The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings For The Nonbeliever - Plot & Excerpts
His academic work in astronomy and his gift for clear exposition took him from the pinnacles of Harvard and Cornell to the more demotic arena of television and film and fiction, where his novel Contact won him widespread renown. Not unlike Bertrand Russell, Sagan had the faculty of connecting ancient superstitions to modern ones: in The Demon-Haunted World he calmly showed how religion drew on primitive fears and helped to reinforce them, and in his Gifford lectures at the University of Glasgow he connected the slavish belief in gods to the idiotic cult of UFOs and other post-modern delusions. There are demon-haunted worlds, regions of utter darkness. —THE ISA UPANISHAD (INDIA, CA. 600 B.C.) Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion. —THOMAS HOBBES, LEVIATHAN (1651) The gods watch over us and guide our destinies, many human cultures teach; other entities, more malevolent, are responsible for the existence of evil. Both classes of beings, whether considered natural or supernatural, real or imaginary, serve human needs.
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