Religious right attacks (gasp!) "Cosmos"

Apparently the records of Bruno's trial, including the charges against him, have been lost. So we may never know exactly why he was burned. But we do know there were many charges. I see no reason why he couldn't have been burned both for his ideas of an infinite universe and his denial of the trinity.

Fashions change in the Church. Copernicus was left alone, Bruno was burned, and Galileo was kept under house arrest, all based on the degree of tolerance of individuals at different times and places, and to a certain extent the personalities of the offenders. That Copernicus was not persecuted is not evidence that Bruno wasn't burned, at least partly, for rejecting geocentrism.

why oh why is this series not showing on PBS?

Not enough Jesus Designer.

Glen Davidson

As I understand it, the decision to go on Fox had to do with attempting to reach a wider audience. As for the commercials, the first program is available on BitTorrent but it is indicated that it is 44 minutes long. I didn't watch it but it is my information that it ran for 2 hours. If there was 44 minutes of programming in 2 hours of TV time, it is hardly worth watching. Possibly the file on BitTorrent represents only the first hour, which seems more reasonable.

My undestanding (IANAHistorian) is that Copernicus carefully presented the heliocentric model as only a mathematical trick to get better answers to heavenly movement problems than the Ptolemaic epicycles-within-epicycles model. CMIIW, but I don't think he ever declared that the Solar System actually WAS heliocentric.

Well there was a scene where the showed Tiktalik crawling up onto the shore, so I guess they just had to object. I think that the second show will be more about the origin of life and evolution, so this is definitely not the end of the complaints.

Copernicus waited till he died before publishing (having others publish it, of course).

Darwin seemed to be going the same route, or perhaps would wait until he was really old. Then Wallace, and it went better for Darwin and Wallace than it did for Galileo.

Glen Davidson

John Harshman said: Apparently the records of Bruno's trial, including the charges against him, have been lost. So we may never know exactly why he was burned. But we do know there were many charges. I see no reason why he couldn't have been burned both for his ideas of an infinite universe and his denial of the trinity.

Fashions change in the Church. Copernicus was left alone, Bruno was burned, and Galileo was kept under house arrest, all based on the degree of tolerance of individuals at different times and places, and to a certain extent the personalities of the offenders. That Copernicus was not persecuted is not evidence that Bruno wasn't burned, at least partly, for rejecting geocentrism.

Having watched the show last night, I didn't get the impression that he was killed for any specific views but for heresies in questioning all things the church felt sacrosanct.

A picture of Giordano Bruno's statue (in Rome!) is at the top of Ed Brayton's "Dispatches from the Culture Wars" blog at http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/

Bruno was accused of and executed for multiple heresies - his cosmology was not important in his seven year long trial.

Like others, I am shocked that the media arm of the Republican Party, the F-Word Network, would carry a pro-science program.

Copernicus was a Lutheran safely out of the hands of the geographic range of the Catholic Inquisition, I think,

Just checked, Kepler was indeed a Lutheran.

Glen Davidson

SLC said: As for the commercials, the first program is available on BitTorrent but it is indicated that it is 44 minutes long. I didn't watch it but it is my information that it ran for 2 hours.

Funny how I seem to have got my wires cross about Copernicus the same way Nick did. Whoops!

I too thought the rather amateurish cartoon portrayal of Bruno was a bit overdone and didn’t tell the whole story.

I think this series is aimed at middle school and high school students; but I don’t know if that accounts for the choice of using comic book caricatures to tell the story.

As to Copernicus; he didn’t want his work published until after he was dead. And Andreas Osiander’s preface to De revolutionibus cautioned that the heavens were not necessarily to be taken as Copernicus was saying. The general positions of both the Protestant and Catholic Churches at the time were that it was okay to portray your models and calculations as if they were true; but you were not to assert that they were actually true.

But the fact remains that the Inquisition was a pretty repressive political force that suppressed ideas by intimidation and death. And Protestants were just as repressive.

Paul Burnett said: Bruno was accused of and executed for multiple heresies - his cosmology was not important in his seven year long trial.

I'd say that Bruno approached science in several respects. His claims were, though speculative, based in part on observation. He made a physical argument that the universe must be unbounded. His idea that the stars were like the sun, just far away, was a reasonable speculation from the appearances, in itself implied a vastly larger universe, and was an application of the principle of mediocrity. His denial of the ethereal element was another application. In other words, Bruno was in many respects acting like a theoretical physicist.

ksplawn said:

SLC said: As for the commercials, the first program is available on BitTorrent but it is indicated that it is 44 minutes long. I didn't watch it but it is my information that it ran for 2 hours.

