Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “Without Noticing, Back into Superstition & Darkness” (1995)

Image by NASA, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There have been many the­o­ries of how human his­to­ry works. Some, like Ger­man thinker G.W.F. Hegel, have thought of progress as inevitable. Oth­ers have embraced a more sta­t­ic view, full of “Great Men” and an immutable nat­ur­al order. Then we have the counter-Enlight­en­ment thinker Giambat­tista Vico. The 18th cen­tu­ry Neapoli­tan philoso­pher took human irra­tional­ism seri­ous­ly, and wrote about our ten­den­cy to rely on myth and metaphor rather than rea­son or nature. Vico’s most “rev­o­lu­tion­ary move,” wrote Isa­iah Berlin, “is to have denied the doc­trine of a time­less nat­ur­al law” that could be “known in prin­ci­ple to any man, at any time, any­where.”

Vico’s the­o­ry of his­to­ry includ­ed inevitable peri­ods of decline (and heav­i­ly influ­enced the his­tor­i­cal think­ing of James Joyce and Friedrich Niet­zsche). He describes his con­cept “most col­or­ful­ly,” writes Alexan­der Bert­land at the Inter­net Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy, “when he gives this axiom”:

Men first felt neces­si­ty then look for util­i­ty, next attend to com­fort, still lat­er amuse them­selves with plea­sure, thence grow dis­solute in lux­u­ry, and final­ly go mad and waste their sub­stance.

The descrip­tion may remind us of Shakespeare’s “Sev­en Ages of Man.” But for Vico, Bert­land notes, every decline her­alds a new begin­ning. His­to­ry is “pre­sent­ed clear­ly as a cir­cu­lar motion in which nations rise and fall… over and over again.”

Two-hun­dred and twen­ty years after Vico’s 1774 death, Carl Sagan—another thinker who took human irra­tional­ism seriously—published his book The Demon Haunt­ed World, show­ing how much our every­day think­ing derives from metaphor, mythol­o­gy, and super­sti­tion. He also fore­saw a future in which his nation, the U.S., would fall into a peri­od of ter­ri­ble decline:

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…

Sagan believed in progress and, unlike Vico, thought that “time­less nat­ur­al law” is dis­cov­er­able with the tools of sci­ence. And yet, he feared “the can­dle in the dark” of sci­ence would be snuffed out by “the dumb­ing down of Amer­i­ca…”

…most evi­dent in the slow decay of sub­stan­tive con­tent in the enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial media, the 30 sec­ond sound bites (now down to 10 sec­onds or less), low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor pro­gram­ming, cred­u­lous pre­sen­ta­tions on pseu­do­science and super­sti­tion, but espe­cial­ly a kind of cel­e­bra­tion of igno­rance…

Sagan died in 1996, a year after he wrote these words. No doubt he would have seen the fine art of dis­tract­ing and mis­in­form­ing peo­ple through social media as a late, per­haps ter­mi­nal, sign of the demise of sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. His pas­sion­ate advo­ca­cy for sci­ence edu­ca­tion stemmed from his con­vic­tion that we must and can reverse the down­ward trend.

As he says in the poet­ic excerpt from Cos­mos above, “I believe our future depends pow­er­ful­ly on how well we under­stand this cos­mos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morn­ing sky.”

When Sagan refers to “our” under­stand­ing of sci­ence, he does not mean, as he says above, a “very few” tech­nocrats, aca­d­e­mics, and research sci­en­tists. Sagan invest­ed so much effort in pop­u­lar books and tele­vi­sion because he believed that all of us need­ed to use the tools of sci­ence: “a way of think­ing,” not just “a body of knowl­edge.” With­out sci­en­tif­ic think­ing, we can­not grasp the most impor­tant issues we all joint­ly face.

We’ve arranged a civ­i­liza­tion in which most cru­cial ele­ments pro­found­ly depend on sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. We have also arranged things so that almost no one under­stands sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. This is a pre­scrip­tion for dis­as­ter. We might get away with it for a while, but soon­er or lat­er this com­bustible mix­ture of igno­rance and pow­er is going to blow up in our faces.

