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Comment by felipelemos | Hacker News Reader

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

It changed the way I see the world, how to have a sceptical mind and not only how but why one should question.

And also, it shows to me that, if you don't have a answer for something, doesn't mean that it can not be true. It's just that you don't know. And for a lot of things, this is the correct and only answer that we can have now.

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I read this book at a time when I had lost my religion which had been very dear to me and the foundation all of my thinking. I was reading lots of different religious texts. This was the first thing I read that said that how we know what we know is more important than what we know. It was the first philosophy I had encountered that would challenge even evidence in favor of itself on the grounds that that evidence didn't meet a certain bar of quality. That was huge and this book helped me understand that concept. Which really made scientific skepticism stand out from other belief systems.

I came from a deeply religious family and read this book after reading Contact (a friend lent me). It too had a lasting impact on my worldview. I cultivate a skeptical worldview nowadays thanks to this book.

It's very high on my list of "We'd be better off if everyone read this" books.

He took me out of the pit of my sunken thoughts, I wake up, I take off the blindfold, it was the first book to open my mind and I will always be grateful

Came here to say this more or less verbatim.

It's the best!

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