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Imagine a Demon Haunted World without Heaven

John Lennon sings can you ‘Imagine’ a world without heaven while Carl Sagan explains science as a candle in the dark in his book ‘The Demon Haunted World.’ Of course, by Demon Haunted, Sagan is showing the reader how unscientific and superstitious people of Christian faith are. Unfortunately, both Lennon and Sagan are naïve to a degree of dangerous proportions. Not only is Sagan naïve, but disingenuous about his own adherence to the scientific method. While Lennon attacks Christianity by declaring the possibilities for man made heaven here on earth, Sagan is denouncing religion by claiming it is nothing more than “validation through prophecy”, whereas science is “a directly observed success.”1 It would be noble if Sagan were truly a scientific warrior in search of truth and fact, yet his reverence for the scientific method seems to apply only when necessary for his ideological bent. In 1983 Sagan along with 4 other scientists published a paper in Science called “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions.” Within the paper is an equation which can paraphrased as follows:

Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe… etc

(The amount of tropospheric dust=# warheads x size warheads x warhead detonation height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x Particles entering the Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle endurance…and so on.)2

The problem with this equation is the variables cannot be determined. The paper is prophetic exaltation by scientists with little regard for any search for the truth. “Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about," other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science but…who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is terrible but---perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter team followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the editors denying that these statements were ever made, though the scientists since then have subsequently confirmed their views.”2

What Lennon and Sagan fail to recognize is the proof of a Demon Haunted World when God is removed from the equation. We have countless testimonials from survivors of prisoners of war camps, gulags and the killing fields to warn us of the dangers of replacing faith in God with a secular ideology. Kang Chol-Hwan writes, “ceding to hunger, acting like an animal: these are things anyone is capable of, professor, worker, and peasant alike. I saw for myself how little these distinctions mattered, how thoroughly hunger alters one’s reason. A person dying of hunger will grab a rat and eat it without hesitation. Yet as soon as he begins to regain his strength, his dignity returns, and he thinks to himself, I’m a human being. How could I have descended so low? This high-mindedness never lasts long.”3 What Chol-Hwan as well as Lennon and Sagan ultimately fail to realize is at our desperate end when reason begins to fail, our faith in God gives us strength and this is well documented by starving sailors on the high seas not resorting to cannibalism to people who face death as opposed to conversion by the sword. When Fox news reporter Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig denounced their faith under threat of death they showed just how little they had. They were starving and eating the last morsels of food meant for the children. An animal has no ability to reason and due to instinct will often feed their young till they die of starvation, yet In Centanni and Wiig’s situation they show clearly the length to which they will go in order to stay alive. Ultimately, everyone takes a leap of faith in something, be it science, man or God, yet at our deepest depth of suffering all we have left to count on is our belief in God and this makes us human. God is the Candle in the Dark and the Demon Haunted World is the world we ourselves create here on earth in large part to people such as Lennon, Sagan and the Centanni and Wiigs of the world.

Notes:
1 Sagan, Carl The Demon Haunted World Science as a Candle in the Dark, Random House (1996), p.26
2 Crichton, Michael Lecture at CIT Pasadena, CA (Jan 17, 2003)
3 Chol-Hwan, Kang & Rigoulot, Pierre The Aquariums of Pyongyang, Basic Books (2001), p.142
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"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy