It seems I find myself wondering about our society's critical thinking skills every more frequently. The burden of proof seems to have changed from requiring that believers prove a claim to forcing skeptics to disprove a claim. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.
The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved. This quote from Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia , which is not provided until the end of the book, well summarizes what Carl Sagan is trying to do with The Demon-Haunted World . It is Sagan's view that the world is experiencing a crisis of skepticism, that it is a tool too rarely used. The cause for this would seem to be a move away from teaching, and understanding, the scientific method.