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

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
ignoring it where we feel threatened - again, because we are not
wise enough to do so.
Except by sealing the brain off into separate air-tight compartments,
how is it possible to fly in airplanes, listen to the radio or
take antibiotics while holding that the Earth is around 10,000
years old or that all Sagittarians are gregarious and affable?
Have I ever heard a sceptic wax superior and contemptuous?
Certainly. I've even sometimes heard, to my retrospective dismay,
that unpleasant tone in my own voice. There are human imperfections
on both sides of this issue. Even when it's applied sensitively,
scientific scepticism may come across as arrogant, dogmatic,
heartless and dismissive of the feelings and deeply held beliefs of
others. And, it must be said, some scientists and dedicated
sceptics apply this tool as a blunt instrument, with little finesse.
Sometimes it looks as if the sceptical conclusion came first, that
contentions were dismissed before, not after, the evidence was
examined. All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree,
self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our
belief system as insufficiently well based - or who, like Socrates,
merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or
demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under
the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It
feels like a personal assault.
The scientist who first proposed to consecrate doubt as a prime
virtue of the inquiring mind made it clear that it was a tool and not
an end in itself. Rene Descartes wrote,
I did not imitate the sceptics who doubt only for doubting's
sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary,
my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig
away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay
beneath.
In the way that scepticism 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
sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what
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