Yes, Carl surely could turn a phrase. He was also self-contradictory in his opposition toward any “intelligent design” thinking. There is nothing “unscientific” in the idea that a pattern of nonrandom configuration of atoms or processes (as in DNA or mitochondrial processes)reflects an Intelligent Designer. Yet Sagan rejected such notions, calling such people names, preferring his closed-system paradigm, that “the universe is all that is, that has been, or ever will be” (or words to that effect). Yet Carl, like other evolutionary astronomers, kept his listening equipment trained on the heavens, yearning to hear some pattern of NONRANDOM signals that might betray the existence of an Intelligent Designer of those very signals.