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Posted on 10/03/2014 8:45:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Neil deGrasse Tyson faked a Bush quote and belatedly apologized for it after the resulting controversy spilled into the Washington Post. But true to Tysonism, his apology consisted of various empty profundities and self-promotion climaxing in…
I will still mention Islamic Extremists flying planes into buildings in the 21st century. I will still contrast it with the Golden Age of Islam a millennium earlier. And I will still mention the President’s quote. But instead, I will be the one contrasting what actually happened in the world with what the Bible says: The Arabs named the stars, not God.
Tyson is free to believe what he likes about religion, but plenty of cultures have named the stars. The Chinese were far better astronomers than the Arabs. The Aztecs were decent at it. Hindu and Greek science was the source of much of the Arab science of the so-called Golden Age of Islam. And the Jews, whose scripture was misquoted by Tyson, were decent astronomers too.
When Tyson says that the Arabs named the stars, he means that the game of broken telephone played from Greece to India to Arabia to Europe led to Arab star names being used in the West.
Culture is destiny which is why there’s an Indian orbiter around Mars and Muslim suicide bombers across the Earth.
Plenty of ancient cultures tracked the stars for reasons of season and superstition. The science that Tyson pretends to be a rational exponent of was, in this case, based on cultures that thought that the stars were deities, had magic powers or controlled fate.
When Jewish scripture identifies G-d as the Namer of the stars, the point isn’t classification, it’s to describe the stars as an organic part of the Creation under a Supreme Creator, rather than independent entities.
Neil deGrasse Tyson and his fanboys would sneer at such a sentiment and yet the Arab astronomers he fawns over were quite fascinated by astrology. They believed the very same notion that Jewish scripture had been attacking long before their time.
For example Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, often wrongly credited with “inventing” algebra and is reputed as an astronomer, but as an astrologer. The Banu Musa brothers were the sons of a robber turned astrologer.
The Arab Muslim interest in astronomy was often funded by rulers who thought that they could use astrology to predict the future.
Neil deGrasse Tyson mocks the Bible while championing the astrologers for “naming the stars”.
Affirmative Action Science.
All their cedar.
I heard an ad for that old scam just this morning. Been a few years since I heard it.
I wonder if he realizes that the “Golden Age of Islam” was in reality the dying gasps of the Hellenistic world.
I never knew that. If that's the case, then screw him and his boring Cosmos redo.
I don’t know, but Director of the Hayden Planetarium doesn’t sound like that heavy of a job. I mean he’s probably a great guy and isn’t that bad in explaining things, though he’s a bit sophomoric in a dumb kinda way rather than say sophomoric in a fun sort of way as Carl Sagan, or sophomoric in a genius way as in Richard Feynman, or the sophomoric in the WTF? way from Stephen Hawking.
In other words it’s his skin color for the field of intellect he’s followed that makes him stand out much, like a white boy being an NBA Shooting guard or point guard.
It is Who created the stars?
In the beginning, God created.....
Yep. The scientific method requires some degree of predictability. Replicable results based on real world observation and collection of data. Newton demonstrated an incredible degree of predictability vis a vis his conception of gravity. AGW has demonstrated NO degree of predictability. The only thing we can predict is that their predictions will be predictably wrong.
“I heard an ad for that old scam just this morning. Been a few years since I heard it.”
I heard it first back in the early 80’s. Still, it’s a rather inventive scam.
But, back on topic, if just shows how out of place deGrasse Tyson is if he thinks Muslims named the stars when obviously this proves this isn’t the case.
So, what is it? An asteroid with 5 moons?
“He counts the number of the stars;
He calls them all by name.”
So, what is it? An asteroid with 5 moons?
Yes, many of the star names currently used are either Arabic or corruptions of Arabic names, because the West got Ptolemy’s great work via the Arabs, but some of the brightest have Greek or Roman names, including Sirius, Canopus, Arcturus, Capella, Procyon, Spica, Antares, Pollux, Regulus, and Castor.
You are correct. Showing my age, forty years ago I was taught how to use a sextant and the star tables to navigate at sea. In celestial navigation pubs, 28% of the 58 navigational stars had not Arabic names. The balance or 72% had names of Arabic origin.
Chinese, Egyptian and other ancient cultures had names for the stars before the false prophet Moe ever existed.
Methinks that Neil needs to stay away from deGrasse.
Then why maintain any social order? Just into the void with no meaning, eh?
IMHO, the structure and complexity of spacetime did not come about without a cause. Moreoever, the orderliness of the universe, and the derivation of the initial function value that we discovered as mathematics, speak much more deeply to me than this incredulous Carl Sagan impersonator.
Pluto was originally named for the Roman god of the underworld, but maybe the astronomers confused it with the Disney dog of the same name. ;-)
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