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

The Marriage of Scepticism and Wonder
pain of the abductees, or those who dare not leave home without
consulting their horoscopes, or those who pin their hopes on
crystals from Atlantis. And such compassion for kindred spirits in
a common quest also works to make science and the scientific
method less off-putting, especially to the young.
Many pseudoscientific and New Age belief systems emerge out
of dissatisfaction with conventional values and perspectives and
are therefore themselves a kind of scepticism. (The same is true of
the origins of most religions.) David Hess (in Science and the New
Age) argues that
the world of paranormal beliefs and practices cannot be
reduced to cranks, crackpots, and charlatans. A large number
of sincere people are exploring alternative approaches to
questions of personal meaning, spirituality, healing, and
paranormal experience in general. To the sceptic, their quest
may ultimately rest on a delusion, but debunking is hardly
likely to be an effective rhetorical device for their rationalist
project of getting [people] to recognize what appears to the
sceptic as mistaken or magical thinking.
. . . [T]he sceptic might take a clue from cultural anthropology
and develop a more sophisticated scepticism by understanding
alternative belief systems from the perspective of the
people who hold them and by situating these beliefs in their
historical, social, and cultural contexts. As a result, the world
of the paranormal may appear less as a silly turn toward
irrationalism and more as an idiom through which segments
of society express their conflicts, dilemmas, and identities
. . .
To the extent that sceptics have a psychological or sociological
theory of New Age beliefs, it tends to be very
simplistic: paranormal beliefs are 'comforting' to people who
cannot handle the reality of an atheistic universe, or their
beliefs are the product of an irresponsible media that is not
encouraging the public to think critically . . .
But Hess's just criticism promptly deteriorates into complaints
that parapsychologists 'have had their careers ruined by sceptical
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