Cosmos - With Neil deGrasse Tyson

[BigJake]

I'm not talking about her complexion, I'm talking about the shape of her features, especially in profile. She looked a lot like Gina Torres, for instance. There's more to ethnic variation than skin tone, and she was drawn to look more sub-Saharan African than Middle Eastern/Semitic.

Near as I could tell, she did not look remotely like Gina Torres, what an odd thing to say. The shape of her facial features was not noticeably un-Semitic... unless I missed something, but I don't think so. I suppose I'll have to have a look when/if there are images available online.

As for the religion question, I don't know about the other episodes but this particular one seemed reasonably even-handed to me. Yes, they talk about superstition and the anger of the gods -- but they also portray En'hedu'anna's hymn to Inanna reverentially and frame the entire episode as an extension of the themes of the myth of Gilgamesh. I didn't see it as taking a particular stance for or against religion. Maybe other episodes have been different.

 

[bryce]

A lot of people don't know that Carl Sagan's original 13-part "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" owes *it's* inspiration to Jacob Bronowski's 13-part "The Ascent of Man: A Personal View". Bronowski was a hero of Sagan's, and a kind of mentor, and in...I think it's Sagan's "The Dragons of Eden", he writes a tribute to Bonowski in the opening.

Also, both series had, what I would call "warning episodes" as their second to last episodes. Ascent of Man had the episode "Knowledge or Certainty" as a warning against dogma vs. science...and Sagan's had "Who Speaks for Earth?" which warned us of the dangers of nuclear war (at the height of the cold war.)

I think the next episode of the new "Cosmos", sadly not airing for 2 weeks (is there a game?) "World Set Free." about Climate Change may be this series "warning episode".

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp1RU1lIHg4[/yt]

 

[davejames]

Although NDT's narration wasn't so in-your-face, the animation very clearly evoked the Noah story. I'm not sure that was really necessary except as a "fuck you" to religious literalists. The show should strive to be better than that. I don't much care for it when it veers into anti-religious polemic. I didn't mind the first few times but when it's a fixture of virtually every episode I find it tiresome and ax-grindy.

I'm not exactly sure how it's "anti-religion" to simply point out the fact that there were multiple flood stories predating the Bible's Noah. Or that many of them happen to share similar details (like the dove being sent out to find land). Are the writers obligated to only show one version of the story?

And religion is such an intrinsic part of our culture and history (and the history of science) that it would be hard NOT to in someway discuss it or allude to it at nearly every juncture.

Frankly I think this Cosmos has been surprisingly considerate and evenhanded on the subject. It's not their fault if some people are especially thin-skinned and can't take even the slightest criticism of their beliefs.

 

[Awesome Possum]

The Noah story isn't special just because more people believe in it, it's historical fact that earlier versions exist. We shouldn't ignore reality because some people would rather live in a bubble of ignorance.

 

[Amaris]

The show isn't anti-religion, it's anti-ignorance, and it's unapologetic about that.

 

[BigJake]

The thing about the Mesopotamian Flood story is that it's a genuinely interesting detail that probably not a lot of people know, and moreover it fits in with the whole theme of the Gilgamesh myth and the transference and survival of life through catastrophe. So there is ample reason for it to be in the episode other than just to gratuitously poke at Biblical literalists.

 

[publiusr]

The show isn't anti-religion, it's anti-ignorance, and it's unapologetic about that.

Agreed

I liked the stylized animation in the fall-of-Sumeria sequence. Very Tartakovsky-esque.

I also like the idea of giving us a glimpse of next year on the Cosmic Calendar. That's something the original never did. [/QUOTE

I liked that as well. We didn't see enough of the next page though.

I knew most of this already, but I don't think I'd really been aware of the model about passing through stellar nurseries and exchanging comets and meteoroids.

That one was a new one on me as well.


My problem was the idea of the internal combustion engine going extinct.

Sorry Neil, but it is just too good at what it does
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33706.0

 

[tomalak301]

As someone who does go to church (Or at least tries) every sunday, I don't find Cosmos to be anti religious at all. I agree with others that it seems more anti-authoritative which is what I agree with. As for this episode, I really liked it, especially at the end connecting to the first episode about the cosmic calender and where we are going as a race and society. I'm glad I stuck with the show, and the next one about global warming should be really good. As for the controversy, I say anyone who doesn't believe in global warming is seriously blind.

