Children play with toy soldiers," said Keith, looking now at Jag. "Child races play with real ones. Maybe it's time all of us grew up a bit." - Robert J. Sawyer

Sagan may not have believed in the God of the Bible, but he at least allowed the possibility of a creator.
Or did he? Carl was no more obliged to believe what he wrote in his sole work of fiction than George Lucas was required to believe in the Force.

It turned out that big-bucks science had been a purely mid-twentieth-century phenomenon, starting with the Manhattan Project and ending with the fall of the Soviet Union.

He cursed himself for thinking anything this complex would end up not being a source of problems.