- Carl Sagan is one of the preeminent
astronomers of our time.
He is known for bringing the heavens
to our living rooms with his PBS series Cosmos.
His latest work is The Demon-Haunted World,
Science as a Candle in the Dark.
It explores the country's growing fascination
with pseudo-science, astrology, faith healers,
the supernatural and the like, all superstitions
that he says threaten to undermine true science.
I am pleased to have him here
and I also take note of the fact
that he is a David Duncan professor of astronomy
and space sciences and director of the Laboratory
for Planetary Studies at Cornell University,
distinguished visiting scientist
of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
California Institute of Technology
and co-planner and president of The Planetary Society,
the largest space interest group in the world,
and a former Pulitzer Prize winner.
Welcome back today.
- Thank you Charlie. - It's great to see you.
Listen to this, I hate to read too much, but this is,
it's almost like they've been reading your book.
This is from the New York Times for Friday, May 24.
Americans flaunt science, a study finds.
Less than half of all American adults understand
that the Earth orbits the sun yearly,
according to a basic science survey.
Nevertheless, there's enthusiasm for research
except in some fields like genetic engineering
and nuclear power that are viewed with suspicion.
Only about 25% of American adults get passing grades
in a National Science Foundation Survey
of what people know about basic science and economics.
I mean, this is singing your song, isn't it?
- Well, it's certainly what I'm talking about
in The Demon-Haunted World.
My feeling, Charlie, is that it's not pseudo-science
and superstition and New Age, so-called, beliefs
and fundamentalist zealotry are something new.
They've been with us for as long as we've been human.
But we live in an age based on science and technology
with formidable technological powers.
- Science and technology are propelling us
forward at accelerating rates.
- That's right. And if we don't understand it
and by we I mean the general public
if it's something that "oh, I'm not good at that.
"I don't anything about it,"
then who is making all the decisions about science
and technology that are going to determine
what kind of future our children live in?
Just some members of Congress?
But there's no more than a handful of members of Congress
with any background in science at all.
And the Republican Congress has just abolished
its own office of technology assessment,
the organization that gave them bipartisan,
competent advice on science and technology.
They say "we don't want to know.
"Don't tell us about science and technology."
- Surprising, because Gingrich is genuinely interested,
I think-- - He is, no question.
- Out of his own intellectual curiosity.
Does the president still have a science adviser
at the White House? - He does,
he does, John Gibbons
and the vice president is scientifically literate.
- He's well known for being scientifically a science maven.
I mean, you blast them all,
creationists, Christian Scientists who you say would rather
allow their children to suffer
than give them insulin or antibiotics.
Astrologers come in for particular scorn on your part.
(laughing)
- Well, I wouldn't say scorn, just derision.
- Derision. (laughing)
A more generous version of scorn.
But what's the danger of all this?
I mean, you know, this is not the thing that--
- There's two kinds of dangers.
One is what I just talked about,
that we've arranged this society based on science
and technology in which nobody understands anything
about science and technology,
and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power,
sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces.
I mean who is running the science
and technology in a democracy,
if the people don't know anything about it?
And the second reason that I'm worried about this
is that science is more than a body of knowledge.
It's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating
the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions,
to interrogate those who tell us that something is true,
to be skeptical of those in authority,
then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan,
political or religious, who comes ambling along.
It's a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on.
It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights
in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights.
The people had to be educated and they had to practice
their skepticism and their education.
Otherwise we don't run the government,
the government runs us.
- Jefferson was amazing in his devotion to science.
- Absolutely. - We think of Jefferson
as this man who was literate
and who was a passionate articulator of freedom,
but if you go to Monticello-- - Exactly.
- What you appreciate is he was at heart a scientist,
a botanist, an architect, geologist.
And if you, Meriwether Lewis,
as we now know from Steven Ambrose,
he wanted him to go out and do experimentations
and explore and be skeptical
and find answers to passages and explore the West.
- Exactly right.
And there was also an economic grail
there if the northwest passage was found.
Jefferson said that he was at heart a scientist,
that he would have loved to have been a scientist.
But there were certain events happening in America
that called to him, and so he devoted his life
to that kind of politics.
- A revolution. - Indeed.
So that generations later people could be scientists.
- Yeah.
Have we, the point is made, and maybe by you, you know,
is that when's the last time we had a president
who made a speech about science?
- I say that. - Yeah.
It is this notion that science
is not of great interest to us in some sense,
that somehow we don't want to learn.
- You see, people read the stock market quotations
and financial pages.
Look how complex that is and--
- [Charlie] Because they know the direct connection
to their own-- - There's a motivation.
But they're capable of it, large numbers of people.
People are able to look at sports statistics.
Look how many people can do that.
Understanding science is not more difficult than that.
It does not involve greater intellectual activities.
But the thing about science is first of all,
it's after the way the universe really is
and not what makes us feel good.
