Religion
Related: About this forumLessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father, Carl Sagan
Yesterday at 8:45 AM
By Sasha Sagan
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We lived in a sandy-colored stone house with an engraved winged serpent and solar disc above the door. It seemed like something straight out of ancient Sumeria, or Indiana Jones but it was not, in either case, something youd expect to find in upstate New York. It overlooked a deep gorge, and beyond that the city of Ithaca. At the turn of the last century it had been the headquarters for a secret society at Cornell called the Sphinx Head Tomb, but in the second half of the century some bedrooms and a kitchen were added and, by the 1980s, it had been converted into a private home where I lived with my wonderful mother and father.
My father, the astronomer Carl Sagan, taught space sciences and critical thinking at Cornell. By that time, he had become well known and frequently appeared on television, where he inspired millions with his contagious curiosity about the universe. But inside the Sphinx Head Tomb, he and my mother, Ann Druyan, wrote books, essays, and screenplays together, working to popularize a philosophy of the scientific method in place of the superstition, mysticism, and blind faith that they felt was threatening to dominate the culture. They were deeply in love and now, as an adult, I can see that their professional collaborations were another expression of their union, another kind of lovemaking. One such project was the 13-part PBS series Cosmos, which my parents co-wrote and my dad hosted in 1980 a new incarnation of which my mother has just reintroduced on Sunday nights on Fox.
After days at elementary school, I came home to immersive tutorials on skeptical thought and secular history lessons of the universe, one dinner table conversation at a time. My parents would patiently entertain an endless series of "why?" questions, never meeting a single one with a because I said so or thats just how it is. Each query was met with a thoughtful, and honest, response even the ones for which there are no answers.
One day when I was still very young, I asked my father about his parents. I knew my maternal grandparents intimately, but I wanted to know why I had never met his parents.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/my-dad-and-the-cosmos.html
hedda_foil
(16,375 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)It has never occurred to my son to ask me this about my father.
I take that as a sign that as a parent 'I'm doing it right'.
(such questions may come later as he is exposed to more and more believers in society, but for now, he has no concept of a 'beyond death' existence at all.)
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Some imply these are life after death experiences, while others side step that.
And it's not a religious issue at all.
It is perfectly normal for children to wonder about what happens and a lack of curiosity doesn't speak at all to you "doing it right". I'm not sure what it speaks to, but if you take the position that your child asking about what happens when you die to be a sign that you are "doing it wrong", you might want to reconsider that.
And for goodness sake, don't ever let him see my favorite movie, Contact. It's all about seeing someone again and has absolutely nothing to do with religion.
That's the problem with crusades. Everything gets sucked into the agenda whether it belongs there or not.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)From the plot synopsis on the wiki page:
The entire movie had religious underpinnings, so to say it "absolutely nothing to do with religion" is absolutely false.
pokerfan
(27,677 posts)that that was the alien and not her father?
cbayer
(146,218 posts)I'm not so sure.
Or had her father become the alien?
Or had the alien somehow ingested the soul of her father?
Or was she just delirious and saw what she wanted to see?
I still love the movie no matter what it was.
"16 hours of static"
More evidence then there ever was for religion.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)The alien ate (ingested) her father.