Blah blah blah.

[blurppi]

I just read Carl Sagan's Contact, then saw the Jodie Foster movie. I'm not usually one to get all nutty about 'the book' vs. 'the movie', but I think the differences between these two are very revealing

Comments

[anonymous]

Part of what I personally find so incredibly frustrating about religion and even more simplified forms of faith like "Everything happens for a reason" and karma is that it exposes one of the weaknesses of humans. We want to A. Believe that there is life after death and B. We don't analyze things logically by nature. A. is pretty straight forward, but what I mean by B. is that we take in the things from the world around us and make assumptions which I assume used to be based on survival. Lions can kill me, they have killed my family, so anything that looks like a Lion must also kill me. Or in the modern day,something bad happens to me, and other bad things have happened to me, therefore bad things must always happen to me. This type of simplified logic is so incredibly flawed, but so deeply hardwired into us. I got better while I was on Airborne, therefore Airborne shortens the common cold. It's flawed logic. Scientists are generally so much better at this because they've been trained to understand what a control is in an experiment.

[anonymous]

Sorry, just realized that I forgot to stress how relatable the deceased relative and afterlife thing is. I really really really understand why you would make the leap to these types of things. I view this as a normal part of how humans cope with mortality and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.