This morning I read Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. So far, I have only read the first few chapters, but I would still like to—given my extremely limited memory capacity—jot my thoughts down anyway.

The first few chapters establishes our insignificance, about how our existence is merely the product of a particularly lucky sequence of events, rather than the religious claims humanity has been preaching since time immemorial.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.
For what every man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

— Demosthenes, Third Olynthiac (c. 349 BC)

Sagan points out the fallacies of such claims, about how inconsistent these arguments are, often contradicting each other from the most minute of details to the most foundational claims (e.g. monotheism vs polytheism) it has in its respective books. He then provides the reason behind our tendencies to believe in religious doctrines.

I found this section to be particularly interesting:

  • Humans are born without much insights about our world, let alone the Universe. We prefer intuitive observations over ones that are not.
    • Hence, it makes sense to believe our senses, because that is what we are born with regardless of the time period you were born in. It is neither dependent on technology nor any prerequisite knowledge, and we are simply relying on our most trusted and our most primal instincts.
    • And yet our senses are often wrong! When we look at the ground we’re currently standing on, which is likely flat, it is easy to make the claim that everywhere around us is the same. However, through science, we have now known that this is simply untrue.
    • He later brings up another author’s opposing view, which argues that what we sense is what we are, and how the modern human is straying further and further from what our ’true’ observations are. Instead of going with our intuitive, sense-based belief of a flat earth, we are now believing in a science-based yet contrarian argument in which our earth is, in fact, a globe.
      • It is perhaps interesting to argue what our true self is, is it our understanding of the real world, or what our senses can feel? Is there even a point in pursuing the truth?
      • Sagan argues that in order to face reality’s problems—which are built on truths whether we like it or not—we must also use truth to find its solutions.
  • Humans like feeling special. Here Sagan brings up an interesting example, about how primates like to form groups and flex on its exclusivity, and we can clearly see the pattern in humans too, all the way back since hunter-gatherer times. Everyone in our group are our people, and everyone outside of it are our enemies.
    • It is therefore very comforting to assert our dominance in the Universe. We believe that the universe does revolve around us, that the sun revolves around our Earth, because that positions us as superior beings of the Universe.
    • This point does bring up an interesting thought experiment, if we do like feeling superior that much, why is it, at the same time, we believe on a Father of all creation, a being who is superior to us?
  • Humans do not like being challenged. We do not like to face uncomfortable truths, nor do we like knowing that we have caused irreparable damage to our Home. This is a point that I resonate the most with personally (in terms of personal experience).
    • Throughout history, lots of great scientists have challenged our existing beliefs through sound logic and scientific observations. These claims often challenge powerful forces, such as the Catholic Church, which had a great influence over the general masses. And thus their opinion is almost always initially met with heavy resistance, because people do not like to know that their beliefs, supported by their religious ‘masters’, are wrong.
    • And yet for me I do not have to look at history to prove how true this sentiment is. A while ago, I had an interesting conversation with my religious friends, about the existence of dinosaurs. They told me that there is no way that these species existed, since it blatantly goes against the Church and their Holy Scriptures. It gravely contradicts their religion’s claim that the earth is $\approx6000$ years old.
      • This might seem like a weird conversation to bring up, especially to devout religious people, except we were having this conversation right in front of the real dinosaur skeletons and fossils exhibited in The Manchester Museum.
    • The same can be said about climate change and the people who refuse to believe it.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (1994)

A significant portion of the book then details how grandeur and massive the Universe is, and how despite our wishes to be the Superior Being of the Universe, the universe does not need to oblige to what we want.

And as humanity has slowly discovered, the Universe really does not care about us and the opinions we have about ourselves.