I was raised Catholic, and attended Sunday School during elementary school and in middle and high school was in actual Catholic schools - complete with compulsory mid-week Mass attendance. I was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church and raised with all that entails... By the time I had reached High School though, I knew that the basic tenets were all nonsense and contradictions of logic, facts and the antithesis of the scientific method. All of it. 1 god in 3 persons? Water into wine? Stars falling to Earth? Rotation of the planet suddenly stopped? Planetary flood and respawning of populations within decades instead of centuries or millennia?
I attained the age of reason (as Carlin once opined) and promptly left the church. It was the philosophical underpinning of Sagan's work and worldview that I found most compatible with my own and with reality as I observed it. I have been at peace with that decision for decades and have thoroughly marveled at just how prescient Sagan was in the book "Daemon Haunted World".
For anyone not versed in Sagan's work, I cannot recommend anything more than that work and "Pale Blue Dot" as jumping off points to an expansive and wonderous journey of understanding and feeling just how we can be simultaneously tiny beyond belief and precious beyond imagination!
Happy Sagan Day to all!!!
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