Sagan’s 1995 pre­dic­tions are now being her­ald­ed as prophet­ic. As Direc­tor of Pub­lic Radio International’s Sci­ence Fri­day, Charles Bergquist recent­ly tweet­ed, “Carl Sagan had either a time machine or a crys­tal ball.” Matt Novak cau­tions against falling back into super­sti­tious think­ing in our praise of Demon Haunt­ed World. After all, he says, “the ‘accu­ra­cy’ of pre­dic­tions is often a Rorschach test” and “some of Sagan’s con­cerns” in oth­er parts of the book “sound rather quaint.”

Of course Sagan could­n’t pre­dict the future, but he did have a very informed, rig­or­ous under­stand­ing of the issues of twen­ty years ago, and his pre­dic­tion extrap­o­lates from trends that have only con­tin­ued to deep­en. If the tools of sci­ence education—like most of the coun­try’s wealth—end up the sole prop­er­ty of an elite, the rest of us will fall back into a state of gross igno­rance, “super­sti­tion and dark­ness.” Whether we might come back around again to progress, as Giambat­tista Vico thought, is a mat­ter of sheer con­jec­ture. But per­haps there’s still time to reverse the trend before the worst arrives. As Novak writes, “here’s hop­ing Sagan, one of the smartest peo­ple of the 20th cen­tu­ry, was wrong.”

via Charles Bergquist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan & the Dalai Lama Meet in 1991 and Dis­cuss When Sci­ence Can Answer Big Ques­tions Bet­ter Than Reli­gion

An Intro­duc­tion to Hegel’s Phi­los­o­phy of His­to­ry: The Road to Progress Runs First Through Dark Times

Philoso­pher Richard Rorty Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Results of the 2016 Elec­tion … Back in 1998

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (42)
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  • Bill W. says:

    “Super­sti­tion and dark­ness?” In oth­er words, Sagan believes Amer­i­ca will become a God-fear­ing nation again, and is UPSET about it? That’s awe­some if true! Can’t wait. Reli­gion and sci­ence go hand-in-hand, but most books­mart peo­ple (like him, R.I.P.), lack the wis­dom to know that, and why. God always wins!

  • Jonathan Collins says:

    This site has become a bro­ken record. I guess chick­en lit­tle is run­ning this site now. I used to come here for infor­ma­tive arti­cles, now it’s just a dai­ly screed about how the US is hurtling towards the apao­colypse with the (fair and free) elec­tion of Don­ald Trump. Give it a rest! Please!

  • CosmosTheInLost says:

    Ahh, if Protes­tant Amer­i­ca only val­ued the truth, ratio­nal­i­ty, and sci­en­tif­ic rig­or like the Catholic mid­dle ages did:

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2014/03/21/science-terrible-middle-ages/

  • Joe C. says:

    Real­ly Bill you want to talk about God, how quaint. Let’s talk about San­ta Claus too. When you talk about God fear­ing peo­ple I fear the stu­pid­i­ty of peo­ple like you, you most­ly just want to ram your ridicu­lous beliefs down peo­ple’s throats.

  • Luis says:

    It is very hard to make pre­dic­tions about what is going to hap­pen, the polit­i­cal vision of the new pres­i­dent makes hard to rea­son­ing about how good or bad are his deci­sions that tar­get either peo­ple, com­pa­nies and nation. For this I agree that we should give him a rest.

    At the same time, just in 4 days, I got shocked with some of the hap­pen­ings we are see­ing: envi­ron­men­tal opin­ions and pro­pa­gan­da com­plete­ly erased from pub­lic expo­sure; tweet­er accounts cen­sored; sci­en­tif­ic research blocked from media. With all this hap­pen­ings, I wounder were is the peo­ple com­mon scene and con­science? I was raised in a soci­ety were con­cern’s of the pub­lic opin­ion, edu­ca­tion, gov­ern­ments and author­i­ties were spread­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and push­ing human­i­ty to a bet­ter future. Now we see the nation that was lead­ing this move­ment, the nation who start­ed the most wars and con­flicts in name of demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and fun­da­men­tal rights, is cen­sur­ing its own peo­ple.

  • Joan Lane says:

    Thank you for your infor­ma­tive and insight­ful arti­cle.

  • Luis says:

    If you are so wise, why being dis­re­spect­ful with peo­ple instead of being polite and show­ing your rea­sons? Maybe you can change them. But I have ques­tion for you to think about. Have church ever proved the exis­tence of God? No. And what about sci­ence? Have any sci­en­tist ever proved the non exis­tence of God? I guess not… Who is right here?

