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

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14<br />

Antiscience<br />

There's no such thing as objective truth. We make our own<br />

truth. There's no such things as objective reality. We make<br />

our own reality. There are spiritual, mystical, or inner ways<br />

of knowing that are superior to our ordinary ways of<br />

knowing. If an experience seems real, it is real. If an idea<br />

feels right to you, it is right. We are incapable of acquiring<br />

knowledge of the true nature of reality. Science itself is<br />

irrational or mystical. It's just another faith or belief system<br />

or myth, with no more justification than any other. It<br />

doesn't matter whether beliefs are true or not, as long as<br />

they're meaningful to you.<br />

a summary of New Age beliefs,<br />

from Theodore Schick Jr and Lewis Vaughn,<br />

How to Think About Weird Things:<br />

Critical Thinking for a New Age<br />

(Mountain View, CA:<br />

Mayfield Publishing Company, 1995)<br />

If the established framework of science is plausibly in error (or<br />

arbitrary, or irrelevant, or unpatriotic, or impious, or mainly<br />

serving the interests of the powerful), then perhaps we can save<br />

ourselves the trouble of understanding what so many people think<br />

of as a complex, difficult, highly mathematical, and counterintuitive<br />

body of knowledge. Then all the scientists would have their<br />

234

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