"Do You Believe in God?" – Carl Sagan’s Powerful Response | A Dose of Reason | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: "Do You Believe in God?" – Carl Sagan’s Powerful Response
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my question is given all these
demotions what is your personal religion
or do you is there any type of God to
you like is there a purpose given that
we're just sitting on this Speck in the
middle of this sea of
stars now I don't want to duck any
questions and I'm not going to duct this
one but let me ask you what do you mean
when you use the word god it's it's
seems that Through the Ages we have
humans have created a mythological
framework that has always involved some
kind of higher spiritual powers and as
every human culture has as that goes
away as we know more and more that and
it seems harder and harder to prove that
anything might exist like that where
does that leave us on our own
[Applause]
which to my mind is much more
responsible than hoping that someone
will save us from ourselves so we don't
have to make our best efforts to do it
ourselves and if we're
wrong and there is someone who steps in
and saves us okay that's all right I'm
for that but we you know hedged our bets
it's Pascal's bargain run
backwards um I I'll say another
word the word god covers an enormous
range of different ideas and you
recognize that in the way you phrase the
question running
from an
outsized
lightskinned male with a long white
beard sitting in a throne in the sky and
tallying the fall of every
Sparrow for which there is no evidence
to my mind if anybody has some I sure
would like to see it
um to the kind of God that Einstein or
Spinoza talked about which is very close
to the sum total of the laws of the
universe now it would be crazy to deny
that there are laws in the universe and
if that's what you want to call God then
of course God
exists and there are all sorts of other
nuances there is for example the deest
god that many of the founding fathers of
this country believed in although it is
a a secret whose name may not be spoken
in some
circles a
a a do nothing King the God who creates
the universe and then
retires and to whom praying to is sort
of pointless he's not here he went
somewhere else he had other things to do
now that's also a God so when you say Do
you believe in God if I say yes or if I
say no you have learned absolutely
nothing I guess I'm asking you to Define
yours if you have one but why would we
use a words so
ambiguous that mean so many different
things gives you freedom to Define it as
it gives you freedom to seem to agree
with someone else with whom you do not
agree it covers over
differences it makes for social
lubrication but it is not an aid to
truth in my view and therefore I think
we need much sharper language when we
ask these
questions I lost both my parents about
12 or 15 years ago and uh I had a great
relationship with them I really miss
them I would love to believe that their
Spirits were around somewhere and I'd
give almost anything to uh spend five
minutes a year with them we we demand
the most rigorous standards of evidence
especially on what's important to us so
if some guy comes up to me and a
Channeler or medium and I can put you in
touch with your parents well because I
want so terribly to to believe that yeah
I know I have to reach in for added
reserves of skepticism because I'm
likely to be fooled and and uh much more
minor to have my money taken
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