It was only 1 hour on NatGeo, but I'd swear the commercial breaks took up more than 1/4 of the time slot. They were, at any rate, far too frequent and completely ruined the atmosphere they were going for in the show. I have never wanted to physically punch Jeep in the face so hard in my life. Anyway, one of the attacks against the Bruno segment is this one, which takes great pains not to fill in the missing details of its rebuttal. For example, it attacks the idea that geocentrism was unpopular or almost unknown among people in Bruno's day by citing a short list of astronomers who WEREN'T burned at the stake. Copernicus, Maestlin, and Kepler weren't Catholic and some of them had protection due to their courtly positions, Brahe believed in an Earth-centric Universe (just that the other planets revolved around the Sun, which revolved around the Earth, so everything still went around the Earth), Stigliola I don't know about, Rothmann mostly seems to have argued details about cosmology and motion but I don't know if he actually set out a heliocentric idea himself. There's any number of reasons why these people wouldn't have faced the kind of persecution Bruno did (or why one of them faced such persecution and recanted). It seems to go out of its way to counter the "propaganda" of the Cosmos short with propaganda of its own.

John Harshman said: I'd say that Bruno approached science in several respects. His claims were, though speculative, based in part on observation. He made a physical argument that the universe must be unbounded. His idea that the stars were like the sun, just far away, was a reasonable speculation from the appearances, in itself implied a vastly larger universe, and was an application of the principle of mediocrity. His denial of the ethereal element was another application. In other words, Bruno was in many respects acting like a theoretical physicist.

SLC said: As I stated on Phil Plait's blog, Bruno's proposition that the stars visible in he sky were like the sun and not holes in the firmament could not be tested because the telescope had not yet been invented. They were pretty prescient though.

John Harshman said: I'm not sure what the telescope had to do with it. How does a telescope show that stars are like the sun? You'd need a very big one to show a disk on even the nearest, largest stars.

John Harshman said: In other words, Bruno was in many respects acting like a theoretical physicist.

TomS said: Here's a suggestion. Before telescopes the magnitude of a star what was often called its size (literally). After telescopes it was realized that stars were so small. The before-telescope estimations of sizes of stars were far too big for their being like the Sun.

I don’t actually know how or when in the history of astronomy it was determined that the stars were suns. Do you?

John Harshman said: In other words, Bruno was in many respects acting like a theoretical physicist.

I'm still trying to fathom the lying liars for Jesus objection to Bruno being burned at the stake for science. Does that mean they are happy with his immolation for his denial of Jesus being God? Well, that's OK right? Go Neil deGrass Tyson job done!

k.e.. said: I'm still trying to fathom the lying liars for Jesus objection to Bruno being burned at the stake for science. Does that mean they are happy with his immolation for his denial of Jesus being God? Well, that's OK right? Go Neil deGrass Tyson job done!

Bruno's main heresy, as far as the inquisitors were concerned, was denying that the real substance of Jesus was in the host. It was also considered suspicious that he went on lecture tours of Protestant countries. They were anxious to sniff out Protestantism or anything like it. Like Galileo, the real reason things went so far was that he made himself personally annoying to the wrong people.

Sad to say, I mostly know about Bruno from Yates (her reportage of facts was more reliable than her interpretations), and the odd article here and there. But there has been a lot of good recent work on Bruno I haven't kept up with.

My objection to the original Cosmos was Sagan's comic-book level understanding of history (don't get me started on his gibberish about Pythagoras)--not that I realized it at the time. I'm skipping this iteration.

At no point in the episode is it claimed that Bruno was killed for thinking the Earth orbited the Sun. People hear the name Bruno and have a knee-jerk reaction to the usual false story to the degree that they failed to pay attention to what the show actually claimed. The show does show the priest giving reasons for the death penalty. Those reasons where theological/philosophical.

The discussion about Bruno reminds me of the poor treatment that the original Cosmos gave on the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

TomS said: The discussion about Bruno reminds me of the poor treatment that the original Cosmos gave on the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

I think that the second show will be more about the origin of life and evolution, so this is definitely not the end of the complaints.

All this shows ia just how difficult it is to better The Ascent Of Man.

