Carl Sagan on Religion and societal harm
Sagan argued that uncritical thinking — which religion promotes — undermines democracy and leaves societies vulnerable to charlatans.
Sagan's concern about religion's societal impact was less polemical than Hitchens's or Dawkins's. His focus was on epistemology: a society that fails to teach critical thinking is vulnerable to manipulation by demagogues, pseudoscientists, and charlatans. Religion, in his view, cultivates exactly the kind of uncritical acceptance that makes this vulnerability possible.
In The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan argued that the same credulity that sustains religious belief also sustains belief in astrology, alien abductions, and conspiracy theories. The antidote is not hostility to religion but the promotion of scientific literacy and the tools of sceptical inquiry — the 'baloney detection kit' he outlined in the book.
Sagan was careful to distinguish between personal religious faith, which he regarded as a private matter, and the institutional power of religion, which he saw as frequently harmful — opposing scientific education, restricting reproductive rights, and promoting sectarian division.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”