 

[Redfern]

Didn't Tyson point out that Faraday had very strong religious beliefs but neither he nor the episode itself present that fact in a negative light? If anything, they depicted the school mistress who wanted to beat the child for having a speech impediment as a profoundly cruel person.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Christopher]

the show's repeated slams against religion

Such as?

From what I've seen, the show hasn't slammed religion, but rather authoritarian, closed-minded people who chose to either ignore or suppress (or both) facts and knowledge. Rather, the message, to me anyway, is that scientific thought (and progress) and religious faith are are not mutually exclusive - a point which the show repeatedly drives home by mentioning that the vast majority of its scientific heroes were also people of faith.

This. Exactly. It's not slamming religion, it's slamming dogmatism. Those are absolutely not the same thing, except in the minds of the dogmatists.

From my perspective, though, the example of the droughts, in the most recent episode, isn't a "slam" against religion - rather, it's pointing out that our technology can progress beyond our understanding of the consequences. It's a lesson that's relevant today because, unlike they "ancients" who did not yet possess the tools to understand their world, we do.

I don't see how the discussion of the droughts had anything to do with religion. That was entirely about climate change and the consequences of technology used without wisdom.

...the next episode of the new "Cosmos", sadly not airing for 2 weeks (is there a game?)...

Apparently the 2-hour finale of The Voice is airing that night. Which might or might not have something to do with the fact that it's the day before Memorial Day.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Didn't Tyson point out that Faraday had very strong religious beliefs but neither he nor the episode itself present that fact in a negative light? If anything, they depicted the school mistress who wanted to beat the child for having a speech impediment as a profoundly cruel person.

Sincerely,

Bill

It's like the bit in the first episode, some people believe in a god that is too small. If there is a god, then it created the universe as it is not how a book written thousands of years ago claims that it is. You'd think that religious people would want to study the universe so that they can admire the handiwork of their god and not deny the infinite wonder and beauty around us.

 

[davejames]

I thought the point the episode made about using our intelligence to adapt and survive the way other animals use their particular gifts was really well made.

It would be a massive shame if we ultimately go extinct on this planet or wipe each other out without ever having taken full advantage of this incredible gift of intelligence nature gave us.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

I think the only time the show slammed religion was with the 6,000 year age of the earth vs how far away stars are, I think I even saw Tyson roll his eyes.

 

[Awesome Possum]

That's not really slamming religion, just the cult of Young Earth Creationism. I think the majority of Christians accept the actual age of the Earth, even a decent of amount of Creationists no longer go along with it.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, yes, yes. Young Earth Creationism is not religion. As I said earlier in the thread, it's a complete misunderstanding of religion, because it mistakes religion for science. Educated religious people all over the world accept what science tells us about the age of the Earth and the origin of species. The official stance of the Vatican is that science explains humanity's physical nature and origins while religion explains our spiritual nature and origins, with the Biblical text being a work of metaphor and symbolism whose spiritual meaning lies beneath the surface.

Really, creationism is mainly an American phenomenon rather than a Christian one per se. It started with William Jennings Bryan, who was hostile to "Darwinism" because social Darwinist ideas underlaid the military movement among German officials that led to World War I. He didn't realize that the Germans' "Darwinism" was a misreading and a corruption of actual Darwinian theory. So he was opposed to evolution more for political reasons than religious ones, although his politics was very informed by his religious beliefs. If he'd understood the truth about evolutionary theory, that it was never intended as a justification for militarism and conquest, he might never have opposed it at all. And without his opposition, American fundamentalists would probably have never begun to see evolutionary theory as a threat to their faith, or at least not as a major one.

 

[Timewalker]

And I liked the acknowledgment that the Sumerians told the flood myth a thousand years before the Old Testament version told it differently. That should give the Biblical literalists one more thing to scream and holler about.

Although NDT's narration wasn't so in-your-face, the animation very clearly evoked the Noah story. I'm not sure that was really necessary except as a "fuck you" to religious literalists. The show should strive to be better than that. I don't much care for it when it veers into anti-religious polemic. I didn't mind the first few times but when it's a fixture of virtually every episode I find it tiresome and ax-grindy.

I see nothing wrong with pointing out the literalists' errors and the fact that the whole world, throughout recorded history, didn't (and doesn't) revolve around them.

The show only ever invokes religion in a derisive manner so I'm not sure how one could draw the conclusion that it's not anti-religion. It very obviously is.

