Carl Sagan's new book

[Hum]

The late astronomer Carl Sagan was the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including "Contact" and "Cosmos."

He was often asked whether he believed in God, and his stock answer was that it all depended on what your definition of "God" was.

He's been called an atheist, even though he's also quoted as saying that "by some definitions atheism is very stupid."

When it came to his spiritual perspective, the late astronomer Carl Sagan was always a bit hard to pin down, even though much of what he had to say about the cosmos was filled with spirituality.

This year, however ? a decade after his death from a rare bone-marrow disease ? some of Sagan's deepest thoughts on the ultimate questions are being brought to light in a newly rediscovered collection of lectures ######The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.

The book, due for publication in November by The Penguin Press, is based on a series of talks Sagan gave at the University of Glasgow in 1985 as part of the Gifford Lectures on natural theology. After lying hidden for decades in Sagan's archives, the transcripts of the nine taped lectures were rediscovered just a few months ago, said Ann Druyan, the scientist's widow and longtime collaborator.

Druyan said Sagan's main theme was "the devoutness of the search itself, of being absolutely true in your searching to the methodology of science, to the error-correcting mechanism."

"In a way it makes someone who thinks that our spiritual understanding of the universe is complete seem that much less devout," she said. "His argument is not with God in this book. His argument is with those people who think that we know everything that we need to know about God. Rather than being dismissive or contemptuous of anybody, he takes the science he knew, everthing that he gathered in his life, and offers it as a way of explaining how he came to believe what he believed."

It wasn't Sagan's style to belittle the defenders of the faith. "This is a deep Carl, it's a very loving Carl, it's a Carl who is not out to make other people look foolish," Druyan said. Rather, Sagan saw the varieties of scientific experience as stages in a quest on the scale of the spiritual quest.

"Whether he knew it or not ? and I think he did ... he was talking about science as a kind of informed worship," Druyan said. "Scientists have been very squeamish about this, about really going into it in any depth, until recently. Scientists have been loath to really talk about the oneness and that soaring feeling that science can give us."

MSNBC Science

[dreamz Veteran]

the title itself seems like it's a variation on william james' famous work, the varieties of religious experience. the description, however, is thoroughly scientific in nature. despite the rhetoric, it's clear that his passion lies in science.

[~WinGz~]

thnks for finding this hum i have always enjoyed his work since i learned about him in 10th grade astro in high school. =)