Sunday 22 March 2015

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Tucked away on one of the far flung satellite channels i stumbled across a programme called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
To my surprise it had the FOX logo on the bottom of the screen which surprised me as i associate FOX with Rupert Murdoch who isn't exactly known for high brow programming and then i wondered just how well a programme that scientifically explained the how, when and why we got here went down with science denying Evangelicals in America.
The excellent presenter, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and his cosmic calendar must have had the teeth grinding on the religious right as the calendar shows a universe that is 13.8 billion years and an earth that is 4.5 billion years old.
It appears that the bible bashers don't accept the challenge with proof or evidence, they just block out the bits they don't like as several TV stations pasted an advertisement break over the bit regarding evolution in the episode.
To much delight he dismissed the 6,000 year old earth theory by explaining that the dead stars and galaxies we still see in the night sky, explaining the time light takes to travel to us, he showed viewers that stars we look at in the sky could not be less than 6,000 years old, because if they were, we could not see them.
Tyson really went for the religionists jugular by explaining how Noah’s great flood never happened, or worse, was a rehashing of another story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that predates the great flood and show that the Bible is nothing but copies of earlier texts, retold with the names changed.
The barb at the end of the final episode was said with relish: 'One of things I love about science is that we don't have to pretend we have all the answers'.
In your face creationists who believe all they do based on a book of stories while scientists have a library of books, evidence, fossils and DNA as high as a mountain to base their beliefs on and on top of all that the wonderful Neil deGrasse Tyson who FOX should sign up to present all their shows whatever the subject matter.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey should be shown in every school to children curious about how we got here and what makes the universe work because anyone who has seen the news lately will know that what we need is a bit less religion in the World. 

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