passage that’s remotely relevant (Exodus 21:22) decrees that if there’s a fight and a woman bystander should accidentally be injured and made to miscarry, the assailant must pay a fine.

Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas considered early-term abortion to be homicide (the latter on the grounds that the embryo doesn’t look human). This view was embraced by the Church in the Council of Vienne in 1312, and has never been repudiated. The Catholic Church’s first and long-standing collection of canon law (according to the leading historian of the Church’s teaching on abortion, John Connery, S.J.) held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was already “formed”–roughly, the end of the first trimester.

But when sperm cells were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. An old idea of the homunculus was resuscitated–in which within each sperm cell was a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum. In part through this misinterpretation of scientific data, in 1869 abortion at any time for any reason became grounds for excommunication. It is surprising to most Catholics and others to discover that the date was not much earlier.

From colonial times to the nineteenth century, the choice in the United States was the woman’s until “quickening.” An abortion in the first or even second trimester was at worst a misdemeanor. Convictions were rarely sought and almost impossible to obtain, because they depended entirely on the woman’s own testimony of whether she had felt quickening, and because of the jury’s distaste for prosecuting a woman for exercising her right to choose. In 1800 there was not, so far as is known, a single statute in the United States concerning abortion. Advertisements for drugs to induce abortion could be found in virtually every newspaper and even in many church publications–although the language used was suitably euphemistic, if widely understood.

But by 1900, abortion had been banned at any time in pregnancy by every state in the Union, except when necessary to save the woman’s life. What happened to bring about so striking a reversal? Religion had little to do with it.Drastic economic and social conversions were turning this country from an agrarian to an urban-industrial society. America was in the process of changing from having one of the highest birthrates in the world to one of the lowest. Abortion certainly played a role and stimulated forces to suppress it.

One of the most significant of these forces was the medical profession. Up to the mid-nineteenth century, medicine was an uncertified, unsupervised business. Anyone could hang up a shingle and call himself (or herself) a doctor. With the rise of a new, university-educated medical elite, anxious to enhance the status and influence of physicians, the American Medical Association was formed. In its first decade, the AMA began lobbying against abortions performed by anyone except licensed physicians. New knowledge of embryology, the physicians said, had shown the fetus to be human even before quickening.

Their assault on abortion was motivated not by concern for the health of the woman but, they claimed, for the welfare of the fetus. You had to be a physician to know when abortion was morally justified, because the question depended on scientific and medical facts understood only by physicians. At the same time, women were effectively excluded from the medical schools, where such arcane knowledge could be acquired. So, as things worked out, women had almost nothing to say about terminating their own pregnancies. It was also up to the physician to decide if the pregnancy posed a threat to the woman, and it was entirely at his discretion to determine what was and was not a threat. For the rich woman, the threat might be a threat to her emotional tranquillity or even to her lifestyle. The poor woman was often forced to resort to the back alley or the coat hanger.

This was the law until the 1960s, when a coalition of individuals and organizations, the AMA now among them, sought to overturn it and to reinstate the more traditional values that were to be embodied in Roe v. Wade.continue on to Part 4

If you deliberately kill a human being, it’s called murder. If you deliberately kill a chimpanzee–biologically, our closest relative, sharing 99.6 percent of our active genes–whatever else it is, it’s not murder. To date, murder uniquely applies to killing human beings. Therefore, the question of when personhood (or, if we like, ensoulment) arises is key to the abortion debate. When does the fetus become human? When do distinct and characteristic human qualities emerge?

Section 8 Sperm journey to becoming Human

We recognize that specifying a precise moment will overlook individual differences. Therefore, if we must draw a line, it ought to be drawn conservatively–that is, on the early side. There are people who object to having to set some numerical limit, and we share their disquiet; but if there is to be a law on this matter, and it is to effect some useful compromise between the two absolutist positions, it must specify, at least roughly, a time of transition to personhood.

Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two become four, and so on—an exponentiation of base-2 arithmetic. By the tenth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from capillaries. It bathes itself in maternal blood, from which it extracts oxygen and nutrients. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus.By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm.By the end of the fourth week, it’s about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It’s recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception.By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear—on their way to becoming arms and legs.By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be.By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike.By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation.By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month.By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later.

So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli–again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air?

The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they’re arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely humancharacteristics–apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn’t stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.

Sagan’s conclusion based on arbitrary choice of the presence of thought by unborn baby

Other animals have advantages over us–in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought–characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That’s how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.

Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain–principally in the top layers of the convoluted “gray matter” called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn’t begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy–the sixth month.

By placing harmless electrodes on a subject’s head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy–near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this–however alive and active they may be–lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.

Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we’ve rejected the extremes of “always” and “never,” and this puts us–like it or not–on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.

It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help… If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973–although for completely different reasons.

Its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. It allows states to forbid abortion in the third trimester, except when there’s a serious threat to the life or health of the woman. In the 1989 Webster decision, the Supreme Court declined explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade but in effect invited the 50 state legislatures to decide for themselves.

What was the reasoning in Roe v. Wade? There was no legal weight given to what happens to the children once they are born, or to the family. Instead, a woman’s right to reproductive freedom is protected, the court ruled, by constitutional guarantees of privacy. But that right is not unqualified. The woman’s guarantee of privacy and the fetus’s right to life must be weighed–and when the court did the weighing’ priority was given to privacy in the first trimester and to life in the third. The transition was decided not from any of the considerations we have been dealing with so far…–not when “ensoulment” occurs, not when the fetus takes on sufficient human characteristics to be protected by laws against murder. Instead, the criterion adopted was whether the fetus could live outside the mother. This is called “viability” and depends in part on the ability to breathe. The lungs are simply not developed, and the fetus cannot breathe–no matter how advanced an artificial lung it might be placed in—until about the 24th week, near the start of the sixth month. This is why Roe v. Wade permits the states to prohibit abortions in the last trimester. It’s a very pragmatic criterion.

If the fetus at a certain stage of gestation would be viable outside the womb, the argument goes, then the right of the fetus to life overrides the right of the woman to privacy. But just what does “viable” mean? Even a full-term newborn is not viable without a great deal of care and love. There was a time before incubators, only a few decades ago, when babies in their seventh month were unlikely to be viable. Would aborting in the seventh month have been permissible then? After the invention of incubators, did aborting pregnancies in the seventh month suddenly become immoral? What happens if, in the future, a new technology develops so that an artificial womb can sustain a fetus even before the sixth month by delivering oxygen and nutrients through the blood–as the mother does through the placenta and into the fetal blood system? We grant that this technology is unlikely to be developed soon or become available to many. But if it were available, does it then become immoral to abort earlier than the sixth month, when previously it was moral? A morality that depends on, and changes with, technology is a fragile morality; for some, it is also an unacceptable morality.

And why, exactly, should breathing (or kidney function, or the ability to resist disease) justify legal protection? If a fetus can be shown to think and feel but not be able to breathe, would it be all right to kill it? Do we value breathing more than thinking and feeling? Viability arguments cannot, it seems to us, coherently determine when abortions are permissible. Some other criterion is needed. Again, we offer for consideration the earliest onset of human thinking as that criterion.

Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester–except in cases of grave medical necessity–it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life.What do you think? What have others said about Carl Sagan’s thoughts on 

END OF SAGAN’S ARTICLE

Carl Sagan with his wife Ann in the 1990’s

I grew up in Memphis as a member of Bellevue Baptist Church under our pastor Adrian Rogers and attended ECS High School where the books and films of Francis Schaeffer were taught. Both men dealt with current issues in the culture such as the film series COSMOS by Carl Sagan. I personally read several of Sagan’s books.  (Francis and Edith Schaeffer pictured below in their home at L’ Abri in Switzerland where Francis  taught students for 3 decades.

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