What are the motifs in The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan?

Sagan believes scientists have too often failed to exercise full moral responsibility for their work by distancing themselves from the potential impacts of their discoveries and by allowing themselves to become corrupted by power. This dilemma probably goes back to the creation of the earliest tools by flaking and shaping spear points from rocks. The situation is not unlike the position of the Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition, when the torture and execution of those deemed heretics was essentially sub-contracted to secular operatives so the church could both condemn its critics and maintain hands free of their blood.