A while ago I came across the term "Saganist". As defined in
Urban Dictionary:
One who participates in the school of thought known as Saganism.
One who maintains an awestruck perspective of the vast cosmos we inhabit so minutely and the wonder of billions of years of evolution that brought us to this moment.
One who finds a source of complete spiritual satisfaction in the natural laws of the universe and the achievements of mankind's scientific practice thus far.
Emphasis is placed upon the duty of care for our planet, the need for ambitious space exploration programs, the folly of religion, nationalism and war, but also the need for compassion in the face of small-mindedness and zealotry.
The world would be an incredible place if all human beings were Saganists.
I'm not really a fan of being an -ist named after a single person. But in any case, Carl Sagan was a really great guy, and I find his sentiment, an summarized in the quote to be very desirable. Why isn't this the predominant sentiment of the world? Think of how different such a world would be compared to the one we inhabit right now.
In a "Saganist" world, science and critical thinking would be core subjects in school and every child would receive excellent education in them. Global warming would have been taken seriously decades ago, not as of now, a half-assed wake-up when it might be almost too late. The pale blue dot would be well-cared for, and not just for humans, but for other animals as well. There would be ambitious plans and projects for space exploration and colonization. Religion would be a fringe phenomena, Christianity and Islam not viewed as qualitively different that Norse mythology and Egyptian mythology.
Hey, I can dream!
I don't agree with Saganism for a few reasons. Firstly, it implies that "spiritual satisfaction" is something worth having, and that the universe in its natural state is equipped to provide it. It glorifies the processes that brought humans to their current condition, when there is not necessarily a good reason to do so, unless you uncritically regard their current condition as something good. That, really, is what everything else hinges on: everything about our being here and how we came to be here is just marvelous, and our job is to keep it that way by resisting the contrary forces of religion, nationalism, and war, all foreign invaders who can only sully the majesty of things in their natural state.
I dispute all of those assumptions. It bothers me somewhat that as an atheist, I'm expected to regard the cosmos with a reverence and appreciation that somehow is justified by its being there. What if I want to think the universe is a gigantic useless trash heap? Do I have to regard this chaotic place, where nothing is guaranteed to go our way and cold empty darkness surrounds us on all sides, as some kind of rapturous miracle?
Moreso than that, I hate the idea that once we all agree to value "critical thinking" and replace religion with science, we've laid the groundwork for solving most of humanity's problems. We can stop there, and not dramatically alter any aspect of our view of the world, of people, or of society, and just use the scientific method for everything. Not that Saganism explicitly makes any of those things forbidden, but in practice, people who adopt that kind of worldview tend not to be very interested in political or social issues; if they are, they turn out to be milquetoast centrists (or, worse, neoconservative war hawks). I have maintained for a little while now that there is a link between fervently believing in the positive value of human life and the glory of natural existence, and the willingness to regard certain humans as dispensable casualties of war, necessary victims in the fight for "enlightenment values", or the like. Only a radical pessimist, who knows that life is not all that great and nature is not anybody's friend, is capable of treating the humanity of others as truly inviolable.
And such a pessimist would not relish the prospect of galactic colonization with delight. What is the automatic justification for a strategy that would, regardless of how smoothly it went, almost certainly multiply the number of people living in wretched poverty by several orders of magnitude, unless we turn our attention to the pressing concerns of political and social justice that simply aren't part of the vocabulary of popular science writers? To simply posit perpetual expansion of human activity as a worthy goal in itself, as if (again) the experience of being a human is unreservedly, unquestionably positive as long as we all think critically and avoid superstition, is overly simplistic.
So, between a religious person who has decided that God is a madman for allowing such suffering to exist on the same planet as such wealth, and a secular humanist who enjoys Michio Kaku books while treating some people as inferior because they go to church, I would rather live in a world run by the former.
