Contact, by Carl Sagan.#

I read this book, because I very much enjoyed the movie. The movie is significantly different, but I think that they changes made in the movie make the story better. I make the distinction between things that were absent (e.g., the debates and scientific details) and the things that were changed (e.g., five passengers rather than one, etc.)#

When I read this book, I interpret a major theme as Sagan's internal conflict with faith and his crusade against "organized" religions. While I have no critique of his handling of his conflict---although I would refer him to read William James again---I do have a problem with his attacks on religion.#

First, he does not attack the strongest religious people, but rather the weakest. While these caricatures are surely somewhat accurate, and represent people one could argue with, they do little to convince. I cannot fault him for not knowing how I reconcile faith and science, but I do fault him for obviously not doing his research on the groups he chooses to attack. For example, consider this non-sense comment: "The Mormon Church declared it [the Message] a second revelation of the angel Moroni." (p. 128) Any one with an even rudimentary knowledge of Mormonism would recognize this as an absurd thing to say: we have a whole book of revelations from God to Joseph Smith and his successors and we receive revelation daily. Such comments do not create trust in his comments on other groups.#

There is a continual argument in his book that goes like this: "If God wants us to believe in Him, why doesn't He show Himself, or provide better proof?" Sagan even offers a very clever method of proof: Give Moses (etc.) a statement like "There is no privileged frame of reference" or other scientific statements that could not be known in his time, but could be verified later. (p. 163) However, it is an ancient understanding in theology that such proof would be paramount to coercion and deny humans the ability to exercise faith and free agency. I think it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of God: He does not want us to "behave", but wants us to "grow" and the various commandments are pursuant to that.#

Despite these complaints, I recommend the book.#

I found very enjoyable Hadden's discussion of Earth and a 'control' planet to show to 'apprentice gods' to warn them of what a bad job is. (p. 286) Also, his idea that immortals are extremely risk-averse (p. 293), of course by immortality, meaning great ability to cure the body, but still fundamentally vulnerable.#