Friday, July 13, 2012

The Demon Haunted World

The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a fairly straight forward dissection of several, if not all, of the world's more curious points brought before us by the mired bog known as pseudoscience. Of how the majority of every out of the ordinary thing occurring in the world is simply someone looking to fool the masses into believing something to which there is no proof or way to confirm such an act or subject existed in the first place. Though considering the gullibility of the uninformed masses such a task would not be all that hard thus Carl Sagan wrote this book to enlighten those who believed that a great deal of these fallacies were simply a religious group or power hungry individuals seeking to a certain amount of control over the ideas the grand populace. Particularly chapter six which shares the books namesake does bring forth the idea that all things we recently believe to be "aliens" could have been "demons" back in the "Dark Ages" or that witches were, in fact, just women accused and persecuted by priests, rival, etc. to simply be rid of them for the so called inquisitors personal gain, and none of the "witches" were given the chance to defend their case or present evidence lest the high knowledge of the church be called into question.

The book itself is a valuable tool towards better understanding the course at large. Its entire structure is towards  better realizing the reeking and festering amounts of pseudoscience lingering around even now, seeking the betterment of those who use it to take advantage of ignorant or desperate persons seeking relief when other outlets offer no recourse. Even early on in the book brings to bare the self imposed hallucinations which brought about the idea of UFO abductions by little gray men with giant eyes is just as real as say demonic possession, and I challenge anyone to say there is proof of either without first making sure the proof can be found true at all, though granted how does one even investigate these claims as no real tools exist to prove them outside of pseudoscience which is in no way credible. While there is no way to really stop the flow of pseudoscience, it is still possible to say reading this book can keep yourself out of that particular mess, though most of which is just unproven nonsense or "miracle" garbage with no way to prove by any other source it even works. Thus this book repost has come to a close and apologizes to any who were waiting on it on baited breath.

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