"C J Campbell" writes:

"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
ink.net...
Believing things without any evidence gave us the dark ages.

"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and
superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of
unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before?
Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of
scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we
agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is
building up around us -- then, habits of thought familiar from ages past
reach for the controls.

"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness
gathers. The demons begin to stir." -- Carl Sagan "The Demon Haunted World,"
1995.

Even Sagan himself was apparently not immune to the the dangers
he warns against:

(from http://www.crichton-official.com/spe...s_quote04.html)

A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan
predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a
nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and
endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome
was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it
happened.

--
Matt Emerson