Carl Sagan's Search For God

Something very cool...

Just a few months from now, a brand new Carl Sagan book will hit bookstands.  Years ago, my dad participated in the world-famous Gifford Lectures, speaking about science and religion, where they intersect and diverge, and his personal feelings about the two.  My stepmother, Ann Druyan, has culled that lecture (and the Q&A that folllowed) into a fantastic read: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.  What he said back then is so insightful and so genuine, covering fascinating, controversial subject matter, topics I dearly wish I could talk with him about today.  I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Here's the official press release:

New York, May 1, 2006-Ann Godoff, President and Publisher of The Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), has announced plans to mark the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's death with the release of his previously unpublished "Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology," The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.  Edited and updated by Ann Druyan, Sagan's widow and long-time collaborator - and including the lecture's original audience Q&A - Varieties explores the relationship between religion and science, and the personal search for God by the brilliant astro-physicist and Pulitzer Prize winner.  The deal, for North American rights, was made with Sloan Harris of International Creative Management, Inc.  The Penguin Press will publish in November 2006.

"Carl's earliest childhood notebooks reflect his passionate curiosity about the nature of God and how the universe came to be," said Druyan. "The Varieties of Scientific Experience is the definitive expression of a lifetime of heartfelt questioning guided by a fearless intelligence."

Godoff, who served as publisher and editor of  four of Sagan's books while at Random House, added, "A very prescient Carl Sagan's unmistakable voice  ponders the pressing question of  the intersection of science and religion. Sagan the humanist, Sagan the scientist, Sagan the writer; the reader will close this book and realize that no one has taken his place."

Penguin Group (USA) Inc. is the U.S. member of the internationally renowned Penguin Group. Penguin Group (USA) is one of the leading U.S. adult and children's trade book publishers, owning a wide range of imprints and trademarks, including Berkeley Books, Dutton, Frederick Warne, G.P. Putnam's Sons, Grosset & Dunlap, New American Library, Penguin, Philomel, Plume, Puffin, Riverhead Books and Viking, among others.  The Penguin Group is part of Pearson plc, the international media company.

Comments

[Joel Schlosberg]

I've often wondered about how Carl would have responded to the upsurge in militant, intolerant religion after 9/11. The silly pseudoscience fads like alien abduction/Roswell that were so popular just 10 years ago seem innocent in comparision. So this is both very cool and sad, given how much Carl's subtle and gentle yet rigorous critique of religion and ability to communicate it to the masses is needed today.

Incidentally, one of the things that bugs me about Keay Davidson's (generally excellent) biography of Carl is his dismissive attitude towards much of Carl's criticism of religion, which he regards as crude and passe:

"In the novel Contact, Sagan had depicted American religion in one of its more primitive forms: tent-revival evangelism. It is hard to believe that a sophisticated thinker like Carl Sagan, even writing as a "pop" novelist, could depict modern religion so simplistically, as if the world had not turned since the Scopes trial of 1925. Sagan wasn't fighting modern religion, he was fighting Elmer Gantry; he was still waging the "warfare of science with theology" that Andrew Dickson White had fought a century earlier. And this is why the novel Contact's treatment of religion is of far less intellectual interest than its treatment of scientific issues. Religiously speaking, he was beating a dead horse." (p. 409)

Given the rise of militant fundamentalism in the post-9/11 era (with the book appearing just a couple of years before), it seems to me that it's Davidson's viewpoint that comes off as dated.

Skeptical Inquirer magazine also recently featured a rediscovered Q&A session with Carl -- which landed on the cover! It's online at:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-07/sagan.html

[Nick Sagan]

"Very cool and sad" is how I see it too--the stakes seem so much higher now, and how I wish he could weigh in on the current situation, this powder keg we seem to be sitting upon.

I completely agree with you about Keay Davidson's criticism--the past few years show that this "dead horse" is very much alive and kicking.

And I'm so glad you turned me on to that Skeptical Inquirer interview! I'd not seen it before, and it pretty much made my day. Thanks for that.