Day By Day

Saturday, November 24, 2007

A Demon Haunted World?


I just don't know what to make of this. Moonbattery has been mainstreamed.

A national survey conducted by Scripps Howard and Ohio University found that nearly two thirds of the public actually believes that the government had advance warning of 9/11 and refused to do anything about it. One third of the public thinks that the government was actually complicit in the attacks. Sixteen percent believe that the government actually staged the attacks so as to have an excuse for going to war.

Other beliefs:

Forty two percent believe that the government knew in advance about the Kennedy assassination.

Thirty-seven percent believe in UFO's and that the government is hiding evidence of them.

Eighty percent believe that the big oil companies are conspiring to drive gasoline prices up.

Read about it here.

This is insanity -- sheer insanity! Yet it is the mood of the public today, and such absurdities are particularly common among young people. This does not bode well for the future -- not well at all.

How can we explain such rampant madness, such pervasive ignorance and distrust and cynicism, especially among the young? Is it the schools..., the mass media..., the breakdown of the family..., secularization? What?

Years ago Carl Sagan, viewing the rise of irrational, superstitious nonsense in our culture, warned that we were inhabiting a "Demon Haunted" world. At the time I thought he was alarmist. Now I am alarmed.

In his book Sagan urged people to use critical, logical thinking and to rely on scientific authority. Well..., he was half right.