And a lot of the competing doctrines
are after what feels good and not what's true.
- Okay, but you've got to make,
I'm not sure you'll go this far with me,
but I mean there's, a lot of that is about feeling good
and there's a lot of that that's about hocus pocus.
But at the same time, there are millions of people
who understand science does not prove religion
because religion is faith-based.
Therefore, you should not deny the value of it
because it is faith-based and not science based.
- But let's look a little more deeply into that.
What is faith?
It is belief in the absence of evidence.
Now, I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe,
but for me, believing when there's no compelling evidence
is a mistake.
The idea is to withhold belief
until there is compelling evidence.
And if the universe does not comply with our predisposition,
okay, then we have the wrenching obligation
to accommodate to the way the universe really is.
- But I think you, but I mean, so you step forward
to say "I deny all religion
"because I can't see it proved scientifically?"
- No, no, no, no no no.
- You see the value of religious experience
and the value of reaching for higher experiences?
- Let me say, religion deals with history, with poetry,
with great literature, with ethics, with morals,
including the morality of treating compassionately
the least fortunate among us.
All of these are things that I endorse whole heartedly.
Where religion gets into trouble is in those cases
that it pretends to know something about science.
The science in the Bible, for example,
was acquired by the Jews from the Babylonians
during the Babylonian captivity of 600 BC.
That was the best science on the planet then.
But we've learned something since then.
Roman Catholicism, Reform Judaism,
most of the mainstream Protestant denominations
have no difficulty with the idea
that humans have evolved from other creatures,
that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, the Big Bang.
They don't have any trouble with that.
The trouble comes with people who are Biblical literalists
who believe that the Bible is dictated
by the Creator of the Universe
to an unerring stenographer.
- [Charlie] And so therefore they--
- And has no metaphor or allegory in it.
- And from there, they make their political
and economic choices, and social choices.
- And scientific.
- And scientific choices and scientific.
And that's part of your problem with that idea.
- [Carl] Exactly.
- It is that because for the wrong reasons,
we make the wrong choices about science.
- That's right.
So who is more humble?
The scientist who looks at the universe
with an open mind and accepts
whatever the universe has to teach us,
or somebody who says everything in this book
must be considered the literal truth
and nevermind the fallibility of all the human beings
involved in the writing of this book.
- Okay, I mean, I accept that, but I also,
the argument that would be made by many is that, you know,
you don't have to, whether a specific scientific act
took place as described by some Biblical writer is not,
is not at the heart of the religious faith
and the religious experience.
- Some people agree with you and some people don't.
Some people think that every jot
and tittle in the Bible is essential.
You throw one thing away to allegory or metaphor,
then it's up to everybody to make their own decisions.
- Then are we, this,
a lot of this has to do with science in the United States.
Are we different than other nations?
- No, absolutely not.
You can see this worldwide.
In India, there's a madness about astrology,
in Britain, it's ghosts,
in Germany, it's rays coming up from the Earth
that can only be detected by dousers.
Every country has its own specialties.
We seem to be fascinated by UFOs right now.
But one thing. - What is that,
before you leave UFOs. (laughing)
Tell me about you and Professor Mack.
- John Mack is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard
who I've known for many years.
We were arrested together at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site
protesting US testing in the face
of a Soviet moratorium on testing.
And many years ago, he asked me
"what is there in this UFO business?
"Is there anything to it?"
And I said "absolutely nothing, except,
"of course, for a psychiatrist."
He is a psychiatrist.
Well, he looked into it
and decided that there was so much emotional energy
in the reports of people who claimed to be abducted
that it couldn't possibly be some psychological aberration,
that it had to be true.
He believed his patients.
I do not believe his patients.
Many of these stories are about waking up from a deep sleep
and finding your bed surrounded by three or four short,
dour, gray and sexually obsessed beings who then take you
to their spaceship after they slither you through your wall,
and perform a variety of objectionable,
sexual experiments on you.
- But here we have Dr. Carl Sagan, astronomer,
versus Dr. John, I mean Doctor, what's his first name?
- John Mack. - John Mack, MD.
- No question.
So what's the problem?
- He's a scientist. - How can scientists disagree?
- He's a scientist. - Is that what you're asking?
- Well, no. I'm asking how could,
I mean what do you think of this man
coming to these conclusions?
- I think he is not using the scientific method
in approaching his issue.
- And were you constantly, I mean,
I assume you come at him with both barrels in conversations.
- And in The Demon-Haunted World.
- [Charlie] And he says?
- He says I don't appreciate the emotional force--
- You don't? - Of these reports.
But many people awaken from a nightmare
with profound emotional force.
That doesn't mean that the nightmare is true,
it means something went on inside our heads.
- You were making a point before I jumped the gun, Mack.
- Oh, yeah.
What I wanted to say is going back
to the question of adequate evidence
on something that's emotionally really pulling you.
I lost both my parents about 12 or 15 years ago
and I had a great relationship with them.
