63: A Conversation with Carl Sagan

June 2, 2026. 

I was planning on doing the next podcast on developing an assortment of chocolates.  Instead, I ran into a conversation on YouTube between Carl Sagan, a liberal and famous astrophysicist, and Dennis Prager, a conservative talk show host with a beguiling sense of humor

This podcast treats six questions that Dennis Prager asks of Carl Sagan, who instead of being forgotten, is more timely and more important than ever.

In the podcast, I mention what progress we are making.  This includes developing a new and very exciting web site for Chocolat des Villages, France.  My next podcast will include a link to it.

As always, please join PH&F in its efforts to empower the Ivorian cocoa farmer!  Tom Neuhaus

Write to me at  tom@projecthopeandfairness.org

To learn more, visit  www.projecthopeandfairness.org

Listen to Podcast 63—>https://www.buzzsprout.com/1057903/episodes/19272182

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Welcome to podcast number sixty three, a conversation between Carl Sagan and Dennis Prager. That was prelude number eleven of Bach's well tempered clavier, a collection of twenty four preludes in twelve major keys and twelve minor keys. Bach wrote it in prison while serving time for having sassed his employer. The prelude is in F major and has clear counterpoint in that themes switch back and forth between the two hands. I like F major as a key because, like C major, it is clearly cheerful. It's certainly a key for tolerating prison time. Today's podcast features six questions asked of Carl Sagan by Dennis Prager. Carl Sagan was one of the 20th century's best-known scientists, and Dennis Prager is a well-known conservative talk show host. Carl Sagan came from a family that practiced Reform Judaism. Dennis Prager comes from an Orthodox family. Sagan taught astrophysics at Cornell University and was known especially for his series Cosmos, which brought the universe into the average American home. Prager was known for the Dennis Prager show, which combined economic theory with politics in a radio show. He was regarded as an important conservative, although he has not been a strong supporter of Donald Trump. Before we start, I just want to say a few words about what's happening in Project Hope and Fairness' world of chocolate. I am hard at work developing a new website for my business, Chocolat des Village. I will talk about the site in my next podcast. My goal is to develop the brand Chocolat des Village in Europe and get to the point where we are importing substantial amounts of chocolate from the villages that follow our tenets. That is strengthening the cocoa farmers' position in the chain and value chain. Okay, so here we go. Dennis Prager is asking questions of Carl Sagan. Despite the fact that one is a liberal and a scientist, and the other a conservative talk show host, the tenor of the questions and answers was light and respectful. I had my own comments, particularly when I think that Dr. Sagan's answer needs a little embellishment. The first question is, do you believe that there are people out there? And Sagan responds, not a chance, because people are the result of a particular evolutionary pathway that could not possibly recur elsewhere. So my comment to that is Sagan did not specify why, but there are aspects of the Earth and its history that make life as we know it quite unlikely to be duplicated. For example, the fossil record demonstrates that single-celled organisms account for at least a billion years of evolution. Then after about two billion years during which water accumulated on land and oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere, there occurred the Cambrian explosion, which happened about 500 million years ago. It's called an explosion because the vast majority of the Earth's taxonomy, the structure of the Earth's life categories, was formed during that period. For all this to happen, two things had to happen. One, water had to accumulate and oxygen on the planet itself and oxygen had to accumulate in the atmosphere. Both of these can only happen if gravity is neither too weak nor too strong, and that narrows the possibilities of where life can occur. In order for oxygen to accumulate, gravity has to be just right to prevent oxygen and other light elements from drifting off into space. Besides, gravity is the Earth's core, which is made of liquid iron. This produces a dipole, which in turn produces a powerful magnetic field that prevents radiation from the cosmos from destroying complex organic molecules that are critical to life's very survival. Celestial events can also have powerful rough repercussions on the procedure uh on how evolution occurred. One need look no further than the Chicksalub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula that formed 66 million years ago, and that permanently altered the evolution by favoring the development of mammals over dinosaurs. The word now here's back to Sagan saying the word believe is a problem. Believe in the absence of evidence should not happen in science. Of course, it does happen in religion. I neither believe nor disbelieve. What I do say is that it it is an extremely important