The entry about Bruno in Wikipedia provides a list of charges against him. The top charges (and almost all of the charges) have to do with his views about the Holy Trinity. The charges regarding his views on cosmology are near the bottom, sort of tacked on near the end. If this list is accurate in the order of charges, then methinks he was martyred primarily for questioning the central beliefs of Christianity. Surely, the most serious charges would be at the top. The view that he was martyred for science might be stretching things.

Thomas Jefferson:

“The Christian god is a three-headed monster, cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three-headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.”

*********

“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” ~ Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823)

Seversky said: All this shows ia just how difficult it is to better The Ascent Of Man.

Mike Elzinga said:

Seversky said: All this shows ia just how difficult it is to better The Ascent Of Man.

Indeed. Jacob Bronowski was superb in that series. I think these science series, such as Cosmos would be much better if they were presented in the format of Richard Crane’s series on "How Things Work" that ran in The Physics Teacher for a number of years and was later published as a book. Students and young people generally have a natural curiosity about how things work and how we can find out things; in other words, their innate tendencies about exploration have not yet been subdued and eliminated by social and political pressure. I think the Cosmos series could be much better if it presented not only the spectacular pictures of what we know, but also told us about the processes and instruments that get us this knowledge and how those instruments work and came to be. Most students love good physics demonstrations that show how things work and how they help get the knowledge about now the universe works. They are very often curious about how things like telescopes and other instruments work. Many of the cartoon descriptions of instruments and technology are virtually worthless in explaining the details and principles on which they work. It is harder these days to find technology that can be taken apart and put back together by kids wanting to understand technology and instrumentation. A good stepping stone to understanding the technology and instrumentation that extend our senses is the mechanical and basic electromechanical devices that young people can take apart without destroying the parts to the point that they can no longer work when put back together. The processes of reasoning can also be discussed; especially how those processes changed and were influenced by society over the centuries that humans have been trying to understand nature. I suspect that the political wars on science would be less effective if confronted with information that showed clearly just how politics and sectarian ideology distort science. If people know how things work, they aren’t so easily bamboozled by charlatans telling them that science and knowledge are bad. That such demagogues are idiots would become more obvious rather than being an infinitely arguable “matter of opinion.”

Mark Sturtevant said: The entry about Bruno in Wikipedia provides a list of charges against him. The top charges (and almost all of the charges) have to do with his views about the Holy Trinity. The charges regarding his views on cosmology are near the bottom, sort of tacked on near the end. If this list is accurate in the order of charges, then methinks he was martyred primarily for questioning the central beliefs of Christianity. Surely, the most serious charges would be at the top. The view that he was martyred for science might be stretching things.

The world was much better and more fun 80 years ago. There were clocks to pull apart to see how they worked, the marvel of radio, people speaking from a box! Horse drawn carriages in the streets, a man with a pole to light the gaslights in the evening, bicycle repair, winding coils, twisting wires to make a a crystal set (how I enjoyed my crystal set during the war when the nazis had confiscated our radios) Although it got much better in 1945 when we got our radio back and could listen to AFN - that was real joy! And to upgrade from cystal sets to two-tube real radio!

Then there was "The Mechanical Universe"... and "Connections"...

Goldarnit, I just missed the broadcast of the first episode here. I didn't expect it to be shown in this country quite so quickly. I stumbled across it on the tv schedule only about a minute before the end credits rolled.

cpmondello said: Thomas Jefferson: “The Christian god is a three-headed monster, cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three-headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.” ********* “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” ~ Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823)

cpmondello said: Thomas Jefferson: “The Christian god is a three-headed monster, cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three-headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.” ********* “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” ~ Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823)

Raping Children Church

Is the new Cosmos available in England at this time?

Matt Young said:

Raping Children Church

Could we please maintain at least minimal decorum? In the future I will send comments such as this one straight to the BW, independent of the quality of the rest of the remark.

Although I think that this appellation is highly appropriate, I will bow to the moderators here and cease and desist from using it in the future.

Second episode just aired. They covered natural selection, artificial selection, intelligent design, evolution of the eye and the origin of life.

Notable quotes:

"Evolution is a fact. It really happened."

"There is no shame is saying I don't know. There is only shame in pretending we have all the answers."

DS said: "Evolution is a fact. It really happened."

Just watched the second episode, and it's pretty much all about evolution.

I was impressed.

Especially considering it was on Fox, it was handled in a very matter-of-fact "The world is round, and we're not going to pretend otherwise" matter.

I thought the examples were particularly clear, especially a segment about the various sub-species of bear that carefully explained how genetic variation affects survival, emphasized that populations evolve, not individuals, and emphasized that the environment picks winners and losers - "And the polar bear, specialized for life among the ice packs, may very well go extinct, as the grizzly bear proves better able to live in a warmer climate with less ice."