It's not enough to make me not watch it but they could assume the audience isn't made up of morons and that we got it after the first two (or three, or four) "here's a stupid thing religion did" stories.

Has the show ever said the Golden Rule is stupid or wrong? No. Has it ever said that the Commandments against stealing, lying, and killing are wrong? No. Has it ever said anything to the gist of "what a pity a bright scientist like _____ was also religious?" No. They never even ridiculed the scientists like Newton and Kepler who were into mystical nonsense like alchemy and horoscopes. Did they make fun of the female poet for worshipfully praising our equivalent of Venus because of what we now know about that planet? No.

Well, maybe the showrunners should have considered that every episode doesn't need an anti-religion sidebar. This past one had NDT talking about how all the gods of the ancient world were angry--or at least, that was each society's explanation for the massive drought. It's true, those peoples couldn't have known the true cause, but then there's this consistent trend with this show lamenting the ignorance of ancient (and not-so-ancient) people, almost always framed in a religious context. It constructs a very us-vs.-them narrative.

Back then, a lot of ignorance was in a religious context. Most answers to questions were in the context of either "because the King/Emperor/Chief/Other Guy In Charge said so" or "because (insert name of god or gods) said so." Back then people didn't have the tools to figure out the answers to the questions people asked, so such ignorance is not such a lamentable thing as it is now, when we do have the capacity to know the answers through observation and the scientific method.

the show's repeated slams against religion

Such as?

From what I've seen, the show hasn't slammed religion, but rather authoritarian, closed-minded people who chose to either ignore or suppress (or both) facts and knowledge. Rather, the message, to me anyway, is that scientific thought (and progress) and religious faith are are not mutually exclusive - a point which the show repeatedly drives home by mentioning that the vast majority of its scientific heroes were also people of faith.

But it's possible that I've overlooked something, so if you could provide some examples of "repeated slams against religion," I'd be appreciative. From my perspective, though, the example of the droughts, in the most recent episode, isn't a "slam" against religion - rather, it's pointing out that our technology can progress beyond our understanding of the consequences. It's a lesson that's relevant today because, unlike they "ancients" who did not yet possess the tools to understand their world, we do. If anything, it's a "slam" against modern anti-intellectualism. At least the ancients had a valid excuse. We don't.

Excellent points.

A lot of people don't know that Carl Sagan's original 13-part "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" owes *it's* inspiration to Jacob Bronowski's 13-part "The Ascent of Man: A Personal View". Bronowski was a hero of Sagan's, and a kind of mentor, and in...I think it's Sagan's "The Dragons of Eden", he writes a tribute to Bonowski in the opening.

Also, both series had, what I would call "warning episodes" as their second to last episodes. Ascent of Man had the episode "Knowledge or Certainty" as a warning against dogma vs. science...and Sagan's had "Who Speaks for Earth?" which warned us of the dangers of nuclear war (at the height of the cold war.)

I think the next episode of the new "Cosmos", sadly not airing for 2 weeks (is there a game?) "World Set Free." about Climate Change may be this series "warning episode".

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp1RU1lIHg4[/yt]

Those images of the pollution and dead birds made me cry for a good 10 minutes in Original Cosmos, and the similar images in last night's episode were equally disturbing. We haven't learned a damn thing in 35 years.

Although NDT's narration wasn't so in-your-face, the animation very clearly evoked the Noah story. I'm not sure that was really necessary except as a "fuck you" to religious literalists. The show should strive to be better than that. I don't much care for it when it veers into anti-religious polemic. I didn't mind the first few times but when it's a fixture of virtually every episode I find it tiresome and ax-grindy.

I'm not exactly sure how it's "anti-religion" to simply point out the fact that there were multiple flood stories predating the Bible's Noah. Or that many of them happen to share similar details (like the dove being sent out to find land). Are the writers obligated to only show one version of the story?

And religion is such an intrinsic part of our culture and history (and the history of science) that it would be hard NOT to in someway discuss it or allude to it at nearly every juncture.

Frankly I think this Cosmos has been surprisingly considerate and evenhanded on the subject. It's not their fault if some people are especially thin-skinned and can't take even the slightest criticism of their beliefs.

It's been said that if a religion is worth anything at all, it can survive a bit of logical criticism and analysis. What's more important about Christianity and the other religions - the dogma in the bible, or that it's supposedly a guide to living a moral life? I use the word "supposedly" because I have met very few religious people who actually practice what they/their church preaches.