question about whether there is intelligent life out there. We have the tools to investigate the questions, so I say let's look. The second question by Prager is why is it important to find out whether there's intelligent life? Sagan responds, because first of all, it characterizes who we are. For the longest time, people have thought that they were the center and point of the universe, the reason there is a universe. And that of course is connected with there not being anybody else. If there is somebody else, then we're not so important as we think. This is my comment. This is an illustration of what some have called the structure of scientific revolutions. That is, by the way, it by the way, is the name of a book. Human history is replete with alternating beliefs and scientific refutations. For example, humans thought for a long time that we lived on a flat surface. However, people began wondering why the masts on ships would suddenly appear over the horizon or why the hulls of ships would suddenly disappear, sink into the horizon. Eratosthenes in the third century BCE in Egypt, believing the Earth to be a globe, to explain that phenomenon, used principles of geometry to calculate Earth's circumference, and he was really close to right. At about the same time, Aristotle proposed that the Earth is the center of the known universe and that the Sun and other planets rotate about it. Seven hundred years later, Copernicus had the audacity to propose an alternative called heliocentrism, whereby planets orbit the sun. This was extremely threatening to the Catholic Church, but now we think nothing of it. Heliocentrism is now a law and is accepted by the Catholic Church. Finding other forms of intelligent life would be quite threatening to all the mainstream religions, especially Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, since they are based on primitive beliefs that turned out to be wrong. The third question asked by Prager of Sagan is why doesn't the existence of humanity argue for the existence of God? And Sagan responds, I don't see why. The existence of a slime mold doesn't argue for the existence of God. The idea that something apparently designed argues for a designer is not valid. I assume that you have not met Mr. Darwin. And he responds, Prager responds, I have met Mr. Darwin, and Mr. Darwin believed in God. And Sagan responds, but we did not believe that the argument he did not believe that the argument that you presented holds water. What Mr. Darwin said is that the slime mold and humans and everybody else have evolved by a set of natural processes, and no hand of a creator is evident or needed. That's the whole point of evolution by natural selection. Prager says, But do you feel that the pancreas and the liver and the intestines and the brain arrange themselves by natural, pure, fluky chance? Sagan responds, that's a caricature. Prager asks, why? Why is that a caricature? Sagan says, You're walking along the beach, you look down, there's something s shiny, you pick it up, it's a pocket watch. You say, My goodness, look how beautifully this is put together. Look how well form, matches, function. Is it possible that the various gears and wheels fell together by accident? Ridiculous idea. A watch needs a watchmaker. And so Prager responds, right, a pancreas needs a pancreas maker. And then Sagan says, and that's the step where you make a mistake. Now let's look at the variety of dogs in the world, ranging from let's say from Dachshoons to Great Danes, different forms, different functions, wildly different. How did they get to be so different? The answer is humans made them different by interfering with who mates with whom. If you want a dog that goes into holes in the ground and ferrets out moles or something, then make sure that this low slung guy mates with that low slung female, and probably you're going to get more low slung dogs. Now, what you are doing is what Darwin called artificial selection, the imposing of restrictions of what kind of offspring they're going to be by an external force. And if humans in a mere 10,000 years or so can produce the entire variety of dogs, cannot nature, which reaches into the innards of organisms? Prager says, but nature doesn't have a brain. Sagan says, nature doesn't need a brain, having four billion years of biological evolution to create all the diversity in the natural world. This is my comment. Darwin was at best a deist, but not a theist. That is, he was more along the line of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson believing that if there is a God, it would be separate from humanity and not the sort of God who looks out for his creation. Regarding creation versus evolution, creation does not allow for natural selection, whereby the environment molds the genetics of an organism. Natural selection is dynamic and able to cope with environmental change. Creation cannot do that. Question four, are you an atheist? Prager asks. Sagan responds, what do you mean by atheist? Prager says, Someone who believes that there is no God. Sagan says, What do you mean by God? Prager says, I'll tell you exactly. A creator with intelligence who is aware of his creation. Sagan responds, but there are