PASCAL, CARL SAGAN, AND ME Blaise Pascal, the French mathematical prodigy, philosopher, and founder of the theory of probability, is perhaps best known for his proposition that the mathematical odds favor a belief in God. According to Pascal's Theorem , if one wagers that there is a God, and loses, one is no worse of than the atheist. While if one wagers and wins, one wins all . Pascal later became a follower of the religious thinker Cornelius Jansen, retired to a monastery, and devoted himself to religious writing. Pascal's theorem has appealed to most intelligent adolescents evaluating religious beliefs imparted during childhood. In light of the important additional scientific insights of our day, the time has come to add a Corollary to Pascal's Theorem . For some time I have been thinking of writing something along this line, but concern over how to phrase what I have in mind to avoid the impression of heresy or doctrinal free-wheeling has held me back. With the appearance of Carl Sagan's new novel Contact (Simon & Schuster: N.Y., 1985) my problem is solved. I can say all I wish to say in the form of a book review. Sagan turns to fiction to protect his scientific reputation. Timmins reviews Sagan to protect his reputation for doctrinal soundness. Several friend have told me how impressed they were with Sagan's introduction to his television series The Cosmos. He said that there are at least a billion other worlds more or less similar to the earth in our galaxy. Probabilities are thus high that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of civilizations more advanced than ours within our spiral of the galaxy alone. Disappointingly, at the end of his series, Sagan discounted his opening remarks by saying that, so far, no contact has been made to prove that any of these civilizations exist and that we must therefore doubt that they do. At the time, I assumed he was protecting his scientific reputation from possible charges of excessive extra-scientific zeal. This assessment appears confirmed by the appearance of Contact in which he takes off all the wraps and, speaking through his protagonists, tells us how the inner man interprets his scientific understanding of the universe. Before reviewing the Sagan novel, let me share with readers an insight I gained from his Cosmos and how this contributed to the development of my Corollary to Pascal's Theorem . We can agree that none in this life is gifted with perfect knowledge. Part of the test of life is to walk by faith. Indeed, the Lord has made known that he has never given a perfect revelation because such a level of knowledge would be beyond our grasp. So many members of the Church, like me, proceed through life fabricating a series of "provisional understandings", attempting to reconcile the world we live in with the gospel as a prop to faith until fuller knowledge enables us to erect a more complete "provisional understanding". Among these matters of faith are some of the most important questions: the Sonship of Jesus, the reality of the Atonement and Resurrection, the nature of Godhood, and how the Universe was created and is governed. a. If we are among the more recently evolved civilizations, as astronomers like Sagan tell us we are, the probability is heavily in favor of there being other significantly older civilizations. Some of these are likely to be of such a level of intelligence that it is not inappropriate to consider them "gods" relative to our life form. b. Considering the progress made in the last hundred and fifty (fifty? twenty?) years in science and medicine, it is not improbable that other civilizations a thousand (fifty thousand? a million?) years older than ours, have evolved methods of super-speed-of-light travel and/or holographic communication/tele-transportation which enable them to contact such persons as Moses, Elijah, or Joseph Smith. These people will have solved the problem of mortality and developed methods of catalyzing new galaxies, solar systems, and worlds -- all according to the laws of nature. c. This being so, it is significantly more logical in our day to accept Pascal's wager that things are as religion teaches us. God, Heaven, and the Hereafter are ours if we work for them and merit them. d. If, on the contrary, God, Heaven, and Eternal Life are no more than aspirations of the human mind bred into us by generations of striving to preserve the race in circumstances under which without such psychological armor plate we would give up and die in the face of adversity before breeding, we have made such enormous progress in the last few years -- flight to the moon, space probes to the outer planets, telecommunications around the world on a virtual person-to-person basis, plus elimination of many diseases which until recently took the lives of three out of five newborns -- that within the next hundred (thousand, ten thousand) years we will have attained such a civilization ourselves. As Brigham Young once said, "We