Carl Sagan II:
Let there be no doubt, Carl Sagan was a hardcore agnostic, and his disdain for mysticism and superstition – practically code for "religion" – was very thinly veiled. Point taken. Not mincing niceties about true spirituality being different from how humans have used and abused spirituality for masked secular (ego-driven) or de facto political ends, religion, on the whole, has been disastrous for the progressive development of humankind and scientific inquiry through the ages.

Carl Sagan is probably one of my "heroes" in terms of the influence he had on my thinking, even though he probably would not have been impressed a decade ago when I was tying in parts of "Cosmos" with the Lotus Sutra that I was reading at the time. He was instrumental in impressing upon me the need for critical thinking when sifting through ideas, looking for resonant personal truths.

More importantly, he emphasized a perspective that looked at all of humanity. An alien visiting our planet might be more likely to hone in on our similarities, rather than our differences. So in developing my own spiritual worldview, it was important to have one that didn't exclude, condemn, or discriminate against other worldviews.

So any spirituality that promulgated an "us against them" mentality went immediately out the door, but paradoxically, one that I adopted also needed to be inclusive about worldviews that did exclude, condemn, or discriminate against other worldviews. That is, they couldn't be discounted on their face, but needed to be examined and incorporated in a functional way.

If I'm calling it a "world view", I want it to be expansive as possible, taking into consideration as much of the world as possible. So if I think my belief covers the world, it doesn't do to automatically eliminate huge swaths of representative views just because they don't conform to mine. Other people feel as strongly about their views as I do mine, so their views must have as much validity as I feel mine do.

The working theory is that if I can summarily, in a furry fit of self-righteousness, invalidate their views as wrong, then my views are just as subject to invalidation. If I can somehow incorporate their views into mine, at least take them into consideration, then my views might be that much stronger. But no summary invalidation, and at least respect that they feel strongly about their views.

It's hard, though, in a reality that is based on duality and discrimination – distinguishing between this and that. When it comes to religions or spiritual worldviews, we like to think our beliefs are taking in the big picture, that they are universal. What good is a God that only holds power and sway over one group and not another?

In order to accomplish our limited human perception of a universal God, we imbue ourselves with the right, in God's name of course, to condemn people who don't worship our God to hell. With that kind of discrimination, division is automatic, respect is impossible, and another person's different worldview is an offense, regardless of how harmonizing it tries to be.