religions that believe in no God of that sort, and still are religions, such as Buddhism. Prager says, I know, I understand that. Sagan says, this is a scientific question. Was the universe created or was it always here? And the only way to answer this is through science. We don't have the answer yet. Prager says, the Big Bang suggests that it wasn't always here. Sagan says, not at all, not at all. Let me suggest three possibilities. One is that 10 or 15 billion years ago or whatever, the Earth universe was made from nothing. The second possibility, the latest, it is the latest in an infinite sequence of expansions and contractions of the universe. And the third possibility is that our universe was created from nothing, one of an infinite number of universes that are spontaneously forming and disintegrating. Prager says, okay, now let me ask you something. I admit that the idea of God is mind-boggling, but do you not admit that the idea of infinity is more mind-boggling? Sagan says, not more. Prager says, that there is no limit to the number of universes. What does that mean? Sagan says, what does God mean? It's mind-boggling either way. Prager says, so where do you think the evidence leads? You look at a baby born and you say, ah, Mother Nature is amazing. Or you know, there might be a God. Which is the more spontaneous it responds? Sagan says, which is the more sentimental and superficial? Which is the deeper answer? Prager says, the sentimental and deeper may be the same. Sagan says, they may not be. Sentimental is a danger. We don't decide where the baby comes from by how it feels to have a baby. I've had five and I think it's great, and I never for a moment thought that God intervened to make the baby. Let me ask you a question about that, by the way. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why is it necessary for him to meddle in the universe after he made it? Why didn't he make it right in the first place? So it would go in the direction he wanted. Prager says, because there would be no need for us then. If the world were perfect, then we would not exist because we would could have no freedom of choice and do bad. Sagan says, that's a very egocentric point of view, that the point of the world is so that we would do good or bad. Prager says, without humanity, there is no point to the universe. Sagan says, Let me now argue about that. Prager asks a fifth question. Why do you speak of egocentrism? Sagan responds, in the egocentric view, the point of the world is that we will be good. We are the reason that the universe is made. Feels good, right? Now let's think about where we are. We live on a tiny world in a solar system which has about 70 or 80 big worlds going around the sun, which is an obscure star in an obscure spiral arm of a humdrum galaxy that contains 400 billion stars, and this Milky Way galaxy is one of about a hundred billion galaxies. The number has been, by the way, uh increased to two trillion. Now imagine that number of places, and in this obscure galaxy, in that tiny star, that little planet, those guys think they are the center of the universe. It's hilarious. Okay, so now Prager asks question number six on the need for science. And so he asks, What is the need for science? And Sagan says, Well, if you eat the seed corn, you're just as dead as if you shot yourself. So that of course is referring to if you're eating the possibility of survival and not knowing where you came from and how and how to uh survive, then you might as well just shoot yourself. He Sagan continues, we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers. If we don't understand science, then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children are going to live in? Just some members of Congress? There's more no more than a handful of members of Congress with any background in science at all. And the Republican Congress has just abolished its own Office of Technology Assessment. This, of course, is decades ago. The organization that gave them bipartisan advice on science and technology. They say, we don't want to know. Don't tell us. Two kinds of dangers. We've arranged a society based on science, and then we don't um uh want to know anything about science. This combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. That was two decades ago. And it sure sounds right now. Um that's my comment, of course. Uh Sagan's thoughts about humanity are more like predictions. His last book, The Demon Haunted World, warned us about where we are going as a species. There's a reason why Carl Sagan's thoughts are being brought up once again to the fore. Well, we finished podcast 63 with Chopin's Prelude number 23 in F major. Note the difference in tenor. Bach's counterpoint piece contrasted staccato and legato. Chopin's piece flows and truly highlights the romantic era of peacefulness and serenity, uh, which of course we need more of these days. Anyway, that's the end of podcast 63. A next podcast, uh, I know I haven't been very good about uh fulfilling my promises and then pretending like I hadn't made a promise. Um, but 64, I believe, will be all about the new website, which is being built right now. Okay, thank you so much for listening. Bye.