must create the Celestial Kingdom for ourselves." e. Ergo: The Timmins Corollary to Pascal's Theorem: Believe, and if you win you win all . Believe, and if you lose, your children's children will win in any case . (And there's no more rewarding a way to get there than Mormonism). Reading Sagan's novel, I consider him to have reached much the same conclusion.1 His protagonist is a gifted young woman astrophysicist who is head of the American Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), financed by the National Science Foundation and carrying our studies in Arizona and Texas. She maintains contact with similar teams around the world. Early in the search (less than five per cent of the sky has been surveyed), her array of space antennae signal the arrival of a non-random message from Vega, some 26 light years from earth. The first message is a re-broadcast of the first major earth TV presentation -- Hitler's opening address at the 1936 Munich Olympic Games -- intended to show us our message was heard and understood. The U.S. SETI team immediately notifies Washington and a Presidential decision is reached to engage the cooperation of the Brits, the Soviets, the Chinese, the Indians, the Japanese, etc., to ensure continuous monitoring of the next message to nothing will be lost due to earth rotation. 1 So has Harvard Professor and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould who has said, "The immensity of the universe, and the improbability of absolute uniqueness of any part of it, leads to the immense probability that there is some kind of life all over" (As quoted in Scientific American, August 1995, p. 41). Naturally, news this important can't be kept secret. There is widespread media speculation, and the world's religious communities are split. Some consider the message a new revelation from God. Others see it as an attempt by Satan to confuse and mislead. Some welcome the evidence of other intelligent beings in the universe, seeing this as part of God's universality. Others think this diminishes the earth as God's footstool (shades of Galileo). Sagan pulls no punches in ridiculing the beliefs of traditional Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. He mentions the Mormons as one of the many sects scrambling for position -- regrettably revealing that he knows nothing of Mormon doctrine or theology. The message is decoded after some fascinating detail recounting Sagan's ideas of how intelligent life would go about ensuring description of an important inter-galactic message. It transpires that the message consists of instructions how to build a remarkable machine requiring several new industries and the cooperation of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Weaving in some contemporary political/economic events, he has Russia and the U.S. in a race to construct the machine. Representatives of four major participating countries, plus a fifth member selected on the basis of qualifications alone, are to travel in whichever machine is ready first. The U.S. machine is nearing completing in time for liftoff just before the turn of the century -- the Millennium which has set off such discussion and released such fears and anticipation among chiliasts (according to Sagan there are a number of non-Christian millenarian religions). Alas, the U.S. machine is blown up by terrorists (Reagan has retired); and the Soviet machine has fallen so far behind schedule that there is no hope of meeting the millennial target (Gorbachev was still in office). Ah, but we've forgotten the Japanese. An important sub-contractor, the Japs have gone ahead without authorization to copy the machine on their own. Each piece has been tested to Denisonian perfection by the magnificent Japanese industrial machine. The American, Russian, Hindu, Chinese, and African scientists rush off towards Vega through "wormholes" in Time/Space, arriving on the other shore (literally a "shore") to be greeted by loved and long-departed husbands, wives, and children. These Eternals inform the travelers that the universe "Is a . . . cooperative project between many galaxies. That's what we mainly do -- engineering. Only a few of us are involved with emerging civilizations. . . . The problem is that the universe is expanding, and there's not enough matter to stop the expansion. After awhile, no new galaxies, no new stars, no new planets, no newly arisen life forms. . . . So in Cygnus A we're testing out the technology to make something new. . . . Increasing the local matter's density's the way to do it of course, It's good honest work". Not only do the "gods" create new worlds (after pooh-poohing traditional religion, Sagan invents a new type of advanced, immortal being he says is just as good, and which would be called "god" by any traditionalists on earth. And his beings are, in fact, remarkably close to the LDS concept of God: plural in number, material in nature, virtuous in character, engaged in celestial