Posted on 03/10/2014 6:58:19 AM PDT by Heartlander
If there was any doubt that the rebooted Cosmos series, which premiered last night, would be politically charged and have a materialistic ideological message, consider what viewers saw in its first sixty seconds. The opening featured President Obama giving a statement endorsing the series. That's not necessarily bad, except for what happened next. Immediately following President Obama's endorsement, the show replayed Carl Sagan's famous materialistic credo from the original Cosmos series that "The cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be." Does it violate the separation of church and state for the President of the United States to be portrayed seemingly endorsing Sagan's materialistic viewpoint? Is this what President Obama meant when he said in his first inaugural address that we should "restore science to its rightful place"?
The irony is that viewers were then immediately told by series host Neil deGrasse Tyson that science follows a "set of rules." It should:
Before I launch into any more critiques, let me note some genuine positives about the rebooted series. First, the expensive CGI which animates the new Cosmos is easy on the eyes, and deliberately appeals to sci-fi fans like myself. Having watched every episode of every Star Trek series multiple times, I was excited to learn that the new Cosmos series was directed by Brannon Braga, who also helped create Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise. In the first few minutes of Cosmos, Braga's influence was clear. Neil deGrasse Tyson is portrayed flying in a sleek spaceship through our solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and then the entire universe, giving us a visually stunning and innovative tour of our "cosmic address," as Tyson puts it. That's another positive about the series: Tyson is a fabulous science communicator. If only he had used this series to simply communicate science, rather than science plus a heavy dose of materialist philosophy.
During the first episode, Tyson devotes lengthy segments to promoting the old tale that religion is at war science, and strongly promotes the idea that religion opposes intellectual advancement. He tells the story of the 16th-century astronomer Giordano Bruno, who he says lived in a time without "freedom of speech" or "separation of church and state," and thus fell into the clutches of the "thought police" of the Inquisition for disagreeing with the church's geocentric views. Never mind that his show made it appear that President Obama endorsed Sagan-style materialism, but I digress... Of course the main religious authority of that time was the Catholic Church, and the program shows angry priests with evil-sounding British accents dressed in full religious garb throwing Bruno out on the street, and eventually burning him at the stake.
Just to make sure that other Christians who aren't Catholic also understand their religions too hinder scientific progress, Tyson goes out of his way to point out that Bruno was opposed by "Calvinists in Switzerland," and "Lutherans in Germany," including the great protestant reformer Martin Luther himself. He never mentions that Protestants aren't the ones who burned Bruno at the stake, nor does he ever mention that most of the founders of modern science were Christians. But I digress...
It's a lengthy scene, all to highlight some of the darkest chapters of Christianity in Europe. But the entire retelling of Bruno's fate lasts a good portion of the first episode's hour. Why make the religious persecution of scientists some four hundred years ago a major focus of a widely publicized television series that is ostensibly about promoting science?
Actually, I'd love to see a TV show aimed at helping the public to understand the dangers of hindering academic freedom for scientists. I suppose if you wanted to cover that topic, you'd want to talk about the evil things some members of the church did to persecute scientists hundreds of years ago. But why stop there? Why not also talk about how Lysenkoists in the USSR persecuted scientists who didn't support their atheist, Communist ideology during the 20th century? Or why not talk about the numerous well-documented examples of scientists who have faced persecution and discrimination for disagreeing with Darwinian evolution in just the last few years? For example:
True, ID-critics may not be burning people at the stake, but they have become so intolerant that in 2007, the Council of Europe, the leading European "human rights" organization, adopted a resolution calling ID a potential "threat to human rights"!
So if Neil deGrasse Tyson felt so strongly that it's important to teach the public about the importance of "freedom of speech" for scientists to "question everything," then why didn't he mention any of these recent incidents where skeptics of Darwinian evolution or proponents of intelligent design had their academic freedom violated? Why did he only focus on incidents from four hundred years ago where the church suppressed science, while he ignored all the numerous instances of the present day where atheist-Darwin activists have suppressed the rights of ID-friendly scientists? Could it be because Tyson himself is basically an atheist, and sees the Cosmos reboot as a great opportunity to promote his materialistic worldview?
