The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

The ancient world's belief in demons is distinct from the morally-loaded Christian interpretation. In the ancient world, demons were a widespread cultural belief, functioning as amoral intermediaries between the gods and humankind. When St. Augustine was examining religions he considered pagan, he worried that these beliefs deluded people against the Christian God and so labeled demons evil. Over the centuries, Christian theologians characterized demons as “powers of the air” (117) who, full of unbridled passions, lead people—particularly women—astray, primarily through sexual congress; a cascading series of beliefs that created the cultural figure of the witch and established the conditions for the brutal witch hunts that swept across Europe and America from the 1400s to the 1600s.

Primarily inspired by the Malleus Malficarum (1487), a treatise on witchcraft that exhaustively cites Scripture that Sagan calls “one of the most terrifying documents in human history” (119), the system of thought concerning the persecution of witches was built upon several self-confirming theories that convicted every person accused of witchcraft. The proofs this treatise offers towards identifying witches are built upon superstition, religious extremism, and fallacies of logic that allowed authorities to accuse and convict female landholders, execute them, and take possession of their land with impunity. For hundreds of years, Sagan explains, these mass persecutions, under supreme religious authority, were perpetuated by a closed-system that did not allow for a skeptical analysis of data.

Sagan notes that many of the characteristics of demon visitations, and afflictions of witchcraft, share elements of alien abduction accounts: airborne, sexually-motivated individuals who enter homes at night and conduct arcane practices upon unsuspecting people. After detailing several other historical episodes that include these same characteristics, Sagan explores the argument made by alien abduction enthusiasts: that these historical accounts are merely records of abductions from populaces that lacked the proper vocabulary for them. They seem to extend Augustine’s view that all supernatural cultural figures—demons, fairies, gods—were in reality aliens. Furthermore, some Christians believe that aliens that range from them being angels to agents of Satan. Perhaps, Sagan concludes, spontaneous temporal lobe hallucinations have created strikingly similar experiences throughout the ages, yet each is interpreted by its experiencers through the dominant cultural paradigms of the time. Sagan offers his hypothesis: Alien abduction accounts are culminations of cultural references around sex-oppression and power-imbalance because cultural vocabulary has more to do with shaping the experience than any factual reality.

Sagan examines the fallibility of witness accounts, primarily those involving hypnosis, which are altered by intentional and unintentional acts of the therapist. Psychological studies have shown how easily memories can be induced to people both under hypnosis and not; it is widely accepted that witness testimony has an inconsistent reliability. These facts must be considered when evaluating alien abductions reports: Memories are unreliable data, so if they are to be taken as proof of abductions, they must bear skeptical scrutiny.

Sagan’s case study is that of apparitions of Christian saints, particularly the Marian apparitions of the 15th century, in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared in rural locations to ardent believers. The most famous of these occurrences happened in the childhood of Joan of Arc. Typically, when this happens to “shepherds and peasants and children” (141), the experiencer gains special status, the location is venerated, and a shrine is built. Sagan views the motivations for “inventing and accepting such stories” (143) as largely obvious: An industry of priestly and lay people develops around the location, pilgrims widen the economy, the nearby town or village gains a firmer identity, and the witness enjoys an elevated social position. In response to questions as to how, in a largely illiterate society lacking mass communication, religious and iconographic details could be similar across societies and generations, Sagan points to scholars’ belief that widespread Christian dramaturgy, itinerant preachers, and repeated sermons all established a shared vocabulary, which was then adapted to regional and cultural differences. Sagan ends the chapter by highlights the similar motivations for those claiming alien abduction and the familiar drawing on cultural vocabulary to flesh out the details of the claim.