Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

When Scientists Know Sin
obscure graduate student in some locale remote from Washington,
DC, who, if the arguments were closely held and highly secret,
would never have the opportunity to address the issue.
What realm of human endeavour is not morally ambiguous? Even
folk institutions that purport to give us advice on behaviour and
ethics seem fraught with contradictions. Consider aphorisms -
haste makes waste; yes, but a stitch in time saves nine. Better safe
than sorry; but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Where there's
smoke, there's fire; but you can't tell a book by its cover. A penny
saved is a penny earned; but you can't take it with you. He who
hesitates is lost; but fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Two
heads are better than one; but too many cooks spoil the broth.
There was a time when people planned or justified their actions on
the basis of such contradictory platitudes. What is the moral
responsibility of the aphorist? Or the Sun-sign astrologer, the
Tarot card reader, the tabloid prophet?
Or consider the mainstream religions. We are enjoined in
Micah to do justly and love mercy; in Exodus we are forbidden to
commit murder; in Leviticus we are commanded to love our
neighbour as ourselves; and in the Gospels we are urged to love
our enemies. Yet think of the rivers of blood spilled by fervent
followers of the books in which these well-meaning exhortations
are embedded.
In Joshua and in the second half of Numbers is celebrated the
mass murder of men, women, children, down to the domestic
animals in city after city across the whole land of Canaan. Jericho
is obliterated in a kherem, a 'holy war'. The only justification
offered for this slaughter is the mass murderers' claim that, in
exchange for circumcising their sons and adopting a particular set
of rituals, their ancestors were long before promised that this land
was their land. Not a hint of self-reproach, not a muttering of
patriarchal or divine disquiet at these campaigns of extermination
can be dug out of holy scripture. Instead, Joshua 'destroyed all
that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded' (Joshua, x,
40). And these events are not incidental, but central to the main
narrative thrust of the Old Testament. Similar stories of mass
murder (and in the case of the Amalekites, genocide) can be
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