Carl Sagan, an astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator, captivated the world with his unparalleled ability to convey the wonders of the cosmos. Renowned for his role in popularizing science, Sagan’s legacy extends beyond academia, leaving an indelible mark on the public’s understanding of the universe.
Carl Sagan’s well-known quote about being bamboozled exactly recounts the experience many have when experiencing a faith crisis. Especially for individuals who were deeply embedded in the church teachings and traditions. Many who have invested significant time, effort, and emotion into the church may find it challenging to objectively evaluate evidence that challenges their beliefs. The fear of acknowledging that one may have been misled, coupled with the emotional investment in the church, can create a reluctance to explore any uncomfortable truths. This psychological phenomenon leads individuals to reject evidence that contradicts their established worldview, even when faced with compelling information.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has cap-tured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you al-most never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.
Séances occur only in darkened rooms, where the ghostly visitors can be seen dimly at best. If we turn up the lights a little, so we have a chance to see what’s going on, the spirits vanish. They’re shy, we’re told, and some of us believe it. In twentieth-century parapsychology laboratories, there is the “observer effect”: Those described as gifted psychics find that their powers diminish markedly whenever skeptics arrive, and disappear altogether in the presence of a conjurer as skilled as James Randi. What they need is darkness and gullibility.
A little girl who had been a co-conspirator in a famous nineteenth-century flimflam-spirit-rapping, in which ghosts answer questions by loud thumping-grew up and confessed it was an imposture. She was cracking the joint in her big toe. She demonstrated how it was done. But the public apology was largely ignored and, when acknowledged, denounced. Spirit-rapping was too reassuring to be abandoned merely on the say-so of a self-confessed rapper, even if she started the whole business in the first place. The story began to circulate that the confes-sion was coerced out of her by fanatical rationalists.
As I described earlier, British hoaxers confessed to having made “crop circles,” geometrical figures generated in grain fields. It wasn’t alien artists working in wheat as their medium, but two blokes with a board, a rope, and a taste for whimsy. Even when they demonstrated how they did it, though, believers were unimpressed. Maybe some of the crop circles are hoaxes, they argued, but there are too many of them, and some of the pictograms are too complex. Only extraterres-trials could do it. Then others in Britain confessed. But crop circles abroad, it was objected, in Hungary for example, how can you ex-plain that? Then copycat Hungarian teenagers confessed. But what about…?
To test the credulity of an alien abduction psychiatrist, a woman poses as an abductee. The therapist is enthusiastic about the fantasies she spins. But when she announces it was all a fake, what is his re-sponse? To re-examine his protocols or his understanding of what these cases mean? No. On various days he suggests (1) even if she isn’t herself aware of it, she was in fact abducted; or (2) she’s crazy-after all, she went to a psychiatrist, didn’t she?; or (3) he was on top of the hoax from the beginning and just gave her enough rope to hang herself.
If it’s sometimes easier to reject strong evidence than to admit that we’ve been wrong, this is also information about ourselves worth having.
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Page 241-242, 1995
https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8Y6KfXf9UC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&pg=PA241
Giving power to a religious institution and then facing the difficulty of reclaiming one’s autonomy aligns with Sagan’s warning. Once an individual has surrendered their intellectual and emotional allegiance to a particular belief system, especially one with significant influence like the Mormon church, breaking free from the cognitive and emotional entanglement can be a daunting and painful process. He emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, ongoing questioning, and the willingness to reassess beliefs in the pursuit of truth, even when it challenges long-held convictions. Wouldn’t it be nice if the church membership learned critical thinking and to pursue truth even if it challenges their convictions?
How did you overcome the bamboozle? Describe what the pain felt like when you were able to acknowledge that you’d been “taken” by the charlatan. How does it feel now to have hopefully reclaimed the power for yourself rather than defaulting it to the church as we’ve been taught? Please share your thoughts in the comments here or consider sharing your whole mormon faith transition story on wasmormon.org!
More reading:
- https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8Y6KfXf9UC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&pg=PA241
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan
- https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469?tag=circubstu-20
- https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/848tbu/bamboozled_by_charlatans_one_of_my_favorite/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/18wte5d/came_across_this_quote_over_the_weekend_and_feel/
- https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1723030,1723030,quote=1
Kind of stupid that someone felt compelled to put the quote down three times in a row. I know that readers for the blind can’t read from a meme apparently, but three times?