The Demon-Haunted World
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
His view is that normal, rational, intelligent people... can have fictional stories in their heads about how things work. It takes energy and focus and research to fix these wrong stories, so often we live with them or don't recognize them.
Many times I've been casually talking with someone, say something, then realize that doesn't make any sense. My wrong story made sense in my head, but not when I speak it out loud.
By practicing the scientific method, we can gradually weed out the wrong stories in our heads.
Now I'm going to re-read `The Demon-Haunted World`
Edit: came for the Sagan, found the Pratchett!
> You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
My Kagi-fu fails me. Its by an environmentalist who says any, say "avoid poisoning fish" advice stands against a massive "the line must go up" mythology. He compares it to the geocentrism of the Church; how the Sun, Moon and starts rotate around us and provides for humanity; and how heliocentrism also had to stand up against this massive mythology.
Better to understand that it is there and how it works. It is precisely due to this myth-making faculty that in the absence of a legit mythos (i.e. that of Christianity, which was the dominant cosmo-conception / worldview in the west for most of our history) the vacuum of power that is left by the absence of a God figure will be replaced by the nearest approximate/surrogate the psyche can find. This is how we elevate celebrities like Trump to the status of a God-king who can do no wrong.
I've long wondered about that even as I've watched the shift intensify over the decades, but in the context you describe, the MAGA death-cult starts to sorta come into focus a bit more. As they've abandoned "God" (as evidenced by so many of their actions going directly contrary to the teachings of Jesus in their own bible) they need a replacement god-figure to worship (one more in-line with the baser desires that they're choosing to embody).
I still find it genuinely insane that their worship of one man leads them to fully embrace the downfall of civilized and thoughtful interaction so completely that it becomes a literal existential risk for humanity.
> "Better to understand that it is there and how it works."
This is the way to overcome / work around so many of our basic human "design flaws". Understanding and being aware of those things allows you to take actions to adjust in beneficial ways. This is one of the "special things" that truly separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom; Our ability to outright defy our "baser instincts" (at least some of us, anyhow).
Thats the actual term and its missing from public debate and school curricula.
Most people that consider themselfs atheists are actually undecided, so more of a skeptic then a strong believer in none-god. Questioning your beliefs is the crucial skill skeptics practice and some "rationalists" lack.
Sacred Economics" and "The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible"
I feel like the current generation of young people don’t have anyone like Carl Sagan to bring a sense of wonder to science and exploration. It makes me sad.
The closest I've seen in modern times is maybe [Neil DeGrasse Tyson][1].
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
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.This quote has always stuck with me and I think about it often, perhaps one of the main quotes that have steered my life.
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”
― Alan Moore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSbaKpCjq4
However to fully put this into context you also need to understand that Alan Moore is an occultist, so he views both power and chaos (in the social context as well as the metaphysical context) through that lens.
https://www.reddit.com/r/occult/comments/1iv2eic/alan_moore_...
But -- I'm an occultist and a philosophical person, so I can tell you from first hand experience that occultism and philosophy are inextricably bound. Any pursuit of metaphysics is occult in nature. Occult simply means "hidden"; it is the domain of those things which can not be perceived directly, but have to be reasoned or intuited out via the mind.
Metaphysics, in that sense, is a subset of the Occult. Metaphysics itself is an extremely broad field, dealing with things like ontology, mathematics, physics, onieriology, cosmology, and so on.
One need not identify as an occultist to study a field which would fall under the label of the occult. Many things are occult and people do not realize it. Psychology, by virtue of the fact that our own psyches are largely hidden from our purview, is widely accepted as an asepct of the Occult, for example.
As for my own beliefs, I do not consider them beliefs, as once you know something to be true, does it make sense to still consider it an article of faith?
There is such a thing as a gnostic.
Plato was deeply esoteric — as were the Pythagoreans for that matter. The history of philosophy is rather enchanted, as it were.
See Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Ficino, Agrippa, Newton…
Development may be a random walk, but there are plenty of people with interest in a certain outcome, and when they get the opportunity they will take it and try escalate the process. That's true in most things.