Now Tyson may officially deny that he's an atheist, but that's just standard political posturing. As he said in the "Beyond Belief" conference, which helped launch the New Atheist movement in 2006:
I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don't. That's really what we've got to address here. Otherwise the public is secondary to this.There's even a Facebook page created by fans of "Tysonism" which purports to promote "a secular religion based on the philosophy of astrophysicist Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson." The page quotes him saying things like:
The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.Another sign that Cosmos has a materialistic agenda is the fact that its executive producer is celebrity atheist Seth MacFarlane (the creator of Family Guy), who commented in an interview with Esquire about the need to be "vocal about the advancement of knowledge over faith":
ESQ: ... I see you've recently become rather vocal about your atheism. Isn't it antithetical to make public proclamations about secularism?
SM: We have to. Because of all the mysticism and stuff that's gotten so popular.
ESQ: But when you wave banners, how does it differ from religion?
SM: It's like the civil-rights movement. There have to be people who are vocal about the advancement of knowledge over faith.Could the anti-religious message already seen in the first episode of Cosmos be MacFarlane's attempt to promote what he thinks is "the advancement of knowledge over faith"?
In any case, MacFarlane seems to promise the new Cosmos series will attack intelligent design:
For argument's sake, let's say "Family Guy" is not family-friendly, then I would say "Cosmos" is the first thing that I've done in my career that you can sit down with your entire family. It's for young people and old people. I think there will be a lot of crossover from the animated shows to this program. I think that there is a hunger for science and knowing about science and understanding of science that hasn't really been fed in the past two decades. We've had a resurgence of creationism and intelligent design quote-unquote theory. There's been a real vacuum when it comes to science education. The nice thing about this show is that I think that it does what the original "Cosmos" did and presents it in such a flashy, entertaining way that, as Carl Sagan put it in 1980, even people who have no interest in science will watch just because it's a spectacle. People who watched the original "Cosmos" will sit down and watch with their kids.Just how badly will Cosmos botch its attempts to attack intelligent design? Stay tuned.
I would suggest that we are guiding ourselves, because we can. Humans, are the only species on our planet capable of this level of exploration.
What would happen if there was an "end" to our understanding?
We are always, and have always been digging deeper and deeper because that is our nature. When signs of the Higgs Boson seem to validate its theory, it opens additional avenues for exploration.
What if those avenues ended ?
What would become of our society if "all that is knowable is known"?
I posit, it will be the end of the world or we can "never" know everything, by design.
Don’t know how I missed that, but I’m glad you didn’t! Thanks for the link!
I didn't get time to watch the show, but I did capture this Lunar image and processed the data over the weekend.
59 seconds of video through a Canon 60D, processed, aligned and calibrated into this image.
Center of image is Crater Albategnius. The central peak is about 5000' and the N/E walls of the crater are about 14,000'...The central peak casts a pyramid shaped shadow across the floor of the crater. This crater is not far from the landing site of Apollo 16.
BTW, thanks for that link...
Sometimes I get those foreign names mixed up. I meant the other guy - Savaronola
i rewatched the original all afternoon and enjoyed it. i remember whenb it first came on and i had the soundtrack.
i will give the second one a second chance given this was the intro. i did not care for the graphic novel approach and would have preferred real actors.
i did catch “we are all star stuff.” in both. i remember delan in BABYLON 5 saying that too, i think a few episodes after she emerged from the cocoon. jeeez what a geek am i.
It is possible, I guess, that it is all ourselves and not divine inspiration.
The scientific process...
Each new theory builds from a successful experiment which in turn produces more theories that must be proven by experiment, and so on. And of course, a very detailed and meticulous accounting is a must.
However...
But then there are those Gestalt like insights that pop into the head of a scientist while he is working on a solution to a problem. Almost like divine inspiration. :)
I don’t think that it will ever end or we will know everything. The universe, both large and small, is too complex and too big and we are too much a part of it to be able “to see the forest for the trees.”
Just a crazy idea: I do believe that religion and science will merge sometime in the future. That, while trying to understand the universe through science, we find proof of a “creator.”
