You want against the mainstream in an astronomy message board,
you would be hard-pressed to go any more against it than to whisper
a discouraging word about the late Carl Sagan.
I wrote to him repeatedly about his numerous errors, biases, and outright misstatements in Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot, Demon Haunted World, and other books he wrote. Carl merely responded by asking me to buy his latest book.
He utterly ignored every objection I had. Every single one.
Dodge and weave. That was his response.
Although he characterized himself as an "agnostic," he vehemently railed against God, after the fashion of a true atheist.
Sagan said "We will spread throughout the Milky Way." I do not take statements out of context. However Sagan loyalists have inerrantly sought to make such comments stick.
Sagan said "Sex was invented." End of sentence. There was nothing before it or after to qualify it in the slightest regard.
Let me say it plainly: Sex was NOT "invented." An invention is specifically man-made. No kind of sex between animal species was devised, developed, or invented by any human.
Sagan lamented the overcrowding of humans on earth. He said we have an excess. With his wife, Ann Druyan, Sagan fathered five children.
What hypocrisy.
Sagan often spoke very glowingly of "scientists," claiming that although they had their SLIGHT imperfections, "some cheat and steal", e.g., on the whole they were SO much better than those nasty army generals who were so "eager to kill one another."
Ah yes, General George Washington, our pre-eminent Founding Father, without which no America. How "EAGER" he was to kill British soldiers, and for no good reason at all.
And so let the defense of Carl the leftist begin. I may even cite a few dozen of his more inane comments by book and page, although it might be hard to top "Sex was invented."
