Carl Sagan was probably the best known scientist in the West in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980 his 13 part series, Cosmos, aired and was a spectacular hit. In the very opening of the series he told his audience this:

So according to Carl Sagan, the cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. To elaborate he meant that the universe was made only from things in our universe -- matter and energy. Explicitly he was saying that there is no God. That was not a statement of the finding of science, made by him as a scientist, it was a statement of Carl Sagan’s personal belief.

But then just a year later Francis Crick, one of the discoverer’s of DNA, the famous double helix, an atheist, said something quite disturbing, well for an atheist that is:

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."

Stephen Meyer’s book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, published in 2021, may have delivered the final death blow to the popularist atheism that Carl Sagan had opened his Cosmos series with. Today all the science seems to be going against any belief that there’s no Creator outside the universe. But more than that, the fall of atheism, if that’s what we’re witnessing, taken to its logical conclusion, spells the end of the West’s self loathing and weird ideologies that are based on the view that the Bible is not the truth and a return to societies based on Judaeo Christian values – which Tom Holland in his book Dominion, said was and is the reason for the success of the West – or more precisely societies that are governed in accordance with God’s laws and ethics as revealed in the Bible. For the West, and the world, I believe, this will come as a great liberation. This series will explore all of those issues and their ramifications.

Tag words: Carl Sagan; Cosmos; Francis Crick; DNA; double helix; atheist; Stephen Meyer; The Return of the God Hypothesis; Tom Holland; Dominion; Bible; John Lennox; Big Bang Theory; Fred Hoyle; Charles Darwin; The Origin of the Species; Geraint Lewis; Luke Barnes; A Fortunate Universe; Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation; anthropic coincidences; Goldilocks universe; Genesis 2:7; Richard Dawkins; The Greatest Show on Earth; Dr Stephen Iacoboni; The Undying Soul;

A great thinker said that the the medieval mind was broader than ours because they believed that the ultimate realities were outside place and time and that man could commune with them through mystical experience and after the death of the body. Who was it that said that?

Tag words: Dr Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Nazi Death camps; the no-future generation; give-up-it is; depression; aggression; addiction; the existential vacuum; logotherapy; Harold S Kushner; When Bad Things Happen to Good People; Dr Iacoboni; The Undying Soul; Henry Bamford Parkes; The Divine Order; Telos;

In his book, 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson wrote:

So why not call this a book of "guidelines," a far more relaxed, user-friendly and less rigid sounding term than "rules"?

Because these really are rules. And the foremost rule is that you must take responsibility for your own life. Period.

One might think that a generation that has heard endlessly, from their more ideological teachers, about the rights, rights, rights that belong to them, would object to being told that they would do better to focus instead on taking responsibility. Yet this generation, many of whom were raised in small families by hyper-protective parents, on soft-surface playgrounds, and then taught in universities with "safe spaces" where they don't have to hear things they don't want to—schooled to be risk-averse—has among it, now, millions who feel stultified by this underestimation of their potential resilience and who have embraced Jordan's message that each individual has ultimate responsibility to bear; that if one wants to live a full life, one first sets one's own house in order; and only then can one sensibly aim to take on bigger responsibilities. The extent of this reaction has often moved both of us to the brink of tears.

Sometimes these rules are demanding. They require you to undertake an incremental process that over time will stretch you to a new limit. That requires, as I've said, venturing into the unknown. Stretching yourself beyond the boundaries of your current self requires carefully choosing and then pursuing ideals: ideals that are up there, above you, superior to you—and that you can't always be sure you will reach.

Life is not always easy, not always in your control. How would this generation have coped in the Nazi Death Camps. Dr Frankl answered that question – because he had just done exactly that.

Tag words: Jordan Peterson; 12 Rules for Life; safe spaces; responsibility; life; Dr Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Nazis; meaning of life; Rainer Marie Wilkie; SS; death camps; gas chambers; Auschwitz; Lord's Prayer; Shema Yisrael; victimhood; oppressed; tragic optimism; logotherapy;

Oppressors and oppressed. Victims and victimhoodr. Dr Viktor Frankl showed that there was an easy way any victim could escape their victimhood.

Tag words: Oppressors and oppressed; Victims; victimhood; Dr Viktor Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Auschwitz; Sigmund Freud; Alfred Adler; Darwin; Theory of Evolution; Dr Iacoboni; the mass murderer of Steinhof; Lubianka prison; Freedom; Responsibility; Arthur Miller; Incident at Vichy; Nazis; Frederick Nietzsche; Twilight of the Idols;

Dr Frankl, now liberated from the death camps, wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning: We came to meadows full of flowers. We saw and realized that they were there, but we had no feelings about them. The prisoners of the Nazi death camps had been gutted. Would they ever feel again?

Tag words: Dr Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Nazi death camps; God; Dr Iacoboni; The Undying Soul; St Paul; 2 Timothy 2; 2 Timothy 3; soul; Third Reich; depersonalization; Psalm 118:5; fear God;

Can you escape your death? Not the last one, of course, no one can escape that one, but can you escape an early death? Viktor Frankl did – by sheer chance and in this part I’m going to tell you how he managed that.

Tag words: Viktor Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Nazi death camps; Auschwitz; Death in Teheran; Hitler; Thousand Year Reich; Türkheim; God; soul; Red Cross; Dr Iacoboni; The Undying Soul; acute leukemia; Wolves;

What’s the one thing that you wouldn’t expect to find in the Nazi death camps?

Tag words: Nazi death camps; Dr Iacoboni; The Undying Soul; acute leukemia; the Lord; God; Dr Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Türkheim Concentration Camp; Dachau; Cannibalism;

Dr Frankl, Dr Iacoboni and Carter would have definitely related to the lyrics of the Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”:

Life goin' nowhere
Somebody help me
Somebody help me, yeah
Life goin' nowhere
Somebody help me, yeah
I'm stayin' alive

But would they? Would they stay alive?

Tag words: Dr Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; brutality; SS; Nazi Death Camp; Dr Iacoboni; Reverend Billy Graham; atheist; God; omnipotent; free will; bargain with God; death;

Death, in the form of cancer, had invaded Maria’s body – but she wasn’t afraid. Why not? Who would win – Maria or death? So many before, in her position, had been carried off by the Grim Reaper. Over 50 years before, in Hitler’s ever diminishing Greater German Reich, for Jews, death could come at any time from any one of many places or people in the Nazi death camps, or they could, instead, take their own lives – but these men didn’t choose that path after one man gave them the gift of revealing to them their reason why they had to live.

Tag words: Death; cancer; Grim Reaper; Greater German Reich; Hitler; Dr Iacoboni; The Undying Soul; acute leukemia; God; Auschwitz; Dr Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Harold Kushner; group therapy; meaning;

There is the other side. Crossing over to the other side. To Dr Viktor Frankl it meant one thing – betrayal. To Dr Stephen Iacoboni it meant something else, something divine. Let’s dive deep into these two very different experiences.

Tag words: Crossing over to the other side; Dr Viktor Frankl; The Meaning of Life; Capos; Dr Stephen Iacoboni; The Undying Soul; Nazis; SS; gas chambers; Jews; botulism; lung cancer; chemotherapy; radiation; Carl Jung;