In memory of Carl Sagan

I remember as a young child watching the Carl Sagan series Cosmos and i can remember that changed my life and expanded my view of the entire world.  Now the entire Cosmos series is streaming on Netflix and even though it was made in the 80's the content really hold up.  I it not only about outer space but he talks about the role of life and humans in the universe.

One great thing that he points out is about life in the universe.  Given the vastness of space and the time the universe has been around there must be life on other planets.  But here is the thing we are separated not only by distance but we are separated by time.  Even if there was plant with life on it across the universe right now and we launched a ship to go there, by the time we get there they may be all extinct or the planet may nat even exist anymore.

I would go as far to say that he is anti religion even though he does not say that directly.   He points out that how the dark ages and the rise of the western religions as held back societies potential.  The dark ages are called that because of the information black out.  Nothing was being learned and science was looked at as bad and all the Knowledge of Greeks and Romans was lost.  The ancient Greeks and Romans embraced  philosophy and science and promoted learning. Then from the start of the first century until  almost 2000 years later when Galileo and the people that came afterward that help society come out of the dark ages and look to the future.

Ok now what does that mean?  Well if you look at all the technology around us we can see that technology grows exponentially when it is free to evolve and move forward.  Just imagine how far we will advance in the next 1000 years.  What if science could get back that lost 1000 years of the dark ages?  What would our world be like to day?  What if scientist have figured out electricity 1000 years ago? We could have all had computers 1000 years ago if the power that be embraced science. and today we would live in a world that is a thousand year in our future.