Writing Homework Help

I’m working on a english discussion question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

One important skill in academic writing is being able to paraphrase passages from a source. Choose a passage (meaning a sentence or a paragraph) from one of the essays we read this week. Provide us with the quote and then how you might paraphrase it if you were planning to use it in an essay. Your quotation and your paraphrase should be appropriately cited.

“Plainly there is no way back. Like it or not, we are stuck with science. We had better make the best of it. When we finally come to terms with it and fully recognize its beauty and its power, we will find, in spiritual as well as in practical matters, that we have made a bargain strongly in our favor. But superstition and pseudoscience keep getting in the way, distracting us, providing easy answers, dodging skeptical scrutiny, casually pressing our awe buttons and cheapening the experience, making us routine and comfortable practitioners as well as victims of credulity. Yes, the world would be a more interesting place if there were UFOs lurking in the deep waters off Bermuda and eating ships and planes, or if dead people could take control of our hands and write us messages. It would be fascinating if adolescents were able to make telephone handsets rocket off their cradles just by thinking at them, or if our dreams could, more often than can be explained by chance and our knowledge of the world, accurately foretell the future.”

Sagan, Carl. “Does Truth Matter?” 50 Essays a Portable Anthology, edited by Samuel Cohen, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, MA, 2020, pp. 310–324.