Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World

Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World is a powerful novel written to encourage people to understand and accept science. It is a request to get the readers to use their minds and think for themselves, rather than just take what the media gives them with no questions asked. Sagan's expertise and impressive resume give him the credibility that allows this novel to be an educational, accurate depiction of the true meaning of science.

The chapter that stood out to me the most was 'Aliens'. Growing up, I was always intrigued by the extraterrestrial life that potentially visited our planet from time to time. One of my favorite movies was Signs because I loved to freak myself out by imagining that aliens really tip toe around the corn fields at night, leaving us messages. It was really interesting to read about the crop circle hoax conducted by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, fooling people for fifteen years. Although it was fake, people believed it. In fact, they believed more easily that the circles were a sign of extraterrestrial life than humans taking hours to meticulously create them. We can't be so naive as to think that aliens don't exist. Whether they have visited Earth or not, they're out there somewhere.

This chapter ties into the alien abduction stories we have read about in our lectures. When aliens became more prominent in movies and documentaries, accounts of alien abduction sky rocketed. This is similar to in the book, when other people began to catch on and create crop circles, too. It strikes a sort of phenomenon amongst people who are looking for something seemingly impossible to believe in. 

While taking this course, I have began to look into things from a deeper perspective. The other night I sat on the beach and looked up at the sky for hours, pondering of all that takes place in the universe. Being able to see Saturn and Mars, I imagined creatures on those specks of light, looking back at me. 

The video below is an interview with Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, "the men who fooled the world":