Did you even read what Zammit said about Sagan before you insulted him? Because his opinion is right on.
http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/sagan.htmlIn his channelling section, Carl Sagan again falls into the trap listed in his own baloney detection kit as observational selection when he picks on the less convincing and ignores the spectacular results.
Further baloney detected is Sagan’s 'argument from authority.' It seems we are to accept Sagan’s conclusions based on his credentials as a scientist. However, psychic matters fall entirely outside his purview as a scientist. He has no objective authority.
Begging the question. He says on what is being stated in channeling: “People pay attention to these puerile marvels mainly because they promise something like old-time religion, but especially life after death, even life eternal”. Here Sagan makes a denigrating statement and tries to give the answer for it. That is technically an inadmissible statement.
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Dr Carl Sagan, the astronomer, scientist, fails in his ‘critical thinking’, in rebutting the paranormal/afterlife in many important respects – as shown above. He did not show he had the means to construct a reasoned argument against the validity of the empirical evidence for the paranormal. He built the ‘straw-man’ argument – concocting something fragile himself so that he could rebut it- to delude himself, to delude the skeptics, to delude the debunkers. He ignored high quality evidence and included the vexatious. He illegitimately tried to use his status as a scientist to rebut the empirical evidence of the paranormal which he does not understand, he did not research or he had ignored.
He preached about critical thinking and violated every rule in the book.Balanced against Sagan’s denigration of the public, describing them as being over-gullible, I submit that a greater proportion of people are searching for some meaning in life because of what they themselves have experienced and science cannot explain. They have legitimately argued that their history and tradition, their values and beliefs have failed them.
That is not being gullible, that is not being dogmatically indiscriminately superstitious - that is not being easily led. That is being intelligent. That is an attempt to reconcile their role in the universe with the given life on earth in a particular environment.
To impute that only Carl Sagan has the answers about what to accept or not to accept – or to state only scientists or the skeptics or the debunkers know what is going on- is to make a most erroneous statement fundamentally inconsistent with what we know about materialistic scientists, what we know about closed minded skeptics and debunkers. Many see these as losers, defeatists and over-sycophantic to those who hand out funding.
Accordingly, whereas Dr Carl Sagan might have been a good astronomer, he fails miserably in empirically showing why the objective, empirical evidence for paranormal and the afterlife should not be accepted.