Review: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If reddit is any indication, this book is a must-read for atheists/skeptics/people who are looking into those viewpoints, or perhaps everyone in general, and they've got a point there. Sagan does a good job of addressing a lot of those superstitions and folk beliefs that tend to continue to persist in our society, as well as explaining the kind of reasoning and tools that are needed to take them on when they come up. A lot of emphasis on made on such issues as the distinction between science and pseudoscience, and the reason why people are so susceptible to fallacious arguments and frauds in the first place.

You could almost call this book a "propaganda" of sorts for skeptical thinking and science as a way of life- and I have to admit I haven't felt so excited and pumped for all things science since before reading this book. But I think more importantly, it has a point with regards to the necessity of examining our own beliefs critically, as well as the dangers of allowing fraudulent arguments and pseudoscience to go unchecked in our society... Lest we repeat the mistakes of the past again. The chapter on the witch hunts was rather uncomfortable to read.

I'm ending this with a quote that struck out to me when I first read it. I think if I had to pick out the most significant message of this book, this would be it.

"Despite this apparent variety of extraterrestrials, the UFO abduction syndrome portrays, it seems to me, a banal Universe. The form of the supposed aliens is marked by a failure of the imagination and a preoccupation with human concerns. Not a single being presented in all these accounts is as astonishing as a cockatoo would be if you had never before beheld a bird. Any protozoology or bacteriology or mycology textbook is filled with wonders that far outshine the most exotic descriptions of the alien abductionists. The believers take the common elements in their stories as tokens of verisimilitude, rather than as evidence that they have contrived their stories out of a shared culture and biology."