Also, a nice, if somewhat shallow, synopsis of that great creationist bugaboo, the evolution of the eye.

On quibble, although they mention the fact that the eyes in their intermediate examples actually do exist in nature, it would have been nice to hammer that point a little more: "And this step is called a 'cup eye', and here's a picture of a contemporary creature that actually has one of these things".

Still, I thought it did pretty well.

It was well done. However it did equate evolution with random mutation plus natural selection. At one point natural selection was described as "the mechanism of evolution". The only mention of genetic drift was a statement that many mutations did not affect fitness. And other forces such as gene flow were not mentioned.

The real possibility of life on other worlds was mentioned. Judging by previews, the next show will cover the history of astronomy, and I bet the downfall of geocentrism and the trial of Galileo is front-and-center.

The show is a co-production of National Geographic and Fox, as far as I can see (not Fox News). Keep in mind that The Simpsons is a Fox show too.

Well they did carefully explain that the eye was not intelligently designed, but that it evolved and showed all the limitations of historical contingency. But I would have preferred that they be much more explicit about the poor "design" of the eye and why it is antithetical to any design argument. IF you are going to mention religious ideas at all, it is best to explicitly discuss why they have been rejected by modern science. Still, anyone with half a brain would have gotten the idea.

The tree of life was well done and the Halls of Extinction was a nice feature.

Now that there was an original Cosmos and a new Cosmos - that mean that there are two Cosmi?

I thought the second episode was really good. Remember, you can't cram too much into an hour without losing your audience. One of my favorite part was when Tyson suggested that maybe somebody now watching the show would solve the mystery of the origins of life.

Have any of you Panda scientists ever received a death threat associated with your scientific research? Could you tell us about it if it's legal and safe for you to do so?

TomS said: Now that there was an original Cosmos and a new Cosmos - that mean that there are two Cosmi?

TomS said: Now that there was an original Cosmos and a new Cosmos - that mean that there are two Cosmi?

ksplawn said:

TomS said: Now that there was an original Cosmos and a new Cosmos - that mean that there are two Cosmi?

Cosmoi, I think.

Casey Luskin has weighed in on Episode 2 at ENV. He rants at length on how wrong Neil deGrasse Tyson was to say that "selection and mutation can evolve anything".

I guess Casey was so busy planning his counter-attack that he missed the very clear point NDT made about eyes having evolved in the ocean, and all the problems this has created (and creates) for land-dwelling vertebrates with eyes. Tyson made the strong point that evolution was doing the best with the materials at hand, and that it would be nearly impossible for animals to shuck their vision apparatus and start anew with eyes properly evolved to work on dry land from the get-go.

If word count means anything (Casey's frantic tome weighs in at over 3700 words, not including references!), methinks ID is plenty concerned about 'COSMOS.'

He rants at length on how wrong Neil deGrasse Tyson was to say that “selection and mutation can evolve anything”.

There is a lot of that behave as if that goes on. It isn't only Ophalism. One which is not particularly related to evolution is the way that God can dictate the Bible to Moses as if it was written hundreds of years after. (After all, are we to deny that God could reveal the future?)

harold said:

He rants at length on how wrong Neil deGrasse Tyson was to say that “selection and mutation can evolve anything”.

Can you save me the misery of reading Luskin and tell me whether this was a straw man misrepresentation, or or a quote mine? I absolutely know that NDGT would not make this mistake. Naturally, a magical, unlimited "designer" whose identity can't be revealed, but who just might have a track record of parting the Red Sea and implanting himself in the whom of a virgin, can create anything, leaving us with the mystery of why the designer would bother to behave as if constrained when magically designing the biosphere. On the other hand, evolution is, of course, constrained by prior evolution, as well as all the constraints on all natural processes, which is completely congruent with what we see in the biosphere.

...it's the same type of argument that Darwin made: "If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only 10 to 15 thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years?" The answer, I recall Tyson saying, is most "anything."

Tyson's main argument that selection and mutation can evolve anything focuses on the evolution of the eye. Here, he attacks intelligent design by name...

If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only 10 or 15 thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years? The answer is: all the beauty and diversity of life.

TomS said: There is a lot of that behave as if that goes on. It isn't only Ophalism. One which is not particularly related to evolution is the way that God can dictate the Bible to Moses as if it was written hundreds of years after. (After all, are we to deny that God could reveal the future?)