  • Marjorie Cunningham says:

    The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is on the verge of a new begin­ning, but I fear it’s going to be in a down­ward direc­tion. Carl Sagan, a per­son­al hero of mine, would shud­der to see what’s hap­pen­ing in a coun­try that has been ris­ing for so many gen­er­a­tions, and his pre­dic­tion of descent into chaos may become all too real. To have a leader, who obtained office by dubi­ous means, abol­ish and erase so many accom­plish­ments that took years to gain is soul sick­en­ing, and we can only hope this insan­i­ty is tem­po­rary.

  • Bill W. says:

    Lit­tle peo­ple use lit­tle words; besides, you athe­ists ram your unproven lack-of-belief ‘down OUR throats’ all the time too. Every time you step out­side and admire the view, plants, ani­mals, etc., that alone is all the proof you need of God’s Cre­ation. Speak­ing of Sagan, do you believe alien-life may exist some­where amongst the bil­lions of stars? Yes? Then how can you com­plete­ly count-out that an Intel­li­gent God may also exist? That incon­sis­ten­cy of belief is illog­i­cal, and does­n’t employ Sci­en­tif­ic Method. God is a vari­able, like it or not, as when try­ing to explain the unex­plained, ALL the­o­ries must be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion before a con­clu­sion is decid­ed upon–even Carl will tell you that! Until then, keep believ­ing that a mys­te­ri­ous explo­sion with no-known-cause made things so-per­fect. God did it. How? He’s God, He can do any­thing; a mor­tal like you or me can­not even begin to sec­ond-guess the How or Why of His omnipo­tence. That would be arro­gant and lack­ing in faith.

  • Nancy Duggan says:

    I’m assum­ing it’s a typo, but “Two-hun­dred and fifty years after Vico’s 1774 death, Carl Sagan—another thinker who took human irra­tional­ism seriously—published his book…” the math­’s a lit­tle off.

  • J.K. Bentley says:

    Sagan was a can­dle of light in our demon- and God-haunt­ed night. Thank you for post­ing this. The fun­da­men­tal­ists are going to be more stri­dent in their oppo­si­tion to ratio­nal thought in the days ahead. I hope you can keep your site up, open, and edu­ca­tion­al.

  • dave says:

    What are these dubi­ous means are you refer­ring to? I remem­ber Trump won the Elec­toral Col­lege. Do you remem­ber a dif­fer­ent elec­tion. Or, as I think, you are a dis­ap­point­ed Oba­maite.
    Also, what accom­plish­ments? The bank­rupt­ing of this coun­try? Or maybe the low­er­ing of Amer­i­ca’s respect in the eyes of the world? Could it be mak­ing the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary less effec­tive and sub­ject to insane social exper­i­ments?

    So far Trump is doing exact­ly what he promised in the cam­paign. Unlike every oth­er politi­cian EVER!
    It’s refresh­ing.

  • Nathan says:

    Nihilis­tic future cast­ing is some­thing most athe­ists have in com­mon. One can only assume that the lack of intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty spawns images of dread and dark cir­cum­stances. How­ev­er, Sagan’s fear of a ser­vices dri­ven world was brought on by Clin­ton, Bush and Oba­ma. The new brinkman­ship in the US is in defence of craft and pro­duc­tion hap­pen­ing at home. Would­n’t this bring us clos­er to a com­mu­ni­ty that under­stands the val­ue of hard work and craft?

  • John says:

    well said Sir.

  • Mike says:

    Reli­gion is what morons turn to when they don’t have the men­tal pro­cess­ing pow­er to under­stand sci­ence. Aleluya!

  • Jeffrey Spaulding says:

    This arti­cle was like­ly post­ed with the intent that we think that Sagan was pre­dict­ing Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion. It seems to me, how­ev­er, that it could just as cogent­ly be refer­ring to the Left­’s increas­ing­ly pro­nounced ten­den­cies to ignore unde­sir­able real­i­ties, and to repeat­ed­ly pro­nounce ide­ol­o­gy in the hope that it will some­how turn into real­i­ty.

  • Josh Jones says:

    This arti­cle was post­ed with the intent that you draw your own con­clu­sions. And there you go, you’ve done it!

  • Ha says:

    Dear Dave,

    “Also, what accom­plish­ments?… Or maybe the low­er­ing of America’s respect in the eyes of the world?”

