Carl Sagan, Sage

I went hunting on the web for something and somehow ended up on a page of Carl Sagan quotes and realized that here may be a source of Straczynski's beliefs as espoused by the Minbari and Jeremiah. I read Sagan's  books years ago when they first came out but never noted these passages beyond the most famous one from the TV series "Cosmos": We are made of star stuff; we are a way for the cosmos to know itself. There is another quote from the book "Cosmos" that expands on that idea:  We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.  The quote that truly spoke to me comes from "The Pale Blue Dot": In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. I think it is time for such a faith to emerge before our old religions, fueled by fundamentalists who, in their zealotry, start us on a path to destruction. We need to grow up.