After years of placing Carl Sagan’s final book “The Demon Haunted World, Science As Candle In The Dark” on my Christmas list, the year my family came through.  I thought it would ease my anxiety about a world were people will believe anything that comes from faith-based sources.

Sagan talks about people who believe in UFOs.  He analyzes patterns that appear over and over in encounter reports, and discusses how there are much simpler explanations.  In one interesting section he posted dozens of comments sent in response to an article he wrote on the subject in Parade magazine.  Most of the people sounded crazy.  Back then their thoughts were expressed to a few letter recipients and three or four guys in a bar.  Now they have 300 followers on social media which algorithmically advances the most extreme possible.

He talked about the “Satanic Panic” craze that took over America in the 80’s.  I definitely remember some parents suing rock band Judas Priest because their child killed themselves.  Carl says these things are a fabrication.  Now I see the whole episode as more evidence that Christians manufacture threats, rile up their members agains their threats, then enact laws to advance their theocratic agenda.  Pizza-Gate is a more current example.

My biggest thought while reading this 90’s-era book was, “Oh Carl, how you underestimated how stupid the American people would become”.  His hope for an embrace of rational thought seems quaint in the time of Jesus of Mara Lago whose every word dictates reality for millions of Americans.  I miss Carl but am glad he won’t see the collapse of Western Civilization and its descent into another Dark Age.