I also tend to believe that it is not a coincidence that so many societies right now flirt with authoritarianism, for example. We influence each other, even more so now that information is global and electronic.
Contrasted with very rational people who are chasing magical, unmoored valuations in the stock market for instance. We buy and sell equity based not on future cash flows, but on confidence there will be a bigger sucker down the line. This untethering of "value" from any productive work is a greater contributor to the hollowing out of the US economy than anyone buying a piece of amethyst.
Apart from that, I read “crystals” and “horoscopes” in a more metaphorical sense here.
The real enemy is the belief that value can be created from nothing, such that an economy of infinite growth can exist. Once you've exhausted all the externalities - exploiting people overseas, domestically, pillaging natural resources - you're left in a zero sum game.
It's in the same paragraph...
> I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority
I've got a theory that the experience of consciousness is down to something like that - different systems in the brain interacting, like it being a bit of the brain that brings together info from the senses and memory recall and thinking outputs and then makes up a story/model of it.
- Srinivasa Ramanujan
> Back when I was at university, a friend mentioned to me that he wanted to read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I had been a fan of Sagan since my teenage years, but had put off reading that book. Asking him if he’d read any of Sagan’s works, he said “No, but this book is often present in skeptic reading lists.”
> Many years later, I finally read the book. I’m surprised with it being recommended by skeptics, as it has a lengthy criticism of skeptics.
...
Quotes taken straight from the book:
"And yet, the chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is in its polarization: Us vs. Them—the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you’re sensible, you’ll listen to us; and if not, you’re beyond redemption. This is unconstructive. It does not get the message across. It condemns the skeptics to permanent minority status; whereas, a compassionate approach that from the beginning acknowledges the human roots of pseudoscience and superstition might be much more widely accepted."
...
"In the way that skepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped."
It is indeed a great book. I would caution folks here that it is not particularly representative of Carl Sagan's books. If you loved/hated this book, it doesn't mean you'll love/hate his other books.
The details are in the blog post. Basically, every skeptic community I've looked at has espoused the very behavior that Carl Sagan criticizes in the book. Very dismissive and arrogant folks. There's a reason he explicitly calls out the skeptic community.
I did put this disclaimer though - I don't want this discussion to degrade into a no true Scotsman fallacy:
> Or at least, visible and vocal skeptics I run across on the Internet. An argument could be made that these are the minority and not really representative of the majority of people who ascribe to skepticism.
I agree, yet I will note that he goes out of his way in the book to label skepticism and then criticize it. He did not wish to be thought of as a skeptic. The Descartes quote is in the book as well.
Put another way: He was a skeptical person, but he did not ascribe to "skepticism".
One thing I was pleasantly surprised to find in the book was an inclination to believe certain things to be true that many skeptics will refuse to entertain due to the lack of evidence. The only example I can recall was that back (and other) pain is often entirely psychosomatic. He didn't invoke John Sarno, but he showed clear openness to believing it. It wasn't a simple "I must have an open mind, so I must consider this as a possibility", but an actual assertion of his belief in it given recent findings. He gives a rationale on why it is a reasonable thing to believe.
(Sidenote: I have a lot of pain, and Sarno's approach did nothing for me)
> He goes out of his way in the book to label skepticism and criticize it.
Respectfully, I disagree, his criticism reads to me primarily as a criticism of dogmatism. First and foremost he seemed to identify as a "scientist", but he also maintained that you can't have effective science without skepticism.
> He did not wish to be thought of as a skeptic.
I would just differ by saying "He did not wish to be thought of only as a skeptic," I am not sure if that is a complete departure from your intent.
Been a while since I read it, so I have to ask: Does it? What stood out to me was criticism of skepticism.
> It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas.
Can I suggest metabunk, which seems to me to be pretty neutral in this regard?
I happen to follow the history of supposed UFO encounters as a personal hobby since years ago. I personally try to view it with a solid dose of careful qualification and skepticism that avoids preconceived biases and this means reading both the reports themselves, their analysis by those who are convinced they were somehow paranormal or inexplicable at least, and analysis by skeptics and people who style themselves as debunkers.
