Maybe.
Wasn't he the guy who predicted "nuclear winter" after Saddam set the oil wells on fire ? {first gulf war}
No matter how "naive" Cosmos may seem to us today, for many of us, this show was a catalyst that lit a fire of inquiry which drove us to seek out more information about the world of science, and the dramatic influence the world of science has had on us.
I see this criticism as another effort by extreme religios to minimize the importance of science and the understanding of the universe it brings. It's a damn shame that science is viewed by a few as the enemy of faith. In fact, my faith has been increased by the wonders described by science. There's nothing about the big bang, astronomy, quantum physics, or even (gasp) evolution that in any way lessens God's role in the Universe. If anything, the mechanisms exposed by science underline the beauty and mystery of God's creation. I feel bad for children who are being bombarded by these new anti-science initiatives from extremists.
Carl Sagan.....a man who was truly a legend in his own mind
Well, you know the saying: Typo ergo qwerty. I type, therefore I misspell.
I watched the series 20 years ago myself, but when Sagan arrogantly stated in one show (and I quote here from memory precisely what he said), "Evolution is a fact; it really happened," I stopped watching. It was clear that the show was less cosmological science, and more a screed for Sagan's particular bias.
PING
I've been watching the show. His blatant liberalism cracks me up mostly. He over dramatizes, often coming across like Capt. Kirk. But I have enjoyed the show. Dr. Sagan at least comes across like he knows what he is talking about when he includes history and such in the show, unlike the "star" announcers that are obviously reading from a script.
It was obvious to me that like Phil Donahue and Hugh Hefner, Sagan could not have dealt with even cursory critical analysis of his views, and therefore limited his exposure to one way communication (books and television), and interviews with sympathetic hosts who would not challenge any of his assertions. He could never get away with it today. The bloggers would tear him apart.
Sagan is right in saying that despite all the claims of UFO sightings and encounters of a third kind, extraterrestrial creatures, and such, not a single artifact, e.g., a piece of metal, a bit of clothing of a visitor, a piece of tissue, a fingernail, has been recovered.
Yet Sagan has written whole volumes promoting the probability of the existence of intelligent life on the billions of planets orbiting the billions and billions of stars in our galaxy, let alone the billions of other galaxies -- this in spite of the fact that there is no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the Cosmos, let alone intelligent life. Of all the billions of electromagnetic waves from the Cosmos received here on Earth, not a single one can be attributed to an ETI.
Therefore, one might ask Sagan the same question he put to UFOers: Of all the countless bits of data received from outer space, the observations of astronomers, the millions of units recorded by radio telescopes, why has not a single bit of information been received which could not be attributed to the random noise of the Cosmos?Question: Why is Carl Sagan so lonely? (pick one)
(a) Sagan is lonely because, as a true devotee of science, a noble and reliable method of attaining knowledge, he feels increasingly isolated in a world in which, as Bronowski has said, there is a failure of nerve and men seem willing to undertake anything other than the rigors of science and believe anything at all: in Velikovski, von Daniken, even in Mr. and Mrs. Barney Hill, who reported being captured and taken aboard a spaceship in Vermont.
(b) Sagan is lonely because, after great expectations, he has not discovered ETIs in the Cosmos, because chimpanzees don't talk, dolphins don't talk, humpback whales sing only to other humpback whales, and he has heard nothing but random noise from the Cosmos, and because Vikings 1 and 2 failed to discover evidence of even the most rudimentary organic life in the soil of Mars.
(c) Sagan is lonely because, once everything in the Cosmos, including man, is reduced to the sphere of immanence, matter in interaction, there is no one left to talk to except other transcending intelligences from other worlds.
But otherwise Sagan was a joke. He was most famous for being a professional debunker who always showed up on the UFO expose`s.
He later latched onto the "nuclear winter" theory, and showed up on this week with David Brinkley during the first Gulf War and declared that if Sadaam set the oil wells on fire, the result would be a catastrophic agricultural disater. Another scientist was on the show, and said that would not happen.
He turned out to be right, and Sagan took a big credibility hit.
The fact that he doesn't praise bronze-age tribal mythology is hardly a detriment to Carl Sagan's legacy.