Robert Maxwell, from your posts, I assume you are Christian? How would you like it if some religious group never missed an opportunity to tell you that you are less trustworthy than a rapist or pedophile? That's the crap that atheists have been putting up with from various people and groups that claim to be moral, righteous Christians. Whatever slights you perceive from the writers of Cosmos, they pale by far in comparison to the bigotry and hate that various religious groups express to each other, and to people who prefer to be religion-free.

I think the only time the show slammed religion was with the 6,000 year age of the earth vs how far away stars are, I think I even saw Tyson roll his eyes.

Yep. The evidence is right there in front of them and they still can't wrap their minds around it. A few weeks ago I was posting on Care2 (social activism site) and some woman kept putting DNA in quotes ("DNA") because she thought it was something "Big Pharma" scientists just made up.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yep. The evidence is right there in front of them and they still can't wrap their minds around it. A few weeks ago I was posting on Care2 (social activism site) and some woman kept putting DNA in quotes ("DNA") because she thought it was something "Big Pharma" scientists just made up.

The problem is that when you introduce the idea of "God did it" to a system then you're pretty much a child on a playground saying, "I'm not dead, I have an invincibility field!" while playing "cops and robbers."

You and I may know the speed of light and how it can show us how big the universe is and, thus, how old it is. We may know the eons it takes for molecules to congeal into galaxies, planets, suns and so forth. How long it takes water and wind to sculpt mountains, rivers and canyons, for bones to turn into fossils, for a species to evolve from single-cell organisms to what everything is today. That's stuff that takes eons upon eons to do. Most of us know that.

But, show this a person who believes God created everything 6,000 years ago or how ever long they want to rationalize it with some of what we know but not to the point of a billions of a years old universe and a species evolved from a type of ape.

You tell them of all of this evidence and they say "God planted it there to stray people from the True Path."

So it may take light billions of years to get to us from the edge of the universe but a "Young Earther" well tell you God makes it seem that way to try and trick us.

I didn't take the idea that we're going to become a new species as very optimistic. That generally takes some heavy culling or selective breeding. I think we'd better stay with the genes we've got.

Others have already addressed this but I'll reiterate.

You don't have a choice in the matter.

That's how evolution works genes mix, mutations occur, changes compound and eventually a new species is created. Human beings in their current form are about 50,000 years old before that we weren't here. It was a different species. This will hold true until the end of time. Sooner or later our species will evolve into a new one this has been happening for all of time and we have no choice or say in it. We *may* be able to control or direct it to some degree with really, really, advanced and really, really wide-spread technology but even then we're still going to end up being something else.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

The problem is that when you introduce the idea of "God did it" to a system then you're pretty much a child on a playground saying, "I'm not dead, I have an invincibility field!" while playing "cops and robbers."

Even Newton invoked "God did it" at some point.

 

[gturner]

Newton was still in the era of the prime mover, who had to put the moving things in motion. That carried on through the early 1800's in the Deists like Thomas Jefferson, who thought that God's fingerprint would be all over his creations and discernible to science.

That view is actually sound, and will one day become dominant throughout the galaxy as we colonize alien worlds and make creation events in their geological record. If aliens are out there colonizing planets and somehow losing the colonization records, the universe will be filled with Young Planet-X Creationists who will proclaim the results of their science and prove that their world was made on Thursday of the Year MCMXIV, and they will have the data to back it up.

As for dogma, a group of top German climate scientists this week sent a memo to their leading journal denouncing such, fighting the rising tide of apocalyptic religious climate nonsense. Based on recent papers by AR5 lead authors, the observationally-based estimates of transient climate response to a CO2 doubling is 1.3C, which matches several recent estimates in the peer-reviewed literature. Since that covers a rise from 280 ppm to 560 ppm, and we're at 402, we've already had 71 percent of that warming, and based on the peak CO2 rises we won't hit the full amount for 80 to 100 years, and that level will be 0.37 C above current temps.

That means that your grandchildren will either have to drive 33 miles away from the equator or move 268 feet higher to avoid the coming climate apocalypse.

In the Cosmos episode, NGT optimistically dreamed of a day when the Arctic sea ice was healed. According to the data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, that day is coming this August, when the Arctic sea ice extend will cross the line into above normal territory.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Link?