    What­ev­er Oba­ma accom­plished, I real­ly don’t think that he ever low­ered the respect the rest of the world had for Amer­i­ca to a lev­el that Trump has done in, let’s see, less than a fort­night.

    Good luck to us all.

  • StellarStella says:

    This arti­cle is becom­ing more and more true every day — with the bla­tant denial of sci­en­tif­ic truths. From the flat-earth­er move­ment which is ridicu­lous, to the denial of evo­lu­tion and cli­mate change by actu­al elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Much of this denial is fueled by hate for those who think dif­fer­ent­ly, or sup­port dif­fer­ent health-care agen­das. It is true, that “no one rep­re­sent­ing the pub­lic inter­est can even grasp the issues.” More­over, we are being suck­ered into believ­ing those who we think are in our “tribe.” We don’t ques­tion a pres­i­dent who repeat­ed­ly puts him­self under a bus and then blames the bus. We don’t ques­tion demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians who say they are fight­ing for the work­ing class while get­ting bought by big banks and oth­er lob­by­ists. I think what Carl says is pro­found, but I want to rearrange one of his quotes “We have also arranged things so that almost no one under­stands [laws and polit­i­cal action]. This is a pre­scrip­tion for dis­as­ter. We might get away with it for a while, but soon­er or lat­er this com­bustible mix­ture of igno­rance and pow­er is going to blow up in our faces.” I can hear the fuze

  • Vickie ruby says:

    I learned if some­one speaks the truth and a bunch of peo­ple get angry and try to dis­cred­it her and call her a “con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist” that she has struck a nerve and they want to silence the crit­ic. I heard the term con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist was made up by the CIA to dis­cred­it those who are try­ing to tell the pub­lic the truth. I don’t know for sure if this is true, but enough jour­nal­ists have told me this. Or else they call them “para­noid” or “crazy” and try to dis­cred­it the truth speak­er.

    So much for free speech folks! But on a lighter note, why don’t you all read my next book which will be com­ing out next month. It will sure­ly light­en your mood and give you a good laugh at the world around us.

  • Charles Fox says:

    That’s an incred­i­bly igno­rant com­ment. Exact­ly what Carl warned us about. Read you bible and be igno­rant!

  • Charles Fox says:

    Charles Bergquist recent­ly tweet­ed, “Carl Sagan had either a time machine or a crys­tal ball.”

    Crys­tal ball?! That’s exact­ly what Carl warned us about.

    Sagan did­n’t con­jure his pre­dic­tions, he applied crit­i­cal think­ing.

  • Kevin H. says:

    At this point I don’t know if you are a Troll or just anoth­er reli­gious fanat­ic (right wing peo­ple have become a car­i­ca­ture of them­selves)

  • Kevin H. says:

    I won­der why so many peo­ple here are like “But my reli­gion is impor­tant!” when the arti­cle nev­er said any­thing about God or reli­gion. It main­ly spoke on how igno­rance is a prob­lem, now if the peo­ple that iden­ti­fy as reli­gious felt attacked per­haps they should recon­sid­er what is that they fear on sci­ence.

    Why is knowl­edge so dan­ger­ous for God?, why is sci­en­tif­ic think­ing threat­en­ing?, spe­cial­ly since any heart or brain sur­geon has saved con­sis­tent­ly more lifes in one year than sev­er­al saints com­bined in their life­time.

  • Ray says:

    G‑d is not the prob­lem. Reli­gions are the prob­lem. The main reli­gion on Earth pro­fess­es that G‑d put his only son on our plan­et about 2,000 years ago. There are approx­i­mate­ly 700,000,000,000,0000,000,000 observ­able stars in the Uni­verse we live in. Our Earth is about 4.5 bil­lion years old. Earth is to the observ­able Uni­verse as a sub­atom­ic partl­cle is to Earth. We are infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small. Wake up! Humans cre­at­ed all reli­gions. The absur­di­ty of earth­ly reli­gion is pro­found. Does G‑d exist? I don’t know!

  • Ray says:

    The ques­tion of G‑ds exis­tence is valid. Reli­gions are all made up by humans.

  • Noel Hedemark says:

    Jonathan and Bill here are per­fect exam­ples
    that prove Carl Sagan was right !