To start with, from the two extremes representing on the one end UFOlogist types and on the other end, hard skeptics and the above-mentioned self-styles debunkers, there's no shortage of emotional reaction, irrational thinking, preconceived notions and confirmation bias.
As for me, while I can't absolutely claim my own objectivity to be perfect and free of biases of one kind or another (by definition this is hard because if one were capable of such a thing, they wouldn't have a bias in the first place) I try to keep an open mind that's not dismissive of those who sincerely and with no evident reason for lying or hallucinating, claim to have seen strange things in the skies, but also try to recognize that people do misinterpret things, especially if they're not trained observers, or sometimes just lie.
However, what I have noticed from many in the skeptic community in particular (and from the debunkers especially) is exactly the thing that Sagan notes. A harsh, extremely condescending attitude to any suggestion that any strange UFO sighting type incident be anything but perfectly explicable. More damningly, because they go into analyzing any such thing with a mind that's already decided on such things not being possible, by default they always feel they must debunk. It has basically become for them a default response.
In some UFO sighting reports, where the details truly are baffling and even include very trained, sober observers (Air Force pilots, police, scientists etc), I've seen reviews by skeptics in which the contortions they make to justify the event as some mundane thing are almost more absurd than simply admitting that X group of people saw something that can't be explained (without having to say that this means it was a UFO by the way).
This is not skepticism. It is instead a dogmatic logic, one based on emotion and irrationality disguised as hard boiled seriousness and being combined with a distinctly arrogant attitude around professing to be the one who is really the rational thinker, it comes across as even more absurd.
From UFO investigators, the same happens in the other direction of course, but on the other hand, I've frequently seen reports in which they themselves have the flexibility to say that some particular case was indeed mundane. I have yet to see a serious skeptic, say, a Philip Klass type, who ever admits something to be inexplicable no matter how hard they need to stretch reasoning to avoid doing so. In some cases, some of them also simply delve into outright character assassination and claiming a witness to be an idiot or implying that there's something wrong with them.
Again, Sagan's warning about compassion comes to mind. On this, he really nailed it while arguing for the importance of skepticism.
Consider that out of print hardcover first printings might ask a premium & if you have a local bookstore that you might want to support.
The 25 chapters are mostly independent and some of them are updated versions of something published earlier. Obviously the chapters complaining about the state of science education in the USA in the 1990s are less interesting for a European reading today. For me the most interesting chapters were 4-15 and 24, about witchcraft and human gullibility, for example.
I find the cheerleading for science in the initial chapters rather tiresome. That's just a personal reaction. I don't think the author is in any way "wrong". I suppose it's partly because it's something I feel I've grown out of. I read a lot of science popularisation when I was young, and I studied sciences, but in my old age I usually prefer literary fiction. I can't help feeling that "Science works!" is a very dull claim in view of the fact that anything that works gets accepted as "science". And the much vaunted "scientific method" is really just common sense, isn't it, really? Can that be taught? I have my doubts. Interestingly, his chapter 18 on !Kung San hunters somewhat makes that same point ...
A nit: He repeats the tired old myth about rhino horns being used medicinally to prevent impotence. More credible writers on that subject[] say they are used for jewellery, knife handles and the like.
[] "Last chance to see", co-authored by Douglas Adams, perhaps? I can't remember whether it's mentioned in there but I'd recommend that book in any case.
How much of whether you're right or wrong on a given issue is not down to knowledge, intelligence or rigor - but to pre-set biases that happen to be set the right way or the wrong way. How the same knowledge and intelligence that can guide you to truths can instead lead you to be more entrenched in wrongs, and just how hard it is to know the difference.
You can try to be better than that, but even if you do, you aren't going to escape your own nature. And most people don't even seem to try.
It's open-ended, anyway. I mean nobody's rationality is ever perfect, or even very good, except relative to others.
The important realization I had is that this is true even for fairly rational people. If you've ever encountered someone who tends to listen more to one source than others, they are exhibiting the exact same behavior this thread is complaining about. And in my experience, this happens to everyone, even the most rational people I've met.
