Cosmos and the religious backlash against it.

BuzzyWigs
reply to post by WarminIndy

 

Am I the only Creationist (Intelligent Design) that doesn't read Answers in Genesis?

You know, I also have room for Intelligent Design, even while I believe that science is amazing. Tyson does not say anywhere (on the show) that there is no God...and he needn't do so. He does however address the medieval superstitions that modern science has explained - such as comets not being 'portents of evil'.

The AiG people are a specific type of 'creationist' - those who believe the Earth is only 6k years old.

I think there needs to be a distinct separation that people can see, so when someone says "Intelligent Design" doesn't mean they are Young Earthers. Maybe that's where the confusion lies? What do you suggest for those of us who are not Young Earthers call ourselves so people don't get confused?

I agree with you, there needs to be some crowbarring between those who embrace, or at least don't dismiss the idea of "Intelligent Design" and Young Earthers who for obvious reasons feel very threatened and 'dissed' by science's findings.

I know that they are not the same. It would be great to have a clear delineation between them. Unfortunately, you know what they say - the squeaky wheel....

I honestly don't see any conflict except for the Young Earth bible-literalists who insist on their notion as the only possible truth. My dad believed in God and LOVED watching Carl Sagan....
the two, in my view, are not incompatible.

edit on 4/1/2014 by BuzzyWigs because: (no reason given)

This reminds me of one of the most beloved hymns ever How Great Thou Art

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

If this universe is great in beauty and design, then the designer must have been very great. For someone to look at the stars, the universe and the galaxy to see only gas and ice rocks, miss out on the beauty of it.

Are These not beautiful? When He said "It is good", I agree, it is good.

And that's what I think, the design was for us to appreciate the beauty of it all. We could just as easily been evolved to not be able to see, then we couldn't appreciate it out there, but we have eyes, so let our eyes see the beauty. There's no scientific reason for us to perceive what beauty is, it's in the eye of the beholder.

If this universe is great in beauty and design, then the designer must have been very great. For someone to look at the stars, the universe and the galaxy to see only gas and ice rocks, miss out on the beauty of it.

I could watch an ibex pissing on a cliff and marvel at the pattern formed by the liquid. Doesn't mean there was anything particularly meaningful about the event. And that's what's confusing to me, personally. More often than not, spiritually significant events are considered to be universally significant, rather than personally significant. And if you don't regard it as God's special miracle delivered straight to your doorstep, you're an idiot or something. Take Pulp Fiction, which I just watched recently for the first time. Jules is astounded by the fact that all the bullets missed him and his business partner, but Vincent just regards it as a freak occurrence. Does he appreciate it? Yes. Does he make it into a reason to change his entire worldview and philosophy? Nope. Sometimes, a cigar is just a smoke. And sometimes, a star is just a ball of burning gas. A beautiful and inspiring ball, but still just burning gas. I guess emotional attachment tends to encourage "reading into it", wanting it to be special and not just a trick of your imagination. But why does it being a trick of your imagination have to make it any less meaningful? That sounds like insecurity to me. Be glad your imagination is so fruitful. Be glad you are capable of imagining such harmonic tones to the universe. But never forget that it IS your imagination, just as you shouldn't forget that your sudden sense of invincibility is a result of the alcohol and not a spontaneous transformation into Superman.

reply to post by boymonkey74


We've been watching it, and from the perspective of my husband who is both a scientist and Christian and likes deGrasse Tyson, he wishes Tyson would stop airing his obvious atheism at every point where he can possibly inject it. It's not like it adds to the narrative or is even necessary. That might be why you are getting such a big backlash. Just a thought.

To get a perspective of how grating it might be, try thinking about watching the show with a Christian narrator who takes every opportunity to inject comments about God wherever they think they can get away with it even though it would add nothing to the narrative.

And yes, mentioning that so and so "killed God" ... I believe that Isaac Newton (not true, Newton was devout) he was referring to that night ... is not really necessary. Obviously, God is not dead for a lot of people, not even dead for many scientists.

Otherwise, it's fine.

AfterInfinity

If this universe is great in beauty and design, then the designer must have been very great. For someone to look at the stars, the universe and the galaxy to see only gas and ice rocks, miss out on the beauty of it.

