Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Sagan was not an atheist; he was an agnostic.

Sagan migth have been called a Cosmist
Socrates II — (archived)

One who wonders and marvels at the amazing Universe we live in.
He called it the numinous in Contact.

Regarding God, Sagan said he was agnostic because while he felt there
was not a whole lot of good evidence for such a being, for humans
to declare outright that no such being existed at all ever was a bit
arrogant on our part, considering how much we do not yet know about
existence in general.

While his parents were not very strong in this regard, Sagan was
raised in a Jewish family in pre-World War 2 Brooklyn, which I am sure
had an influence one way or the other. But I think it is also safe to
say if Sagan had to lean in one direction or the other, he would have
had to go on the atheist side.

One of the goals of his 1985 SF novel Contact was to imagine how a
being who created our Universe might actually leave a message to his
creations. In the case of the novel (not the 1997 film), it was putting
messages in the value of pi.

I love the part of the novel where the main character, Ellie Arroway,
tells the alien she meets that there cannot be an intelligent message
in pi because that transcendental number was built into the very
fabric of the Cosmos, and he replied "Exactly."

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