Questioner: Do you think that your people will go ahead?
CS: Why do something so foolish? A very good question. And here we are getting into murky issues of politics and psychology and so on, but I don't believe in ducking questions-I'll tell you what I think. I think that the alternative is abhorrent to the powers that be. The alternative is that you negotiate massive, verifiable, bilateral reductions in nuclear weapons, which would be an admission that the entire nuclear arms race has been foolish beyond belief, and that all of those leaders-American and Russian and British and French-for the last forty years, who bought this bill of goods put their nations at peril. It is such an uncomfortable admission that it takes great character strength to admit to it. So I think that rather than admit to it we are looking at a desperate attempt to have still more technology to get us out of the problem that the technology got us into in the first place. The ultimate technological fix. Or, as it is sometimes called, "the fallacy of the last move." Just one more ratchet up the arms race, please let us have it, and then everything will be fine forever. And if there's anything that's clear from the history of the nuclear arms race, it's that this isn't the case. Each side, generally the Americans, invents a new weapons system, and then the other side, generally the Soviets, invents it back. And then both nations are less secure than they were in the first place, but they've spent a charming amount of money and everybody's happy. Now, there's no question that if you wave a trillion dollars at the world aerospace community, you will have organizations, corporations, military officers, and so on interested in it, whether or not it will work.
And I'm sure that this is a part of it. But it's not the main part. The main part is a tragic reluctance to come to grips with the bankruptcy of the nuclear arms race. In the United States, it's eight consecutive presidents, something like that, of both political parties, that have bought it. Most of the people who run the country are advocates of the nuclear arms race, or have been in the past. It's very hard to say, "Sorry, we made a mistake," on an issue of this size. That's my guess.
Questioner: I think for the first time yesterday President Reagan offered to share the technology of SDI with the Russians.
CS: It's not the first time. He's been saying that all along.
Questioner: Yeah, but isn't it perhaps preferable that the joint efforts of the great powers be extended for perhaps defensive matters rather than the offensive weapons that have occupied them for so long?
CS: No, I don't agree. We're talking about a shield. Let's imagine another kind of shield, the contraceptive shield. Let's suppose that the contraceptive shield lets only 10 percent of the spermatozoa through. Is that better than nothing, or isn't it? I maintain that that's worse than nothing-among other things, for giving a false sense of security. But on the idea of sharing the technology, this is an administration that will not give an IBM personal computer to the Soviets. And we are asked to believe that the United States will hand over the eleventh-generation battle-management computer, which is decades off, and which will be so complicated that its program cannot be written by a human being or any collection of human beings. It can be written only by another computer. It cannot be debugged by any human being. It can be debugged only by another computer. And it can never be tested except in a nuclear war itself. And this we will hand over to the Russians? In either case, if we believed it would work or if we didn't believe it would work, I can't imagine the Russians saying, "Thank you very much. We will now have this as the principal mainstay of the security of the Soviet Union, this program that the Americans have very kindly just given over to us."
Nor can I imagine that the United States, after taking a sober look at this idea, would turn over the security of the country to this mad scheme. A system that has to work perfectly to protect the country and which can never be tested. Trust us. It'll be fine. Don't worry about it.
Questioner: Can religious beliefs adapt to the future?
CS: Well, it's certainly an important question. My feeling is, it depends on what religion is about. If religion is about saying how the natural world is, then to be successful it must adopt the methods, procedures, techniques of science and then become indistinguishable from science. By no means does it follow that that's all that religion is about. And I tried to indicate at the end of my last lecture some of the many areas in which religion could provide a useful role in contemporary society and where religions, by and large, are not. But that's very different from saying how the world is or came to be. And there the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions have simply adopted the best science of the time. But it was a long time ago, the time of sixth-century B.C., during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. That's where the science of the Old Testament comes from. And it seems to me important that the religions accommodate to what has been learned in the twenty-six centuries since. Some have, of course, to varying degrees; many have not.
Questioner: [inaudible]
CS: The god that Einstein was talking about is completely different, as I've tried to say several times in these lectures, from the standard Judeo-Christian-Islamic god. It is not a god who intervenes in everyday life, no microintervention, no prayer. It's not even clear that this god made the universe in the first place. So that's a very different use of the word "god" than what is, I gather, your attempt to justify the existing religion. That we have to use our sense organs and our intellectual abilities to comprehend these issues, I think, is apparent. Perhaps they are limited, but it's all we have. So do the best with what we have. Don't foist, I say, our predispositions on the universe. Look openly at the universe and see how it is. And how is it? It is that there's order in there. It's an amazing amount of order, not that we have introduced but that is there already. Now, you may choose to conclude from that fact that there is an ordering principle and that God exists, and then we come back to all the other arguments: Where did the ordering principle come from? Where did God come from? If you say that I must not ask the question of where God came from, then why must I ask the question of where the universe came from? And so on.
Questioner: Professor Sagan, I'd like advice, please. Is there anything you think an individual could do to change in some way the world situation, or should we just sit back and accept it?
CS: Nope, you don't have to sit back. I think if we let the governments do it, we will continue in the very desultory direction we have already been going for forty years or more. I think the first thing, in a democracy, where there is at least some pretense about the people controlling government policy, is that every democratic process ought to be used. You can make sure that those whom you vote for have rational views on these matters. You can work hard to make sure that there is a real difference of opinion in the alternative candidates. You can write letters to newspapers and so on. But more important than any of that, I believe, is that each of us must equip him- or herself with a "baloney-detection kit."
That is, the governments like to tell us that everything is fine, they have everything under control, and leave them alone. And many of us, especially on issues that involve technology, such as nuclear war, have the sense that it's too complicated. We can't figure it out. The governments have the experts. Surely they know what they're doing. They must be in favor of the support of our country, whichever our country happens to be. And anyway, this is such a painful issue that I want to put it out of my mind, which psychiatrists call denial. And it seems to me that that is a prescription for suicide, that we must, all of us, understand these issues, because our lives depend on them, and the lives of our children and our grandchildren. That's not an issue you want to take on faith. If ever there was a circumstance in which the democratic process ought to take hold, this is it. Something that determines our future and all that we hold dear. And therefore I would say that the first thing to do is to realize that governments, all governments, at least on occasion, lie. And some of them do it all the time-some of them do it only every second statement-but, by and large, governments distort the facts in order to remain in office.