“The Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan discusses the importance of not believing all the pseudoscience nonsense that we see on t.v. and learning about true science and the real reasons for certain anomalies. The book begins with a memorable limo ride of Dr. Sagan where he ruins the beliefs of the driver by explaining the science behind the falsehoods he is fascinated by. I found the beginning of chapter 2 to be quite ominous in that he discussed his fears for this country and the world. The lack of science programs, fewer and fewer manufacturing companies in the country and how the media is working to dumb down society. Later chapters went into depth to discuss specific pseudoscience myths and how they can be disproven.
The chapter I found most interesting was Chapter 4 entitled Aliens. This chapter delves into people's fascination with Alien abductions. Carl Sagan discusses how if all these stories were true people would be getting abducted all the time and you would definitely notice your neighbor being abducted. He also discussed the fascination that aliens supposedly have with sexual reproduction and how they are always trying to reproduce with humans in these stories. To disprove these stories Sagan went on about how if these Aliens are so much more advanced than us, why would they want to reproduce and abduct humans as well as use instruments that are so similar to ours. This chapter was also very interesting to me because of how so many people today are saying that they have seen ufo's or aliens even the U.S. Navy has spotted unidentified objects that were all over the news in recent months. People are still questioning if there is life beyond Earth to this day and can be easily led to believe in Aliens, UFOs and abductions as can be witnessed in the video below, even though there is a reasonable explanation for the man's sudden disappearance.
The book “The Demon Haunted World” relates to many of the topics we covered in class, it is all about using science to disprove many of the different myths that the world still believes in. In the alien chapter Dr. Sagan goes into depth about the subject we covered briefly in class. He also discusses false memories a lot. How through therapy and hypnosis many people come to believe that they have experienced all of these unusual anomalies that can be disproven with science or with just some common sense. Dr. Sagan is a true man of science and feels it is just as fascinating as believing in the supernatural, witches or extraterrestrials.
This book was vey difficult to read in that there were many scientific terms and it was sometimes hard to follow. The many examples of the different witch trials in chapter 7 for example were confusing, but in the end we learned that the accusations of witch were a way for people to explain what they couldn’t understand and a way for the government and church of the time to control people. “The Demon Haunted World” was worth reading in that it will help people to understand how these beliefs of the supernatural can’t really exist and how we should rely on our own brains when dealing with crisis or world issues instead of believing that our problems are the result of the paranormal.
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