You might think that I am arguing that the ancient religions were misremembered, misperceived, or misunderstood contact experiences with alien astronauts. A young Carl Sagan thought that. So does a contemporary US television series and, no doubt, millions of its viewers. No, I am not saying that. I do not believe that. Why? Because that kind of mythmaking is simply an example of a very common error that historians of science called “presentism.” The error of presentism is the understandable (but always false) presumption that one’s present scientific worldview or grasp of the cosmos is somehow
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