
By: Sheppard Gordon
Re: Sagan-Wisconsin S.J.

 SAGAN ARGUES AGAINST FOLLY OF PSEUDOSCIENCE
 04/14/96
 Wisconsin State Journal

   We tend to think that we live in a scientific age but astronomer Carl
Sagan warns that we live in an age of "pseudoscience" that threatens to
undermine the very processes that contribute to our health and material
well-being.

   Sagan, whose essays in the Sunday "Parade" magazine are read by
millions, is, no doubt, the world's best-known popularizer of science.

   In "The Demon-Haunted World" Sagan looks in bewilderment at the
stories of space aliens, UFO abductions, astrology and biblical
literalism and determines that far too many people believe them.

   "Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does
pseudoscience," Sagan writes. "Sparse and poor popularization of science
abandons ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were
widely understood that claims to knowledgeSagan require adequate
evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for
pseudoscience. But a kind of Gresham's Law prevails in popular culture
by which bad science drives out good."

   Most of his arguments have been made before and, Sagan says, have
drawn angry response.

   People write him to tell them they have, too, been abducted by space
aliens. Religious people accuse Sagan, a self-professed non-believer, of
ignoring the truths of the Bible.

   Religion and science are certainly compatible, Sagan says. But, when
religions make pronouncements that are, "if only in principle, testable,
religions, however unwillingly, enter the arena of science" and must
allow their pronouncements to be tested.

   "Of course many religions -- devoted to reverence, awe, ethics,
ritual, community, family, charity and political and economic justice --
are in no way challenged, but rather uplifted, by the findings of
science.

   "Some of mainstream Christianity and Judaism embraces and even
anticipated at least a portion of the humility, self-criticism, reasoned
debate and questioning of received wisdom that the best of science
offers.

   "But, other sects, sometimes called conservative or fundamentalist --
and today they seem to be in the ascendant, with the mainstream
religions almost inaudible and invisible -- have chosen to make a stand
on matters subject to disproof, and thus have something to fear from
science."

   Why is all this important?

   Sagan says he is in no way debunking the reality of religious belief.
Rather, he argues, people ought not accept on "faith" those things that
contradict notions shown scientifically to be untrue.

   The theory of evolution has been shown time and time again to be an
accurate concept of how life on earth developed, Sagan argues.   BOOK
REVIEW

   The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark By Carl
Sagan. Random House: $25.95

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