I guess emotional attachment tends to encourage "reading into it", wanting it to be special and not just a trick of your imagination. But why does it being a trick of your imagination have to make it any less meaningful? That sounds like insecurity to me. (no reason given)

I suppose then you are simply nothing special, you are,after all, nothing but a complex chain of amino acids and proteins. I suppose it was a trick of my imagination to assign meaning to your existence. Why should I?

If the universe has no meaning because it is just balls of gas, ice rocks and black holes, then you being the by-product of that meaningless universe, why assign meaning to your own existence? You do exist, but in the pure definition, there's no meaning or purpose for you to do anything else except replicate and reproduce yourself. No meaning in DNA, it's just a by-product of the universe.

That's you, you are that descendant of meaningless balls of gas. You believe in evolution, and according to the Big Bang, you descend from meaningless nothing. How else then should I think of you?

reply to post by WarminIndy

I suppose then you are simply nothing special, you are,after all, nothing but a complex chain of amino acids and proteins. I suppose it was a trick of my imagination to assign meaning to your existence. Why should I?

Why should you indeed?

If the universe has no meaning because it is just balls of gas, ice rocks and black holes, then you being the by-product of that meaningless universe, why assign meaning to your own existence? You do exist, but in the pure definition, there's no meaning or purpose for you to do anything else except replicate and reproduce yourself. No meaning in DNA, it's just a by-product of the universe.

But that's the beauty of it! Tell me, would you rather have a tv dinner, or a meal made from scratch? I find that the meaning we craft ourselves, the value we assign of our own sense of appreciation, the virtues we cultivate from the lessons we experience as we live, is a more powerful and more revealing understanding than any "official guide". There is no absolute answer to the question "why are we here?" I guess the better question is "why do you want to be here?" Why does anyone have to tell you what the world, the universe, your town, your family, or you means to you? You deserve to have your own answer, the answer you earned, the answer that makes you who you are. Because that's the biggest reason we care, right? Because finding the answer to existence means finding the answer to who we are. But we decide who we are, so it doesn't matter where the universe came from or where it's going. Would it change how you live your life? Would you suddenly become a bad person?

That's you, you are that descendant of meaningless balls of gas. You believe in evolution, and according to the Big Bang, you descend from meaningless nothing. How else then should I think of you?

If you want to think of me as nothing, given what I just explained above, then it would reveal a great deal of your character. But I wouldn't stop you and insist that you not think of me as nothing. Quite frankly, you are sentence on a computer screen. Your perception of me is irrelevant to my happiness. For the vast majority of my time, you might as well not exist. I'm not being mean, I am demonstrating how perception determines everything. Your appreciation is a matter of perception, which means that it is based solely on your experiences. A rather fickle thing to base anything on, really. We could be looking at the same thing and reach different conclusions, because we are not the same people. We haven't lived the same lives, seen the same things. And that's the definition of subjective. And as I've explained before, subjectivity is beautiful in that you can turn heaven into hell (and vice versa) simply by living and seeing. And we have a tendency to create and destroy as a result. When we can look at a bird and build a metal machine capable of flying twice as high and three times as fast as that bird, I can't think of a single reason why we need the meaning of life handed to us on a silver platter - or in a dusty tome.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by WarminIndy

 

I suppose then you are simply nothing special, you are,after all, nothing but a complex chain of amino acids and proteins. I suppose it was a trick of my imagination to assign meaning to your existence. Why should I?

Why should you indeed?

If the universe has no meaning because it is just balls of gas, ice rocks and black holes, then you being the by-product of that meaningless universe, why assign meaning to your own existence? You do exist, but in the pure definition, there's no meaning or purpose for you to do anything else except replicate and reproduce yourself. No meaning in DNA, it's just a by-product of the universe.

But that's the beauty of it! Tell me, would you rather have a tv dinner, or a meal made from scratch? I find that the meaning we craft ourselves, the value we assign of our own sense of appreciation, the virtues we cultivate from the lessons we experience as we live, is a more powerful and more revealing understanding than any "official guide". There is no absolute answer to the question "why are we here?" I guess the better question is "why do you want to be here?" Why does anyone have to tell you what the world, the universe, your town, your family, or you means to you? You deserve to have your own answer, the answer you earned, the answer that makes you who you are. Because that's the biggest reason we care, right? Because finding the answer to existence means finding the answer to who we are. But we decide who we are, so it doesn't matter where the universe came from or where it's going. Would it change how you live your life? Would you suddenly become a bad person?