I really miss them.
I would love to believe that their spirits
were around somewhere.
And I'd give almost anything
to spend five minutes a year with them.
- Do you hear their voices ever?
- Sometimes.
About six or eight times since their death I've heard it.
- "Carl," just in the voice of my father or my mother.
Now, I don't think that means that they're in the next room.
I think it means that-- - They're in your head.
- I've had an auditory hallucination.
I was with them so long, I heard their voices so often.
Why shouldn't I be able to make
a vivid recollection of them?
- Here's what's interesting about this for me,
I mean, you won't see this, but I'll throw it at you anyway.
You convinced me a long time ago that it was arrogant
for me or for anyone else to believe
that there wasn't some life outside of our,
- To exclude the possibility.
- To exclude the possibility was an arrogance
of intellect that we should not assume.
- [Carl] I still believe so.
- You couldn't prove it, you didn't know it was there,
but the arrogance-- - Right.
We don't know if it's there,
we don't know if it's not there.
Let's look.
- And if you take that, why can't you say
"there's a lot we don't know.
"There's a lot of power there that we don't know."
- It's what I believe, but that doesn't mean
that every fraudulent claim has to be accepted.
We demand the most rigorous standards of evidence,
especially on what's important to us.
So if some guy comes up to me and, a channeler or a medium
"I can put you in touch with your parents."
Well, because I want so terribly to believe that,
I know I have to reach in for added reserves of skepticism
because I'm likely to be fooled, and much more minor,
to have my money taken.
- [Charlie] Well, is it JZ Knight was it?.
- Yeah, exactly.
She has a guy named Ramtha
who's 10,000 years old or something.
- 35. - 35, yes.
And he tells you lots of things
but nothing about what life was like 35,000 years ago.
- [Charlie] Shirley Maclaine believes.
- Shirley Maclaine believes that Ramtha was her brother.
(laughing)
- Things like the Loch Ness monster and all of that.
- Again-- - Photographs.
- All fakes.
I mean the most famous photograph
has now been shown to be a fake,
but could there be a unknown mammal
or even reptile of large dimension swimming in an Irish,
in a Scottish lake?
Sure there could.
That we don't know about?
Sure there could, who says no?
- [Charlie] But nobody--
- But the evidence does not support it,
does not demonstrate it.
So do we say, "oh, ridiculous,"
no we don't do that.
We say unproved, which is a Scottish verdict.
- Some reviewers differ with your conclusions on this point
that you seem to say it's growing,
this kind of pseudo science and--
- No.
Sorry to interrupt.
I don't, this is part of being human.
Humans have had this way of magical thinking
through all of our history.
The problem is that today the technology
has reached formidable, maybe even awesome proportions,
and so the dangers of thinking this way are larger.
Not that this is a new kind of thinking.
- You are living with myelo displasia.
- Or I have been. - You have been.
It's in remission.
Are you--
- Well, you know, with diseases of this sort
and in all cancers-- - Cancer of the bone marrow?
- Myelo displasia is not exactly cancer of the bone marrow,
but if untreated, it inevitably leads to leukemia.
And the trouble with all these diseases
is you never know that you've got every last cell.
You can only detect down to a certain level.
But down to the level that anybody can detect
in terms of how I feel and my stamina and all that,
it seems to be gone.
I'm very lucky. - Because you had a sister
who enabled you to have a bone marrow transplant.
- That's one.
And also the enormous advances in scientific,
in medical science in just the last few years.
If I had had this thing five or 10 years ago,
I would be dead, sure as shooting.
And then, finally, the love and support of my family.
All of those played a central role.
- So you're optimistic?
- I'm very optimistic, or at least very hopeful.
- And just share with us, because of your sense of language
and your sense of understand and being reflective
and introspective, what does, what do you think about
and what does it do for you to--
- I didn't have any near death experiences,
I didn't have a religious conversion but--
- [Charlie] But you thought about
what it would be like to die?
- Certainly and what it would be like for my family.
And, I didn't much think about what it would be like for me,
because I don't think it's likely there's anything
that you think about after you're dead.
- That's it? (laughing)
- Yeah a long, dreamless sleep.
I'd love to believe the opposite,
but I don't know of any evidence.
But one thing. - Faith, Carl, faith.
- One thing that it has done is to enhance my sense
of appreciation for the beauty of life and of the universe
and the sheer joy of being alive.
- You had a healthy portion of that before this,
but even you it happened to.
- Oh, there's no question. - An appreciation--
- Every moment, every inanimate object,
to say nothing of the exquisite complexity of living beings.
Yeah, you imagine missing it all
and suddenly it's so much more precious.
- [Charlie] May you live a long time.
Thank you very much. - Thank you Charlie.
- It's a pleasure. - Same here.
- Carl Sagan.
Science as a candle in the dark.
The title of the book is A Demon-Haunted World.
Thank you for joining us we'll see you next time.