That's what I'm talking about. That one person who seems way more rational than most might be 95% irrational - just outperforming the "97% irrational" baseline. And those 2% that make up the difference? How much of this is teachable skills, things you and me could learn and apply, and how much of it is just some weird brain wiring?
That appearance of reason may be deceiving too. You'd expect an atheist to outperform the average by a lot - but is this true? How many atheists are atheists because they carefully examined the case for God's existence and found it lacking - and how many are instead atheists because of something like an innate contrarian streak, or just because of conformism paired with non-religious upbringing?
I happen to remember the reason why I ended up an atheist quite well. I just didn't like the idea of God existing, at all. I didn't get there by being reasonable - I got there by being lucky.
That doesn't mean it's correct. It doesn't even mean it's objective. The best you can get is a consensus among a subset of humans that certain things happen because of certain other things, and certain models can predict some of these things with limited accuracy.
This turns out to be useful for human experiences, as far as it goes. But we literally can't imagine what connections we're not aware of, what formalisms and models we can't create because our brains are too limited by their evolutionary wiring, and what experiences we're not having because same.
You could argue that these invisible imperceptible things can't affect us, by definition. But we don't know that's true. There could an entire universe of influences and abstractions we're not aware of.
And there probably is. Realistically, what are the odds that our not very large or clever brains really do have the potential to understand the entire universe?
What we think of science is more like the gap between the smartest 1% and the rest of the population. Science is a good way to make those 1% insights sticky and useful to everyone else.
But it's highly presumptuous to assume that human cognition has no limits, and the universe fits comfortably inside our brains.
My belief on this is not entirely rational, of course, but it seems to me that there's probably a sort of Turing-completeness for intelligence/understanding, where as soon as a mind starts being able to understand abstraction, given enough time and resources, it can probably understand the entire universe.
It would also be presumptuous to say that brainfuck is equally powerful to every other programming language that exists, and yet we know it to be true. The fundamental reason we can prove that Turing-complete languages are equivalent to each other is that we can build the same abstractions in both, so intuitively it feels like a similar principle holds for human intelligence.
When in fact this entire genre should be read and addressed exclusively for oneself.
It reminds me how I was passionately discussing sth like this with a (former) friend and it seemed we agreed on the principles. When suddenly through some offhand remakr or turn of phrase it turned out he was thinking of others while I was thinking of myself
Meaning, he thought how easily others were misled (naturally, he himself was perfectly immune, his worldview correct) while I was talking about how I needed to protect myself from being seduced by agreeable nonsense.
Again, this genre applies to the reader, it is not a lecture material for you.
We have no business judging others`s beliefs when we have enough trouble keeping our own sane.
What we can do is short or bet against them if we are so convinced that we are right. Place your bets and stick to yourself. If you are as right as you are convinced, you should do well over time. Physical and economic reality >> fantasy and cope.
I agree with you except for this part here, because what other people believe can, and does, materially impact you when they vote. There's an incentive to try and influence others' beliefs when they're harmful to you or your communities.
And the literature on this is completely difft and, more to the point, vastly more effective than the one on philosophy of science or striving for truth.
Not saying one is better than the other. My point is only those are difft and Sagan is not a good guide to make masses of people vote or act how you want.
Assessing other peoples’ beliefs and ideas is, in my experience, one of the best ways to stay sane and learn. Ideas are ultimately independent of the people that hold them. I feel like it is people with unfounded ideas (religions, historically) that try mightily to stop other people from critically assessing them.
That's a nice thing to believe. I disagree.
The difference between good people and bad people literally is the things they believe. Nazis aren't born evil, they are made evil by naziism. Its not only OK, it's necessary to your survival to judge them by that metric.
In a world with bad faith & ill-informed missionaries (meme-ssionaries?) this is an inadequate political/societal perspective. We should all have the humility to be wrong but the conviction of our current beliefs and tomes that represent them
A kinder way to say "judging" is perhaps discrimination. As humans we must discriminate between the good and bad opinions of others, and even good and bad people, or we are doomed.
