The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Author:Carl Sagan [Sagan, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2011-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

Astrology, channeling, Ouija boards, predicting the future, and much else is forbidden. The author of Deuteronomy does not argue that such practices fail to deliver what they promise. But they are "abominations"— perhaps suitable for other nations, but not for the followers of God. And even the Apostle Paul, so credulous on so many matters, counsels us to "prove all things."

The twelfth century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides goes further than Deuteronomy, in that he makes explicit that these pseudosciences don't work:

It is forbidden to engage in astrology, to utilize charms, to whisper incantations. . . All of these practices are nothing more than lies and deceptions used by ancient pagan peoples to deceive the masses and lead them astray. . . Wise and intelligent people know better. [From the Mishneh Torah, Avodah Zara, Chapter 11.]

Some claims are hard to test—for example, if an expedition fails to find the ghost or the brontosaurus, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Others are easier—for example, flatworm cannibalistic learning or the announcement that colonies of bacteria subjected to an antibiotic on an agar dish thrive when their prosperity is prayed for (compared to control bacteria unre-deemed by prayer). A few—for example, perpetual motion machines—can be excluded on grounds of fundamental physics. Except for them, it's not that we know before examining the evidence that the notions are false; stranger things are routinely incorporated into the corpus of science.

The question, as always, is how good is the evidence? The burden of proof surely rests on the shoulders of those who advance such claims. Revealingly, some proponents hold that skepticism is a liability, that true science is inquiry without skepticism. They are perhaps halfway there. But halfway doesn't do it.

Parapsychologist Susan Blackmore describes one of the steps in her transformation to a more skeptical attitude on "psychic" phenomena:

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