Jill Hutchinson's Reviews > The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

All of us of a certain age remember Carl Sagan and his fascinating television program Cosmos. He explained science in words that the layman could understand and he approaches this book in the same manner. His basic premise here is “how can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience, New Age thinking, and fundamentalist zealotry and the testable hypothesis of science”.

To support this premise, he provides case studies and examples of the various beliefs, myths and generally accepted ideas which many people accept as truth and proceeds to test them against the facts of science. It is guaranteed to disturb some readers or even make them angry as he doesn’t spare the sacred cows of alien presence, crop circles, ESP, and even religion. “Prove it”, he says, “show me the facts”, “give me something tangible”…….he does not give credence to eye witness reports and provides examples how these reports can change over time without the realization of the reporter. He never demeans those who say they were abducted by aliens or healed by faith healers; he merely show how these events have no basis in fact and unfortunately are sometimes scams which further muddies the waters. He questions, for example, if a faith healer is truly gifted by God to heal the “sick and the lame”, then why doesn’t an amputee grow a new limb. Or that even though the presence of crop circles was proven to be made by people having some fun, there are those who continue to believe that the circles were made by aliens. People believe what they want to believe and condemn science for attempting to question these beliefs.

He spends a little too much time on alien abduction, only because he was involved with the study of that phenomenon but it does tend to slow things down a bit. This book will be controversial to some readers and a breath of fresh air to others. In either case, it is a fascinating read.