Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World"

"As children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than things children in the dark hold in terror..."

Lucretis - On the Nature of Things ~60 BCE

Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" is an exceptional book. In a nutshell, it is a series of short chapters on the scientific process and how to instruct people about it, how science and wonder are not exclusive to one another but beneficial, why it and critical/skeptical thinking are important, problems that arise when it isn't, and ways to use them in everyday life and to improve our society. To me it articulates what I think, but the methods and facts he uses are more poignant and provide a better definitive justification of my viewpoints than I could give.

One of the best takeaway from this book is his baloney detection kit. The items in the kit are are:
-Independent confirmation of the facts presented.
-Encouraging debate on the evidence, by knowledgeable persons, from all points of view.
-Arguments from authority have little weight in of themselves.
-Think of all the ways a thing can be explained, test each one, and remove that which can be disproved or cannot be proved. The remaining answers are the most likely explanation.
-Never get attached to a hypothesis just because it is your hypotheses. Always compare it fairly to the options.
-Quantify (use multiple methods of analysis) because something vague and based only on its quality is open to other explanations.
-If there is a chain to an argument then every chain must stand up to inquiry.
-Occam's Razor; if there are two equally valid explanations then the simpler one should be chosen.
-Ask if it the results can be falsified and if so, then they are not worth your time without independent verification of evidence.

A great quote, one of many, used in the book is from Morris Cohen: "To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority. But there is obviously an important difference between an establishment that is open and invites everyone to come, study its methods, and suggests improvement, and one that regards the questioning of its credentials as due to wickedness of heart...Rational science treats its credit notes as always redeemable on demand, while non-rational authoritarianism regards the demand for the redemption of its paper as a disloyal lack of faith."

There is much in this book that can defend against what I fear, the use of zealotry to overthrow democracy for no other reason than power and control over others.  Highly recommended.