Carl Sagan wrote The Demon Haunted World (© 1995) as “...a personal statement, reflecting my love affair with science.
But there’s a second reason...
Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues;
when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...”
If we want to know how did we get to this state of affairs, he said:
This world as we know it is only just one brief moment that appears to us to be an endless horizon of time... this time grants comfort... and this comfort breeds complacency... and from complacency stems ultimate stupidity and eventual destruction.
There was too complacency after the success of the New Deal and the return home of the WW2 veterans. People thought the merit of public education, public infrastructure, the spirit lifting national park system, research into all forms of science, was proven and could never be discarded. Little did they realize that dark forces like the Koch brothers and other plutocrats planned otherwise and took over the media and the political arena with their Trojan horses. They have transformed a great deal of the USA into the state it was before the United States Constitution was passed, and hate all the Amendments that were designed to correct the flaws within the original document.
It has been said that the expectation of the philosophers who created the system, was for it to continue to be reformed. George Washington said he hoped 'America would become the most liberal of all nations.'
Now the wealthy forces of plutocracy, theocracy, oligarchy or feudalism has been very effective. They have over the last half centure turned the people against the ideas of the Enlightenment and New Deal, using media, religion and conspiracies for the other side of the political spectrum to ensure they get power from all sides. It's worked brilliantly. We've also worked against ourselves, constantly:
“The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.”
But Sagan said specifically on how we lose democracy:
“If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”
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