The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for…

Okay, FINE. I'll read it. Sheesh.

A collection of Sagan's lectures on atheism from the 80s. Terrific stuff. I don't love books by atheists (although I am one), but this is great. ( )

Nothing mind-blowing, but Carl Sagan is incredibly cogent and by the end, he convinced me that we need to colonize space and get our shit together. (I already thought that, but yeah.) ( )

The overarching theme of this book is the intertwinement of science and religion. The author starts off with making the reader realize the enormity of scales, of size and time, in the world. He goes on to discuss issues such as evolution of life, the beginning of the universe, existence of the extraterrestrial intelligence, and how it relates to the existence of life on Earth. The discussions are not directed towards experts in physics; rather, they are accessible to anybody. I find them of extraordinary quality, because of the author's ability to disentangle hard questions into approachable clear-cut ones, and "courage" to apply the scientific method to the hardest of questions about life, and, it seems, his enormous integrity. Not only is the book an eye-opener; it is also funny, and poetic, and written in beautiful English. It is extraordinary - one of the best books I have ever read. ( )

This book was published posthumously and consists of a series of lectures touching on religion and science. I found it very interesting and engaging. Sagan's main point, which deserves repeating, is that skepticism is good and should be welcomed, that rational analysis is useful, and that theories and arguments should be founded upon evidence, which itself should be tested.

A couple of my favorite points in the book:
The first occurred in the first few pages, where an artist's rendition of the solar system was offered, with each planet marshaled into a line. The planets and the sun were depicted to scale, but the distances were not. The intent was immediately apparent. There were four huge masses, besides the sun, and the rest of the planets were tiny. As Sagan said in the book, the solar system consists of four huge planets and the sun, and the rest is debris. We live on a tiny fraction of the third piece of debris from the sun.

In discussing religion, Sagan succinctly stated an important criticism of religious faith. He said (and I am definitely paraphrasing; Sagan put it much more eloquently) that there is a serious danger in believing that a solution to our problems will come from some supreme being because then we, as humans, do not spend the time in finding solutions ourselves. ( )