If you were to learn only from your own mistakes, or try to pretend that there is no such thing as a bad person, you would live a short and brutal life of victomhood.
We must judge kindly, but we must judge.
Logic itself is a kind of magical thinking. There's no way to get from logic to epistemology, and yet people think they will get to epistemological high ground if they keep to a logic asceticism strictly enough.
One of my favorite parts of this book was the essay "The Dragon in my Garage". The essay argues that if you can't provide any testable or falsifiable evidence for a dragon's existence, then its existence is no different than the absence of a dragon.
Mentioned it in my blog -
"The promise of an afterlife is a cornerstone of many religions, offering comfort in the face of mortality. However, this promise often hinges on the existence of an all-powerful deity, whose nature and existence remain subjects of debate. Central to many afterlife beliefs is the notion of an invisible, immortal soul or spirit capable of experiencing emotions, enabling the concepts of reward or punishment. Yet, no empirical evidence has been found to confirm the existence of such a soul. Acclaimed science author Carl Sagan illustrated this challenge with his “dragon in the garage” analogy. If someone claims to have a dragon that is invisible, silent, intangible, and undetectable by any means, there is no practical difference between the dragon’s existence and non-existence. Similarly, without verifiable evidence, the existence of an immortal soul remains unproven."
My other favorite books from him are -
1. Pale Blue Dot - That "look again at that dot" might be the most poetic thing I've read.
For the unaware, or for those who want to read it again, here's the full quote -
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
2. Cosmos.
3. BILLIONS AND BILLIONS - the part he described coming to know that he had cancer was beautifully written.
4. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are with Ann Druyan.
I never read that fiction book he wrote - Contact.
But, man, I'm going to add one of his books to my To Be Read list again lol.
> Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the [irrelevant empty space with nothing going for it except size] ...
Perhaps Sagan should have devoted more effort to examining his rather amateurish assumptions. Like Dawkins, he was terrible at philosophy.
1) Most people haven’t internalized at all how big and empty and terrifying the universe is. This is a rhetorical device to make that point.
2) Carl Sagan also famously said “We are a way for the universe to know itself” so I think you may be straw-manning his overall position just a little bit here.
I think Sagan was, in his clumsy way, perhaps trying to recover something lost in the loss of religion, a kind of reverential humility that recognition of God previously inspired. The closest thing he could find was the universe. Naturally, this leed toward a kind of pagan materialist pantheism (which likely explains his interest in Hinduism).
And Sagan was just so personable and seemingly humble. While Sagan basically agreed with Dawkins on most points as to the importance of science and reason and the dangers of magical thinking and religion, he lacked the arrogance and smugness that Dawkins has that often rub people the wrong way. I wonder what Sagan would have written had he lived into the early 21st century "New Atheism" period.
He didn't merely lack it - he opposed it. A quote from the book:
"In the way that skepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped."
...
"whereas, a compassionate approach that from the beginning acknowledges the human roots of pseudoscience and superstition might be much more widely accepted."
Talk about hubris, and a comically unsophisticated sort. There are much more intellectually interesting atheists out there (in recent history in the Anglosphere, someone like Thomas Nagel, for example; Nietzsche, of the historically most famous ones). Sagan, Dawkins, the New Atheists are lightweights.
(For bystanders who don't know the term, scientism is like when an advert says our shampoo contains hilyironic acid which nourishes the growing hair or some similar sciency-sounding nonsense, maybe with 3D graphics of molecules, to sell you on a thing just by association with science.)
W.r.t. Sagan, it is the general character of his work that it privileged science (and I mean this in the modern sense of the term, i.e., “empirical science”) to the exclusion of other rational modes of knowing. Indeed, if anything is paradigmatic of rationality, it is philosophy, not empirical science. And Sagan’s insistence on evidence of does not square with things like his views on mathematics (never mind some of the superficial commentary on numerical representation) or what proofs for the existence of God can consist of.
Sagan’s views were also often guided by sentiment rather than reason. The first that comes to mind if the childish and fallacious inference involving the tacit assumption that size is proportional to significance. But of course, they were presented as if they were reasoned.
