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Title: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
List Price: $15.95
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| The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Ballantine Books Sharpen your critical thinking skills | It's hard enough to understand how Sagan could know as much about astronomy as he did, let alone the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. But that his range of knowledge was also as wide as this book demonstrates on pseudo-science and supernaturalisms is stunning, let alone that he could write on all these topics.
I wasn't aware just how evil the treatment of witches was: I'm glad Sagan spared at least some of the details. That chapter alone was worth the book for me. Nor was I aware to what extent people actually did believe that demons were real. The attitudes and behavior about witchcraft and demons truly makes me feel I do not understand at all the mindset at the time of Rome or even during the Middle Ages. The chapter on James Randi's Carlos hoax I'll treasure: next time someone tries to sell me on telepathy or reincarnation, I hope I think of this immediately. Good information and examples here as well about hypnoisis, UFO's, hallucinations and a good deal more. This book amounts to an implicit course in choosing a scientific outlook and becoming, as Sagan would have said, a "baloney detector".
It is appalling how small a percentage of people in the U.S. accept evolution and natural selection. Have we really needed brilliant scientists like Sagan and Dawkins to have wasted time trying to convince people of just how well-founded evolution is? And yet reading in this book about how many people believe in UFOs, telepathy, ghosts, astrology, it puts the unwillingness to acknowledge evolution into perspective. Scary? Or do you doubt that it is? In either case, this easy to read book is packed with reasons to prefer a scientific approach to life. Sagan's lectures in
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
provide good reasons not to feel threatened by science but rather feel welcome its help in enhancing our sense of wonder about our lives ... and turning to knowledge instead of being distracted by foolish beliefs.
| | The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Ballantine Books Scientifically illiterate Americans | | insight as to why the sheep believe in ghosts, God, aliens, luck charms. Well done. | | The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Ballantine Books Should be required reading | I wish Carl Sagan had lived long enough to produce a revised edition of this book to incorporate the rise of the Internet and the signal to noise ratio present on it. Not only does he give you a practical tool kit of critical thinking, he provides examples of how such a kit was used or ignored in our past. often with bloody and sad results.
People holding rigid convictions are often threatened by people who use critical thinking and for good reason. Critical and skeptical thinking plays no favorites and will confront religion as easily as it does the charlatan claiming to speak to dead relatives for money. Sagan repeatedly reminds the reader that a choice must be made, know the truth no matter how scary it may appear or delude yourself with comforting thoughts.
Reading this book will not get you to think Carl Sagan's way, it will teach you to think your own way. It can seriously alter your world-view when you begin to examine why you believe what you do. We need critical thinkers today more than ever as we become flooded with information from sources of unknown quality and intent. The human mind wants to believe what it is told and even the best minds fall victim to distortions and lies. Having a mental system in place to help you evaluate what you see and hear will go to great lengths to protect you from your own gullibility.
There is a reason the scientific method is emphasized by Sagan, it has been proven to work over and over. It is a self correcting system that thrives not on belief but on testable facts. It welcomes scrutiny and the attack of long held ideas in order to refine what we know to be true.
Sagan makes an elegant point that to be a critical thinker you have to be willing to change your mind when facts and evidence challenge what you currently think. Holding fast to a rigid conviction makes you a convict in your own mind and is such a waste.
An idea is only as good as the attacks it survives. To weakly attack an idea because you don't want it to fail undermines the point of thinking at all. | | The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Ballantine Books A Candle in the Dark | I'm so lucky to have read this book several years ago when I was a young teen. In an age of increasingly bitter attacks on religion by folks who seem to be more angry at God than skeptical of him, it's refreshing to return to Carl's warm and persuasive technique. Rather than inviting the reader to attack religious ideas and their hapless hosts, Dr. Sagan presents skepticism, materialism, and the scientific method as what they are - invaluable tools of discovery for the curious mind.
It seems like we skeptics are, thanks to Hitchens and Dawkins, becoming the arrogant killjoys and persecutors that Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" makes us out to be. I've always considered this book to be the ultimate atheist primer, and never have we been more in need of this lucid, breezy, and amusing introduction to free thinking. | | The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Ballantine Books excellent book,sagan saw the future. | | warning: sheepole people need not bother reading this book.You need to be able to have a semblance of Critical thinking, and this book helps shed light on ufo's,ghosts, and all the other invisible friends.anyone who can see the trouble this country is currently in, needs to read this book. science allways prevails! | | The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Ballantine Books Product Description | "A glorious book . . . A spirited defense of science . . . From the first page to the last, this book is a manifesto for clear thought."
*Los Angeles Times
"POWERFUL . . . A stirring defense of informed rationality. . . Rich in surprising information and beautiful writing."
*The Washington Post Book World
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don't understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
"COMPELLING."
*USA Today
"A clear vision of what good science means and why it makes a difference. . . . A testimonial to the power of science and a warning of the dangers of unrestrained credulity."
*The Sciences
"PASSIONATE."
*San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle | | The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Ballantine Books Amazon.com | | Carl Sagan muses on the current state of scientific thought, which offers him marvelous opportunities to entertain us with his own childhood experiences, the newspaper morgues, UFO stories, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of pseudoscience. Along the way he debunks alien abduction, faith-healing, and channeling; refutes the arguments that science destroys spirituality, and provides a "baloney detection kit" for thinking through political, social, religious, and other issues. |
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