  • Magnet says:

    It’s so biz­zare that the reli­gious come out in gooves after read­ing this. Sagan is not even com­ment­ing on reli­gion, but way to make it anoth­er “attack” on your kind 😂. Who­ev­er was say­ing sci­ence “can’t dis­prove god” does­n’t under­stand how sci­ence works. Sci­ence proves things nkt the oth­er way around. You can’t dis­prove lep­rechauns exist, so why waste your time wor­ry­ing about it? Athe­ist “ram their unproven lack of belief down our throats” do you real­ize how stu­pid that sounds? Athe­ism is not a claim, it’s sim­ply a rejec­tion of the god hypoth­e­sis. I refeft your claim of god. There’s noth­ing to prove in that state­ment. If you make a pos­i­tive claim, ie “There is a god.” The bur­den of proof lies on you as the claim mak­er to pro­vide evi­dence.

  • Claudio Farias says:

    Is it pos­si­ble to pub­lish a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of this arti­cle in anoth­er lin­guage with­out vio­late copy­rights?

  • Jon Cates says:

    The para­ble of Skeeter and the Geek.
    Skeeter knows fish­ing, log­ging, and tail­gate par­ties.
    The Geek knows cal­cu­lus, Excel, mod­el­ing, and cul­ture.
    Skeeter pro­vides the food, the Geek makes it feed more than ever.

    Skeeter does­n’t under­stand the data and the Geek does­n’t under­stand the effects of pol­i­cy from the data.
    We stop com­mu­ni­cat­ing at our own per­il.

  • Nth says:

    “This site has become a bro­ken record. I guess chick­en lit­tle is run­ning this site now. I used to come here for infor­ma­tive arti­cles, now it’s just a dai­ly screed about how the US is hurtling towards the apao­colypse with the (fair and free) elec­tion of Don­ald Trump. Give it a rest! Please!”

    This did not age well!

  • Nth says:

    “… now it’s just a dai­ly screed about how the US is hurtling towards the apao­colypse with the (fair and free) elec­tion of Don­ald Trump. Give it a rest! Please!”

    This did not age well!

  • Lord Montague says:

    Reli­gion is man­made. (Fear­ful) man cre­at­ed God. There is no wis­dom in pro­claim­ing there is God. There is wis­dom in being intel­li­gent enough to reflect and realise, that God is a con­struct to help fear­ful man to live. Wher­ev­er reli­gion is col­lud­ing the minds though, not help­ing to over­come fear, even infring­ing on the free­dom of the mind for oth­ers, it should be defeat­ed.

  • Devon Dowell says:

    One of the stages of a human life is toward the end when our assess­ment of the younger gen­er­a­tions is less than gen­er­ous.

    I think the aging “boomer” gen­er­a­tion and our fears and super­sti­tions are being pan­dered to by all forms of media.

    I don’t think the younger gen­er­a­tions are buy­ing it. The young peo­ple I know have a pret­ty good under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion. Whether or not they can par­tic­i­pate with­out being cor­rupt­ed is the ques­tion.

  • Dave says:

    The quote is past­ed below. It’s a warn­ing to avoid self destruc­t­ing. Whether you are reli­gious or not, uti­liz­ing knowl­edge to avoid such cat­a­stro­phe is good.

    In Carl Sagan’s words, “We wish to pur­sue the truth, no mat­ter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imag­i­na­tion and skep­ti­cism both. We will not be afraid to spec­u­late. But we will be care­ful to dis­tin­guish spec­u­la­tion from fact.”

    I find that to be a rea­son­able pur­suit. And the quote you ques­tioned, if read with a bit of patience and an open mind, can be a help­ful path in pur­suit of what I believe is our com­mon desire: yours, mine, and Sagan’s, peace and sur­vival of human­i­ty.

    “I have a fore­bod­ing of an Amer­i­can in my chil­dren’s or grand­chil­dren’s time — when the Unit­ed States is a ser­vice and infor­ma­tion econ­o­my; when near­ly all the key 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. The dumb­ing down of Amer­i­ca is most evi­dent in the slow decay of sub­stan­tive con­tent in the enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial media, the 30-sec­ond sound bites (now down to 10 sec­onds or less), low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor pro­gram­ming, cred­u­lous pre­sen­ta­tions on pseu­do­science and super­sti­tion, but espe­cial­ly a kind of cel­e­bra­tion of igno­rance.

