Demon Haunted World Book Report

The Demon Haunted World is a collection of scientific explanations written by Carl Sagan. Sagan is a famous astronomer who has written many books. Sagan is known for having very strong and pointed opinions that come across as offensive to some people. These strong opinions are very evident in his books. In his book the Demon Haunted World, he used his strong opinions to invalidate the most popular pseudoscience. This is one of the reasons that I choose to read this book . I believe in some pseudoscience, so I was interested in hearing the counterargument to these heavily debated topics.

Sagan starts his story by talking about the troubling fact that so many people in this world are scientifically illiterate. It is estimated that 95% of people are scientifically

illiterate. Sagan attributes this illiteracy to media filling the commons person’s brain with pseudoscience. This illiteracy is also very dangerous because people won’t understand certain advanced scientific events and could end up make poor decisions because of it.Sagan then goes on to talk about one of the largest pseudoscience topics, aliens.

There are many different topics that are related to aliens. For example; crop circles, abductions, strange lights, mysterious marks on the body, and forced sexual experiments are all attributed to aliens. Sagan spends the next half of the book explaining how these claims are irrational and giving are more logical reasoning other than aliens. Crop circles are just teens playing a prank on farmers. Abductions are mass hallucinations that are implanted in people's heads by social media. Strange lights are planes or natural astronomical events.Mysterious marks are people who unknowingly mutilate themselves. The forced sexual experiments are stories made up by rape victims who are in denial. After Sagan had fully disproved every potential alien theory, he went on to talk about a very old type of pseudoscience, witchcraft. Witchcraft is a classic example of a small group of people taking advantage of the easily moldable minds of the a group of people. The punishment for being a witch was being executed. So, if someone didn’t like someone or wanted them dead they would just say they were a witch. There was no

way for the person accused to prove that they weren't a witch, so they just had to accept their fate and die. Sagan included this old and irrelevant example because it shows that if people could be fooled that easily by witchcraft why couldn’t they also be fooled by something like aliens. Sagan finishes off the book by explaining that he doesn’t think that aliens aren’t real, he just thinks that their isn’t enough evidence to support it. Until someone brings back conclusive evidence that they were infact on a spaceship and were experimented on by aliens, he won’t believe any of the stories.
Even though this is a very opinionated book, there are many facts that can be learned by reading it. Something I learned was that many crop circles that are allegedly made by aliens are really just teens playing a prank on farmers. There have been many teens that have spoken to the media about making them and even went as far as telling them how they made them. I also learned that many alien abduction stories are really just hallucinations. Most of the time the person saw a movie or read something about aliens abducting people. Then they will have a hallucinations about. These types of hallucinations are called mass hallucinations because there are many cases of this happening with the same story. Scientists know they are hallucinations because when they ask the victim to tell them what happened, they tell them the exact plot to a alien movie that already exists. Sagan then teaches us that Mars is a very windy planet. These winds lead to many structures being formed on the surface of Mars which can look like a face or a city. One of Sagan's most emphasized facts that he constantly referred to throughout the book. This fact is that there is fine line between pseudoscience and real science. This was best summed up when Sagan said, “Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.” What Sagan is trying to say is that without conclusive evidence that can’t be explained any other way whatever is trying to be proven is considered just something we hope is true and is worthless to scientists until it is proven correct.
I did not agree with everything Sagan said in this book, but I still enjoyed reading it. The fact that Sagan was brave enough to rebuttal such widely accepted topics in our society makes it very interesting to hear. Also, his vast knowledge on all the topics he talks about makes all his points very strong and entertaining to read about. So, if you looking for a book that doesn’t conform to the norm in our current society, then the Demon Haunted World is the book for you.