engineering to create new worlds, and constantly pushing towards the frontiers of celestial knowledge. (Pace , Brothers Brigham and Orson. Sagan gives the verdict on your long-running debate. Orson wins.) Have you ever puzzled over Joseph Smith's comment about worlds "passing away to their glory"? One of Sagan's sages attributes the "wormholes" and "black holes" to ". . . a Galaxy-wide civilization that packed up and left without leaving a trace -- except for the stations . . . . And it's the same in other galaxies also. Billions of years ago; they all went someplace. . . . We're just the caretakers. Maybe someday they'll come back." Multiple generations of gods! Do you think that you could ever, through all eternity, find out the generations where Gods began to be? Or see the grand beginning where space did not extend? Or view the last creation, where Gods and matter end? (W.W. Phelps). Indeed, friend Sagan even has two mutually revolving black holes at the center of the galaxy where some of us in our "provisional understandings" have thought that Kolob and the other "great governing ones" hold forth. When our voyagers return home, they find that instead of having been gone weeks (or at least the whole day their own watches show), they've only been gone twenty minutes in earth time. Their carefully prepared video cassettes have been erased by the magnetism of the "wormholes". The golden book has been reclaimed and all we are left with is the personal testimony of the (in this case) Five Witnesses. (If Joseph had insisted on including his and Oliver Cowdery's testimonies, we'd have had five witnesses to the Book of Mormon). Governments are afraid to accept the story without hard evidence. Participants are all promoted and given good jobs, but cautioned not to speak openly of their experience. Public announcement is made that the experiment was a "good try" failure. And we find the President, after interviewing in depth Dr. Ellie, the American participant, feeling much as Agrippa after interviewing St. Paul -- "Almost thou persuadest me . . . ." An interesting sidelight to the Sagan saga is his treatment of morality. Initially, his scientists spend much time sleeping about, as practically all intellectual amoralists are wont to do (at least until Herpes and AIDS came along). After contacting the Immortals, they (or at least the American heroine) discover a "new morality", based on the wisdom of the ages instead of the arbitrary threats of fire and brimstone of the traditional Judeo-Christian deity. The "good" reason for not sleeping around is that affection for another is too precious and sacred a commodity to be scattered improvidently. It should be focussed to maximize its yield. Shades of what our dear LDS papas taught us. And not far from Immanuel Kant. Did anyone really believe morality had any other basis that the wisdom of the ages and what a loving Heavenly Father revealed as guidelines for happy living? Sagan can't quite give up the notion that God ought to have provided a final, unequivocal proof of His existence. He hasn't yet quite grasped that life is a test we can't be quite sure we're taking, to elect the next generation of inner-directed folks who'll create the next generation of worlds without having to have someone else constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure they won't stray once given ultimate power. Towards the end of the visit to the "distant shore" one of the immortals casually mentions that they've discovered a repetitive series of digits in the umpteen millionth decimal of pi. The novel closes with the American, Chinese, and Russian "witnesses" having with the aid of the world's most powerful computers broken the code of the pi series and found that the miraculous formula represents . . . a circle! Take a circle, divide it by its diameter, carry the residual decimal to 10 to the sixtieth power, and you find a circle within a circle. Any readers who are Masons? Mormons? A final word on this interesting, rather well-written, and philosophically rewarding book. The immortals told the travelers that the whole purpose of life is "to have a good time." Is this close enough to "Man is that he might have joy"? I recommend Contact to scientists who've had their noses too close to the grindstone, to readers of science fiction whose interest goes no further than another trip beyond the stars, to youngsters questioning their dad's and priesthood advisor's teachings and who'd benefit from reading what a top notch scientist thinks when school's out, and to any student of LDS theology who'd like to compare notes with respect to his own "provisional understanding" with that of an authentic scientific (former) wunderkind who comes to his task with none of our inherited doctrinal baggage. I think the latter will find their "provisionals" at least as imaginative (and remarkably similar to) those of a renowned scientist with free-wheeling views of what the universe might be like.