PALE BLUE DOT (page 2)

Apognophos

It just makes Earth that much more special if it's a pale blue dot in a massive universe. That universe may be vast, but it could all be ours if there is no other life competing for that space. As long as we don't know of any life on other planets, it makes it appear as if we were planted here like a one-of-a-kind seed, to grow and to go out exploring. I'm not making any claims, just observations about how it seems. I never understood why the PBD photo was intended to demonstrate the opposite, though I have lots of respect for Sagan otherwise.

titch

Brainfloss: That IS a great video, and is very profound. It makes a person stop and think. I've seen it many times, but, the only thing that it doees for me is to make me realize how totally insignificant that the Pale Blue Dot (Earth) is, and all of us residents of the PBD---Pale Blue Dottians?---Pale Blue Dottists?---really are. Thanks for sharing it.

Titch (Your Fellow Pale Blue Dot Inhabitant)

clarity

Carl Sagan's Remarks About Jehovah's Witnesses False Prophecies

Alan Feuerbacher

A few years after the complete collapse of everything C. T. Russell had predicted, J. F. Rutherford began a process of replacing Russell's unfulfilled predictions with a series of invisible and spiritual events associated with the years 1914 and 1918. By the early 1930s the process was complete.

An interesting comment on this transformation was made by Carl Sagan in his book Broca's Brain(New York: Ballantine Books, 1979, pp. 332-333):

Doctrines that make no predictions are less compelling than those which make correct predictions; they are in turn more successful than doctrines that make false predictions.

But not always. One prominent American religion confidently predicted that the world would end in 1914. Well, 1914 has come and gone, and -- while the events of that year were certainly of some importance -- the world does not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended. There are at least three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a failed and fundamental prophecy. They could have said, "Oh, did we say '1914'? So sorry, we meant '2014.' A slight error in calculation. Hope you weren't inconvenienced in any way." But they did not. They could have said, "Well, the world would have ended, except we prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth." But they did not. Instead, they did something much more ingenious.

They announced that the world hadin fact ended in 1914, and if the rest of us hadn't noticed, that was our lookout. It is astonishing in the face of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough-mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry

Finkelstein

A realistic perspective of religion by Carl Sagan.

I think he touched on the expansiveness of human imagination when there is expansive amount of human ignorance of the world in which we live and of are selves..

prologos

The blue planet with the related red sunsets, that harbours a religion that had the world ending in 1914, and an overlapping generations ever since.

An overlapping generation whose members are destined to rule the cosmos, not just the universe and the pale blue dot. and

C Sagan the sage: "-- we did not notice--"

Heaven

Carl Sagan: "We are made of star stuff."

I am not so sure JWs would understand that statement.

PALE BLUE DOT