I went to the museum of natural history last night with Dave to see a discussion with Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's widow) about the search for god. Druyan transcribed a lecture series Sagan gave in the early 80s and published it in a new book called "A personal view of the search for god." The talk was pretty much a re-hashing of all the arguments trying to reconcile science with religion. That religions answers what science cannot. That science doesn't provide a structure for ethics or morality. That the god that Sagan believed in was very different than what most people believe. And there was a lot of talk about how great Sagan was (which he was) in popularizing science.

It was a bit annoying because they dealt with this talk as if the audience knew nothing on the topic. But the audience was not your typical museum audience that knows little and wants to see cool stuff. I think this audience, showing up at 6:30 on a tuesday night (many sporting AMNH badges -- probably scientists that do research at the museum), had a far greater understanding of the issues presented than Ann Druyan had thought. So she went over a lot of the same stuff we've heard forever rather than jumping into more complicated issues or exploring certain ideas more fully.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that interesting either. But it's great to see people like Druyan dedicating her life to making science more mainstream and accessible.

The lecture will be podcast on the AMNH website... but its not up yet.