I also believe that whatever creator might exist only noticed us when we started attributing our existance to him. That we were just another one of his creations until we devoloped the cognitive ability to theorize that he might exist.
Welcome to geekdom!
Cosmos was pretty inspiring. I actually saw Sagan at an event in the early 80s. Back when I was a youngster.
Funny thing too: I recorded the music from Cosmos from a Hearts of Space broadcast around 15 years ago. It is on my mp3 player. I didn’t realize it and recognized all of the songs while I was watching it yesterday. Lol.
I used to listen to HOS while studying. Yes, I know that it is PBS.
Personally, I think science and religion are merging together now, as opposed to what secular scientists like DeGrasse and Dawkins want us to believe.
As Physics gets more weird and abstract I see an opening for philosophy to regain lost ground. Science has for many many years rejected the "why" question when it comes to explanations. With a continuing stream of unsatisfying conclusions, many will seek a more solid foundation for their beliefs.
It's interesting and ironic to me that the scientific establishment has claimed the "high ground of reason" while relegating their opposition to "Faith".
I note also that Black "chrstians" who have no objections to blasphemy against G-d can't stand it when they are themselves insulted. Maybe they've all joined the "Fiver Percenters" and now think that they're "gxd?"
This version of Cosmos demonstrated how good the original was. Showing this type of production with commercial breaks is dreadful.
hopefully the next episodes have more science and less cartoons.
In 33 years that number has become "billions of billions".
For the hours the Original Cosmos was on it was like listening to a melodious poem, I was enthralled but the commercial interruptions on this version were bad. So much has been learned in the intervening years that this series should be a dead bang hit.
Brian Cox from BBC's "Wonders of the Universe" might have been a better choice for narrator, though Tysons early interaction with Dr. Sagan was touching.
-PJ
Servetus was burned by the Calvinists of Geneva for views that didn't go so far as Bruno's (though admittedly more heretics were executed in Catholic countries).
The original series wasn't that great either. Too many long scenes of Sagan staring in rapture at the approaching stars.
Extrapolating, doesn't that put in question our whole perception of reality including the pseudo reality of the mathematics that describes physics.
For example, it defies common sense that mass is not constant but depends on, of all things, velocity! That time slows down, again depending on velocity. And by simply observing an experiment you can change its outcome. That a particle can behave like a wave and particle and visa versa. And these are the less abstract ideas.
They know all these things and more.
Yet, this is their foundation.
A foundation that is built on uncertainty.
This is where the war is being fought.
The war of ideas and in turn what our political battles will ultimately come down to.
Even the tools of logic and “reason” that they cling to, can’t be explained by them.
Is logic among men an evolutionary oddity?
If so, any and all of both theirs and our foundations are equally valid.
But, their validity as they claim is scientific.
I’ve posted this before, and I find it very enlightening.
Listen carefully.
No Science, No Logic and No Morality: Atheism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxz84kS8k4U
I’d be interested in your thoughts.
As a side note.
I’m very interested in the social structure of belief.
How is it that while there are thousands and thousands of examples of a Christian foundation that includes creation which individually are happily accepted by atheists, but when combined to offer a conclusion are rejected without further thought or consideration?
Is it willful ignorance ?
Bookmarking.
I have two simple questions for physicists. 1. What existed prior to the big bang? 2. What caused the big bang?The proper, honest scientific answers to that are "Unknown." and "Unknown." And the reason for those answers is that there is no scientific evidence available to us (yet, or ever) to tell us with any certainty what was there.
Is Tyson a legit astrophysicist? Or an unworthy AA hack, ie, a Colin Powell of physics?Tyson has a BA in Physics from Harvard and a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia. His research has so far been impeccable.
As Physics gets more weird and abstract I see an opening for philosophy to regain lost ground. Science has for many many years rejected the "why" question when it comes to explanations.The reason why science rejects the "why" question is because it's irrelevant to the scientific process. It doesn't matter Why something opens, only How. The Why of something is not something that should ever be dealt with by science because Why cannot be measured.
How is it that while there are thousands and thousands of examples of a Christian foundation that includes creation which individually are happily accepted by atheists, but when combined to offer a conclusion are rejected without further thought or consideration?What examples might you be speaking of?
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