If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constant… - Carl Sagan

The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition.

No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn’t he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why’s he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there’s one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer.

Space is nearly empty. There is virtually no chance that one of the Voyagers will ever enter another solar system — and this is true even if every star in the sky is accompanied by planets. The instructions on the record jackets, written in what we believe to be readily comprehensible scientific hieroglyphics, can be read, and the contents of the records understood, only if alien beings, somewhere in the remote future, find Voyager in the depths of interstellar space. Since both Voyagers will circle the center of the Milky Way Galaxy essentially forever, there is plenty of time for the records to be found — if there's anyone out there to do the finding.
We cannot know how much of the records they would understand. Surely the greetings will be incomprehensible, but their intent may not be. (We thought it would be impolite not to say hello.) The hypothetical aliens are bound to be very different from us — independently evolved on another world. Are we really sure they could understand anything at all of our message? Every time I feel these concerns stirring, though, I reassure myself. Whatever the incomprehensibilities of the Voyager record, any alien ship that finds it will have another standard by which to judge us. Each Voyager is itself a message. In their exploratory intent, in the lofty ambition of their objectives, in their utter lack of intent to do harm, and in the brilliance of their design and performance, these robots speak eloquently for us.
But being much more advanced scientists and engineers than we — otherwise they would never be able to find and retrieve the small, silent spacecraft in interstellar space — perhaps the aliens would have no difficulty understanding what is encoded on these golden records. Perhaps they would recognize the tentativeness of our society, the mismatch between our technology and our wisdom. Have we destroyed ourselves since launching Voyager, they might wonder, or have we gone on to greater things?
Or perhaps the records wil

A new generation gladly abandons its critical and skeptical faculties. Old slogans and hatreds are dusted off. What was only recently muttered guiltily is now offered as political axiom and agenda.

If we are to prevent this climactic danger from working its worst, we will simply all have to work together, and for a long time. The principle obstacle is, of course, inertia, resistance to change—huge, worldwide, interlocking industrial, economic, and political establishments all beholden to fossil fuels, when fossil fuels are the problem. In the United States, as the evidence for the seriousness of global warming mounts, the political will to do something about it seems to be shriveling.