My point is, whatever his merits as an astronomer and the practice of astronomy (I have heard varying opinions), he was a mediocrity in areas like philosophy and theology. He should have had the humility to recognize the limits of his knowledge.
By guessing, of course! Gotta start somewhere.
You still haven't supplied details of exactly ... ah, don't worry about it, I suppose I'll just bear your observation in mind when I come to read a Sagan book. Or a Dawkins book. But I don't remember Dawkins sidelining philosophy? It still sounds kind of like "oh he should have said something apologetic about religion because of metaphysics instead of being so damn certain", the kind of thing any wet agnostic would like - not because there's quality philosophy being overlooked, just because wishy-washy people want their spirituality placating.
In the case of Dawkins, that he was whiggish and philosophically weak is not some novel criticism. His criticisms of Aquinas, for example, were laughably uninformed. And unlike Aquinas, who charitably advised people to attack an interlocutor's views at his strongest points, Dawkins happily sought out the weakest and their weakest for cheap show. He didn't seek out highly regarded scholars who disagreed with him, but ones he could easily ridicule, and he found them. It is buffoonish to think Dawkins et al. have some kind of intellectual high ground here. Only someone ignorant of philosophical work of the last two millenia could find Dawkins impressive here.
For you and others here, I would recommend beginning with Edward Feser's "The Last Superstition: A Refutation Of The New Atheism" [0] to begin to grasp how crude, unsophisticated, and incoherent their intellectual positions are. The author wrote this book during the height of the New Atheist craze when the polemic of the "Four Horsemen" was particular aggressive, and so he rightly returns some of those polemical barbs, though unlike the New Atheists, his comes from a position of intellectual substance.
[0] https://archive.org/details/edward-feser-the-last-superstiti...
Because as a general rule, if you're going to engage in commentary of a subject matter, you should know what you're talking about. Many people, including many scientists (certainly among the vocal ones), fail to mind the bounds of their narrow domain of expertise and tread unwittingly into philosophical territory, all the while believing their views are scientific in nature. This happens all the time with materialism, which is not a metaphysical position entailed by science, but nonetheless is often presented as if it were and sold to the public as a package deal. Sagan was certainly guilty of that, that and his whiggish view of history.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/religion-and-philoso...
Hauntology is about this sense of loss. That there are these other futures that were due and coming, but have been cancelled. Fisher argues that Western society mid-future lost it's ability to generate "new", trapped recycling and recombining.
And it feels like that, and so much worse. We're not just lacking in our generative wow, in our ability to go forth & be "yes we can" people. We're utterly dogged and dragged down into the muckiest disrealities by endless people deliberately haunting the world. That half of politics everywhere has become pro-haunting parties. That dis-reality and fear, scaredness of the world and other people, has no real purpose but it keeps people weak and dumb and slow, as Sagan said. Off kilter with no sense and sensibility.
It feels like the dishonesty and fearmongering of politics, the calling of enemies, the unwillingness to come back to reasonability and reason and faith and trust in each other, to be good: it's haunting us so badly. We're in an age where The Demon-Haunted World is a playbook. Being used everyday by the very powerful.
To make people into: scared people, afraid of demons haunting them, believing in shadows and fear more than truth and reason. We humanity are being haunted by spook science going on in the Head of the Health and Human Services (RFK). It's Presidents getting up and telling us our cities are warzones and our Senator getting up and asking for photos of today & it being an incredible place. The President's Truth acocunt posting AI-generated "med-bed" dis-realities! https://bsky.app/profile/wyden.senate.gov/post/3lzy6exxcf22n
This world is demon haunted, and it's not just ignorance of the dark. It's destroying the worthy good futures, refusing arrival of decent obvious truth, by ensnaring us and locking us in fantasy. It's using many-headed-hydra tactics, to flood the zone of reality, to brow-beat disreality forever, to insist insanity has a valid spot on the Overton Window.
America would be much less divisive if they ignored the preachings of their tribe leaders, and made up their own minds.