That's you, you are that descendant of meaningless balls of gas. You believe in evolution, and according to the Big Bang, you descend from meaningless nothing. How else then should I think of you?

If you want to think of me as nothing, given what I just explained above, then it would reveal a great deal of your character. But I wouldn't stop you and insist that you not think of me as nothing. Quite frankly, you are sentence on a computer screen. Your perception of me is basically irrelevant to my happiness.

AfterInfinity

Then you would be the same to me, nothing but a sentence. So why get on here and post your opinions if that's nothing more than chemicals firing across synapses?

Who said I found you meaningless? The fact that I mentioned that just raised an insecurity in you. Are you worried that you are nothing more than just this?

Ultimately, you are a by-product of a meaningless universe, a complex chain of amino acids and proteins, with chemicals that fire across synapses that cause you to think of words to put across a computer screen, which is also nothing more than electrical impulses, also from a meaningless universe.

I find that the meaning we craft ourselves, the value we assign of our own sense of appreciation, the virtues we cultivate from the lessons we experience as we live, is a more powerful and more revealing understanding than any "official guide".

It doesn't matter how I think of you, it is what you are ultimately. The fact that you value your own sense of appreciation means that you merely value what you didn't create yourself, and that is you.

All of these memories and feelings are nothing more than electro-chemical impulses. You assigned meaning because you want to be more than just that. Ultimately, that's all you are. You are the one who is consistent with saying there is nothing more, that this moment you breathe and are alive now, is simply nothing more than evolution. From the ground you came to the ground you shall return. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

The sum total of a person, according to evolution, is meaningless existence. Is that what you feel insecure about?

Uhm... what backlash? As others have pointed out above, with the exception of a few assholes who call themselves "religious", there doesn't seem to be any general backlash against it.

This sounds more like the Atheists writing a narrative they want to talk about, rather than the narrative that actually exists. They do this all the time when they set up their straw man, 6,500-year young Earth believer and then proceed to tear him down when most Christians believe nothing of the sort.

Besides, need I remind everyone it's just a TV show? If people are worried about a TV show giving impressionable minds a distorted view of reality, well... eh nevermind. I've banged my head against brick walls enough already this week.

reply to post by WarminIndy

AfterInfinity

Then you would be the same to me, nothing but a sentence. So why get on here and post your opinions if that's nothing more than chemicals firing across synapses?

Because that's who I am. I don't care if my opinions are worth less to you than the contents of your local sewage treatment plant. I know that someone cares enough to wonder what I think, and I am more than willing to oblige because that contributes to their perception. And maybe that will bring them one step closer to the sort of understanding I would love to have.

Who said I found you meaningless? The fact that I mentioned that just raised an insecurity in you. Are you worried that you are nothing more than just this?

You asked a question, I gave you my exact thoughts. And no, I'm not worried. I know for a fact that in 500 years, no one will remember me. There's no point in worrying about the inevitable.

It doesn't matter how I think of you, it is what you are ultimately. The fact that you value your own sense of appreciation means that you merely value what you didn't create yourself, and that is you.

My body is me inasmuch as the pages on which Lord of the Rings was printed are the story itself. I didn't create my body, but my body does not define who I am.

The sum total of a person, according to evolution, is meaningless existence. Is that what you feel insecure about?

Again, I will be totally forgotten in 500 years. This is not something I should be insecure about, because it is something I cannot change. I can either accept it, or live the rest of my life in dread of dying, and subsequently being forgotten. Fear of death is a terrible affliction, because it never ends and it never fades. That is not something I wish to harbor in my heart. So I don't. Or at the very least, I do not allow it to become a deciding factor in my life.

Woodcarver
reply to post by DeadSeraph

 

As a Christian, I don't believe that science and spirituality are incompatible,

What part of spirituality is compatible with science? Science has absolutely nothing to say about it. Where is there a scientific model of spirituality? The foundation of any science is based from observation. You must start there.

There has always been a heavy push by the religiously minded to twist scientific data to further their agenda. The heat that Cosmos is drawing is just another example of ignorant people refusing to listen (or perhaps unable to understand) what they are being told.

Im sure it is no surprise to the producers of this series.

There are those who seek and meditate beyond where the current science is of today. From a non-dual-list like myself that for instance play around with chakra and Reiki.