  • Cat says:

    Carl Sagain did not turn out to be the paragon of find­ing out what is true and cut­ting throgh the b.s. as he defined it .I read his book about the can­dle­stick in the dark and became an annoy­ing bore and agi­ta­tor to my friends who were explor­ing things like oth­er ways to under­stand con­scious­ness through astrol­o­gy, etc.

    Now that I am learn­ing ancient astrol­o­gy as a sys­tem of so many sys­tems of thought from the past, I am con­vinved all our ratio­nal sci­ence mind­ed­ness has helped ruin the plan­et. We need­ed a good mix of spir­it and mat­ter and an even greater under­stand­ing of how they work togeth­er. Ancient cul­tures may have been super­sti­tious or naive, but they had a greater con­nec­tion to and respect fr the earth, cycles and try­thems of light and dark­ness, And in a way, I feel like sci­ence, at times, is its own mythl­o­goy pass­ing away.

    Over­all, I val­ue his con­tri­bu­tions. He’s right, though. We need­ed a big­ger under­stand­ing of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, though I don’t know know how it woould have been pos­si­ble as we lost our con­nec­tion to our place in the cos­mos that the ancients stud­ied on a whole dif­fer­ent lev­el than the mate­r­i­al.

  • John says:

    Sor­ry but it wasn’t sci­ence and ratio­nal thought that ruined the plan­et. It was unchecked cap­i­tal­ism. Sagan was 100 per­cent right on the mon­ey about the effects of non crit­i­cal think­ing. Super­sti­tion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty may make some peo­ple feel good but in the end they only hold us back. While I do believe we need to respect our plan­et more, we don’t need mag­ic, reli­gion or spir­i­tu­al­i­ty to do it.

  • Laura L Jones says:

    God fear­ing peo­ple are usu­al­ly the sneaky,two faced, hyp­ocrites that hide behind reli­gion hop­ing it cloaks how immoral they real­ly are. Or its old peo­ple who are scared of death and find reli­gion eas­es their fears of the Big Sleep.

  • Robert says:

    Cap­i­tal­ism and rich peo­ple are pol­lut­ing our plan­et and destroy­ing the ozone lay­er.

  • Bill Smith says:

    It’s how you want to see it. We have two com­po­nents, intel­lec­tu­al and emo­tion­al. It depends how you see it. Sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry help us observe, test and learn about our envi­ron­ment. God, reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, helps us under­stand love and com­pas­sion, and that there is some­thing big­ger than our­selves. One wont hold up with­out the oth­er. You can have angry, hate­ful peo­ple that know sci­ence but cant get along and we end up blow­ing our­selves out of exis­tence. Or you can have god, and love with­out sci­ence and you may get along but you will not advance. Togeth­er we can have a struc­ture of lov­ing, car­ing peo­ple who are sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly advanced.

  • Orlando says:

    I am Boli­vian. Come from a fam­i­ly of agnos­tics. I lived in Austin and Hous­ton and now in Orlan­do and always amazed me how many peo­ple went to church. I reme­ber see­ing these white peo­ple, that looked inteligent, but that at the end were so igno­rant and closed mind­ed. I come from a mixed race fam­i­ly, among them, white Vas­cos and Cata­lans, and from indige­nous Quechuans that I used to aso­ci­ate with igno­rance because of the way the lived so see­ing sim­i­lar behav­iours here in the US. shocked me.

  • Tammy says:

    You only lived in big cities with con­ges­tion, high­er crime rates and high­er costs of liv­ing. So many choose the big cities for mon­ey mak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. When they choose the mon­ey they choose what comes with it.

    Not all places in Amer­i­ca are like those big cities. I have turned down job offers in the past from places in New York and in Cal­i­for­nia that would have made good mon­ey. I did so because I know how cor­rup­tive it can be and I did­n’t want that kind of life.

    Most like­ly would be bored here.. there is not much excite­ment, not much night life, the cost of liv­ing is low­er, prices are low­er, not many high rise build­ings, farm land near­by, rivers and lakes near­by, peo­ple still stop and help a lady with car trou­ble or help an elder­ly per­son, give food to the hun­gry. One can only give to those that sit on the cor­ners and hold signs up so much. We have learned that some of them dri­ve nicer cars than one might think and it’s a con.. but some are legit. Always be care­ful who you help. Oth­ers are mov­ing here and new faces are about. Most seem like nice peo­ple just try­ing to sur­vive.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.