Discussion Group Report

Carl Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World, is an outstanding work that describes practically every known form of superstitious belief in today's world and tells us how to distinguish between authentic science on the one hand and pseudoscience and anti-science on the other. These latter have become a favorite lure used by present-day peddlers of superstition.

Sagan asks the crucial question, "If we teach only the findings and products of science--no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be--without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience? Both are then presented as unsupported assertion."

He points out the importance of democracy, with its attendant freedom of expression and separation of powers, for the advancement of science. Thomas Jefferson, himself a scientist, explained, "In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved..."

Sagan says part of the duty of citizenship is not to be intimidated into conformity. He advocates that the oath of citizenship taken by recent immigrants and the pledge that students recite include something like, "I promise to question everything my leaders tell me," and "I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgments." The pledge, he says, should be directed at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights rather than to the flag and the nation.

The founders of our nation, he adds, were well-educated products of the European Enlightenment and students of history. At that time there were only 2.5 million American citizens. Today there are 100 times more. If there were 10 people of Jefferson's caliber then, there ought to be 10 x 100 = 1,000 Tom Jeffersons today. Where are they?

Most of us are for freedom of expression when there's a danger our own views will be suppressed. We're not all that upset, though, when views we despise encounter a little censorship here and there. The system founded by Jefferson, Madison, and their colleagues offers means of expression to those who do not understand its origins and wish to replace it by something very different. Jefferson proffered, "If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." He continued, "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither."

Science, or its delicate mix of openness and skepticism, and its encouragement of diversity and debate, is a prerequisite for continuing the delicate experiment of freedom in an industrial and highly technological society. The Bill of Rights de-coupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind--each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager to impose this truth on others. The Framers of the Bill of Rights had before them the example of England, where the ecclesiastical crime of heresy and the secular crime of treason had become nearly indistinguishable.

Sagan concludes, "Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don't have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen--or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility, and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness."

Carl Sagan died 29 December 1996. His role as a voice of reason, a researcher, a defender of the scientific method, a skeptic, a storyteller, and an inspiration is greatly missed.