Funny how it seems one person in the show had an astral projection revealing the true nature of "what is" and Neil DeGrasse Tyson called it a guess. Always test "what is" and when you notice you are trapped in a box (old science can be wrong) that is a lie then lose the faith in that the box is the truth. There is a reason many of the breakthru:s in science have been from people that are called mystics.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by WarminIndy

 

AfterInfinity

Then you would be the same to me, nothing but a sentence. So why get on here and post your opinions if that's nothing more than chemicals firing across synapses?

Because that's who I am. I don't care if my opinions are worth less to you than the contents of your local sewage treatment plant. I know that someone cares enough to wonder what I think, and I am more than willing to oblige because that contributes to their perception. And maybe that will bring them one step closer to the sort of understanding I would love to have.

Who said I found you meaningless? The fact that I mentioned that just raised an insecurity in you. Are you worried that you are nothing more than just this?

You asked a question, I gave you my exact thoughts. And no, I'm not worried. I know for a fact that in 500 years, no one will remember me. There's no point in worrying about the inevitable.

It doesn't matter how I think of you, it is what you are ultimately. The fact that you value your own sense of appreciation means that you merely value what you didn't create yourself, and that is you.

My body is me inasmuch as the pages on which Lord of the Rings was printed are the story itself. I didn't create my body, but my body does not define who I am.

The sum total of a person, according to evolution, is meaningless existence. Is that what you feel insecure about?

Again, I will be totally forgotten in 500 years. This is not something I should be insecure about, because it is something I cannot change. I can either accept it, or live the rest of my life in dread of dying, and subsequently being forgotten. Fear of death is a terrible affliction, because it never ends and it never fades. That is not something I wish to harbor in my heart. So I don't. Or at the very least, I do not allow it to become a deciding factor in my life.

edit on 1-4-2014 by AfterInfinity because: (no reason given)

AfterInfinity

This whole thing isn't about you. The fact you think it is about you means that you must indeed feel you are worth something and you are not meaningless. As Carly Simon says, "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you".

What you need to address is that your philosophy of "I'm not going to be here in 500 years, doesn't matter to me, because I'll be forgotten", isn't just you. How do you speak to 12 year-old children and tell them that they are nothing more than just complex strings of DNA from a meaningless universe?

That's the whole issue in my posts, that just because something might be meaningless to you because you are a by-product of random chance, what does it say for the whole of humanity that right now is struggling to believe in the meaning of someone else's life? When you tell all of humanity that it is meaningless because those living right now won't be around in 500 years, what's the point of even having something to believe in?

Just tonight I watched the news about a 2 year-old boy shot four times by grown men in the Taliban in Afghanistan. The only family member this little boy has is his 17 year-old aunt, his parents were killed. But to think of that little boy as meaningless and coming from the random chance of a universe that doesn't care if he lives or dies...that's simply something wrong. And the fact you think this entire post is directed at you personally, that's a shame that you can't see just how your philosophy is actually embraced by the heartless humans.

But tell the little boy, "you are the end product of millions of years of evolution, you are nothing but DNA and you won't be around in 500 years, so for anybody to have any emotional attachment to you is meaningless, because little boy, you are meaningless".

But God forbid that I should say the little boy is worthy of being told he is special because God forbid he should be made in the image of God. God forbid his life should have meaning, because God forbid the little boy should have a life that is more than just survival of the fittest.

The song ain't about you, it's about just how your philosophy is embraced and no one should have emotional attachment to something as beautiful as a child's life.

greavsie1971
science tells us GMO's are safe, all vaccinations are safe and nuclear power is safe. I love science but am not open enough to believe everything scientists tell me.

BTW, I thought Cosmos was great too.

I am going to assume that you simply didn't word your comment with much forethought and are not that ignorant of what science is. Science has never once proven anything to be safe. Scientific data could even prove that getting out of bed isn't safe as you could trip and fall once you got up. Science also tends to avoid subjective relatively meaningless words such as safe and good (at least from a definable concrete perspective.) Scientific studies give us statistics such as how many people have allergic reactions to vaccines or get sick, etc. Media might tell you a vaccine is safe, but a scientist will tell you how many people had no adverse side effects and how many people did have adverse side effects. Words like safe, fuzzy feeling, and happy have nothing to do with it. Scientific studies also tell us the dangers of being exposed to radiation etc... GMO's have not had the benefit of long term scientific study. There is no one monolithic science, .. there are millions of scientific studies, and the ones that have been repeated over and over again have statistically garnered a version of Truth, though science does not use such words.

