"Keep your baloney detector ready"

Everyone who watched the series "Cosmos" on PBS remembers this famous line by the late Carl Sagan; host of the renowned series. He often used this phrase when confronting philosophies that made assumptions about the cosmos not verifiable by testing and experimentation. His dogma was this: "Any viewpoint that did not pass these tools of science was simply 'baloney'." And he enthusiastically encouraged us to be ever vigilant against such things ourselves.  

Remember the line "The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be"? When Dr Sagan dogmatically told that well remembered line you would think that it came from the Scientist of all scientists. The statement was presented as a proven scientific fact that stood water-tight against any other non-verifiable view of the origin of Dr Sagan's cosmos. 

The simple truth of the matter is that there is no scenario concerning the origin of the cosmos that can be verified and tested. Certainly not Dr Sagan's above statement. Yes, there's lots of data that can show evidence of certain things. For example, the now accepted scientific theory that the universe had a beginning. But to make such a broad statement about the non-existence of God and pretend to pass it off as pure science is.... well, just baloney!

Thank you Dr Sagan for your prudent reminder of being ever watchful for mere conjecture marketed as scientific fact. We are all more critical thinkers because of it!