Happy Carl Sagan Day!

It’s no picnic being an atheist.

Not only do you get no respect.

Not merely are you suspected of not being a very nice person (since you probably go around saying things like “I would gladly lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins”).

But you don’t even get much time off, since most of the major holidays are religious in their inspiration (even if not so much anymore in their observance).

But if you are the sort of true-blue unbeliever who would rather submit to the rack than utter the words “Merry Christmas,” never fear. Tomorrow, November 12, is a holiday just for you.

It’s Carl Sagan Day!

I swear I’m not making this up. If you don’t believe me, check out the official Carl Sagan Day website. Here’s another one.

The concept is also being widely promoted by the Center for Free Inquiry and its various affiliates, such as this one in Michigan which lays the point of the whole exercise on the line:

The Center for Inquiry is working to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values. . . .

Through education, research, publishing, and social services, CFI seeks to present affirmative alternatives based on scientific naturalism. The Center is also interested in providing rational ethical alternatives to the reigning paranormal and religious systems of belief, and in developing communities where like-minded individuals can meet and share experiences.

It’s funny about those “affirmative alternatives” to religion, based on “scientific naturalism.” They were tried already once before–during the French Revolution.

You remember, right? The priests were beheaded, the churches turned into Temples of Reason, and the Culte de la Raison (the Religion of Reason) instituted as the official state philosophy.

Ah, cela fait rêver, as the French say—it’s enough to set one of our modern sans-culottes to dreaming.

Alas, there is no immediate prospect of their bringing the Culte de la Raison back in 21st- century America.

But in the meantime, our contemporary Dantons and Robespierres can at least get together to celebrate the birthday of the great Carl Sagan.

Wait a minute. The great who?

If you are under the age of 40, it is unlikely you’ve ever heard of Carl Sagan (1934–1996). He was an astronomer at Cornell University, who enjoyed a brief hour of celebrity in the early 1980s with some pretty good popular science books and an interesting TV series called Cosmos. Maybe you can still catch the reruns on the Discovery Channel or someplace.

He is also one of the founders of the science of exobiology—a field of study closely related to cryptobiology.

Today, though, he is mostly remembered for being lampooned as the guy who repeated the phrase ”billions and billions of stars” at every opportunity with a special smarmy emphasis. I think it was supposed to be about putting all those late-20th-century folks who still thought the earth was at the center of the universe in their place.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against celebrating great scientists. Science, after all, is one of the highest manifestations of the human spirit (or soul, if you prefer).

Newton Day, very good. Maxwell Day, fine. Einstein Day, all right by me.

But it is one thing to distinguish oneself in science. The men and women who do that deserve our respect and, at the very highest levels of achievement, our collective remembrance, as well. We ought to honor the great scientists for the same reason that we honor the great philosophers, the great poets and novelists, the great artists and composers.

It is something else entirely, though, to distinguish oneself in science popularization. That is a singularly slender accomplishment upon which to base an entire religion.

Decidedly, the people promoting Carl Sagan Day need to look around for a worthier object of their veneration.

They could start with Lynn Margulis—Sagan’s ex-wife. Her life’s work has been of far greater scientific importance than Carl’s ever was.

I’m not sure how she would feel about the honor, though.