AudioOne

greavsie1971
science tells us GMO's are safe, all vaccinations are safe and nuclear power is safe. I love science but am not open enough to believe everything scientists tell me.

BTW, I thought Cosmos was great too.

I am going to assume that you simply didn't word your comment with much forethought and are not that ignorant of what science is. Science has never once proven anything to be safe. Scientific data could even prove that getting out of bed isn't safe as you could trip and fall once you got up. Science also tends to avoid subjective relatively meaningless words such as safe and good (at least from a definable concrete perspective.) Scientific studies give us statistics such as how many people have allergic reactions to vaccines or get sick, etc. Media might tell you a vaccine is safe, but a scientist will tell you how many people had no adverse side effects and how many people did have adverse side effects. Words like safe, fuzzy feeling, and happy have nothing to do with it. Scientific studies also tell us the dangers of being exposed to radiation etc... GMO's have not had the benefit of long term scientific study. There is no one monolithic science, .. there are millions of scientific studies, and the ones that have been repeated over and over again have statistically garnered a version of Truth, though science does not use such words.

I always wondered what that fifth dentist really thought. You know those commercials of 4 out 5 dentists agree.

That's simply dental consensus. I want to know what that fifth dentist really thinks. And were did they even come up with that statistic? Did they poll every dentist in this country and around the world? Blah, that means 1 out of 5 dentists disagree. I want to know, is that fluoride really going to turn me into a raving psychopath?

What does the fifth dentist think? What evidence does he have that is being suppressed by the other four? Scientific consensus means that people will buy that toothpaste because four of them agree.

I remember what my husband's other criticism of it is - to him, it's painfully obvious when Tyson steps outside of his area of expertise. He doesn't get things exactly right.

ketsuko
I remember what my husband's other criticism of it is - to him, it's painfully obvious when Tyson steps outside of his area of expertise. He doesn't get things exactly right.

Your husband isn't the only one who has noticed that about Tyson. That's a very big reason why I decided to not even bother watching Cosmos.

reply to post by boymonkey74


Wow. That guy is obnoxious. What a troll. His shirt says it all I guess. Not sure who the bigger idiot is, him or the people he's criticizing. Equally fanatical it would seem. Thanks for posting it anyways... Guess I got what I asked for

ketsuko
I remember what my husband's other criticism of it is - to him, it's painfully obvious when Tyson steps outside of his area of expertise. He doesn't get things exactly right.

Meh, for fun I followed him on Twitter. He's also kind of wrong on there a lot. He Tweeted his displeasure over the movie Gravity, not because of the cinematography, but the science was wrong..lol.

He acts the same on Twitter. There were a few tweets I responded to and one even was retweeted by some random magazine that I never heard of.

Most Christians, including the Catholic Church, accept every scientifically proven fact including evolution, the Big Bang theory, and the theory of evolution (granted there is no absolute stance on theories as they are not yet laws of science).

I'm not sure that anyone here has actually watched the new Cosmos series. The first episode has a 10-15 cartoon segment where a poor scientist dude who thinks he has discovered that the Earth is not the center of the universe is unjustly persecuted by the authorities of his time and burned at the stake for it. The "authorities" in the cartoon are priests and Church officials who are depicted as evil nutjobs, like they literally have dark evil shadows under their eyes like something you would expect the villain in a Disney movie to look like. People are holding crosses as well as axes in a circle around the guy as he is burned alive for his scientific discovery. In reality, the guy they are talking about was sentenced and executed by completely secular authorities who were pissed off at him for publicly insulting the authority of the King who still believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, a commonly held belief at the time as science had not yet proven otherwise (not that he deserved execution or even punishment in any way).

ghostfacekilah00
Most Christians, including the Catholic Church, accept every scientifically proven fact including evolution, the Big Bang theory, and the theory of evolution (granted there is no absolute stance on theories as they are not yet laws of science).

Haha wow. Didn't mean to mention evolution twice.

reply to post by ketsuko

it's painfully obvious when Tyson steps outside of his area of expertise. He doesn't get things exactly right.

What things, may I ask, did he get not exactly right?
I'd like to be advised of any errors in the show.

reply to post by WarminIndy


I've already answered all those questions.

www.abovetopsecret.com...