I recently read Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. In this book Sagan aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. (I confess to skipping some of the chapters devoted to debunking alien abduction claims, but overall I think it’s worth reading.)

Below are some quotes from Carl Sagan on science and spirituality:

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

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”…I maintain that science is part and parcel humility. Scientists do not seek to impose their needs and wants on Nature, but instead humbly interrogate Nature and take seriously what they find.”

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”…even if General Relativity were everwhere and forever valid, what better way of convincing ourselves of its validity than a concerted effort to discover its failings and limitations?

This is one of the reasons that the organized religions do not inspire me with confidence. Which leaders of the major faiths acknowledge that their beliefs might be incomplete or erroneous and establish institutes to uncover possible doctrinal deficiencies? Beyond the test of everyday living, who is systematically testing the circumstances in which traditional religious teachings may no longer apply? (It is certainly conceivable that doctrines and ethics that may have worked fairly well in patriarchal or patristic or medieval times might be thoroughly invalid in the very different world we inhabit today.)

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“Science, Ann Druyan notes, is forever whispering in our ears, “Remember, you’re very new at this. You might be mistaken. You’ve been wrong before.” Despite all the talk of humility, show me something comparible in religion.”