DS said:

TomS said: There is a lot of that behave as if that goes on. It isn't only Ophalism. One which is not particularly related to evolution is the way that God can dictate the Bible to Moses as if it was written hundreds of years after. (After all, are we to deny that God could reveal the future?)

No. No one is denying that a god could or could not do anything he or she wanted. But what god apparently did not do is reveal anything about the workings of nature that was not already known (or supposed) or anything about the past that was not already known, or anything in the future that actually came true. In fact, it is almost as if she deliberately tried to make it look lie the holy book was written by a bunch of guys who really didn't know anything other than what was already commonly known at the time they wrote, whether it was actually right or wrong. Now I wonder why that is?

Dave Thomas said: At first Luskin quotes NDT thusly:

...it's the same type of argument that Darwin made: "If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only 10 to 15 thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years?" The answer, I recall Tyson saying, is most "anything."

it's the same type of argument that Darwin made: "If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only 10 or 15 thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years?" The answer, Tyson tells us, is "all the beauty and diversity of life." In other words, Tyson wants you to believe that natural selection provides all the answers for everything since life arose. Just as he did in Episode 1, Tyson has overstated his case.

For the plural, I'm going with cosmosis.

DS said:

TomS said: There is a lot of that behave as if that goes on. It isn't only Ophalism. One which is not particularly related to evolution is the way that God can dictate the Bible to Moses as if it was written hundreds of years after. (After all, are we to deny that God could reveal the future?)

No. No one is denying that a god could or could not do anything he or she wanted. But what god apparently did not do is reveal anything about the workings of nature that was not already known (or supposed) or anything about the past that was not already known, or anything in the future that actually came true. In fact, it is almost as if she deliberately tried to make it look lie the holy book was written by a bunch of guys who really didn't know anything other than what was already commonly known at the time they wrote, whether it was actually right or wrong. Now I wonder why that is?

Dave Thomas said:

Dave Thomas said: At first Luskin quotes NDT thusly:

...it's the same type of argument that Darwin made: "If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only 10 to 15 thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years?" The answer, I recall Tyson saying, is most "anything."

Wow, Luskin has already revamped the blog. Now, instead of the above it says...

it's the same type of argument that Darwin made: "If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only 10 or 15 thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years?" The answer, Tyson tells us, is "all the beauty and diversity of life." In other words, Tyson wants you to believe that natural selection provides all the answers for everything since life arose. Just as he did in Episode 1, Tyson has overstated his case.

Tricksy folk, these IDers!

Tyson is out there with a brass band, pounding a big drum while Luskin is banging on his high chair tray with a spoon. Whaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Not trusting Luskin's transcription, I carefully transcribed the proceeding directly from the show. Upon looking back, I can now see that Luskin indeed copied Tyson's comment "If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only 10 to 15 thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years?" verbatim.

I'd mention that according to the Bible there were about 300 years between the Flood and Abraham, and, in the times of Abraham there were sheep and goats, species of the Bovidae family.

To heck with hyper evolution. Just think about the hyper reproduction required.

Within something like 200 years after the flood, there was a human society large enough to support the building of the Tower of Babel, a structure taller than the Great Pyramids of Giza. In order to build a structure larger than the pyramids, it would probably require a population in excess of that of Egypt.

Start with 8 people (4 women). Assume a 50% child mortality rate (not too unusual for the day), a ratio of men to women of 50/50, and a 20 year period of fertility for each woman (ages 15-35). It works out to requiring that every woman must have given birth to (on average) a little more than 3 live children every year for 20 years of her life, for every generation, for 200 years.

And that's just to build the Tower of Bable. That doesn't even count repopulating Mesopotamia, the Americas, and the rest of India, Asia, and Europe.

Not only did women live to be hundreds of years old in those days, they also bred like rabbits. Literally.

Sure, with exponential population growth you can get to those kinds of numbers, no sweat. In the real world, we obviously did. But remember in the YEC world, there are these biblical time constraints. You don't have several thousand years to do this. You only have less than 200. And with bronze-age agriculture, you don't have the physical or caloric resources to actually support exponential growth.

In the eyes of primitive fish, the transparent gel near the pinhole formed into a lens. At the same time, the pinhole enlarged, to let in more and more light. Fish could now see in hi-def, both close up, and far away. And then, something terrible happened. You ever notice that a straw in a glass of water looks bent at the surface of the water? That's because light bends when it goes from one medium to another, say from water to air. Our eyes originally evolved to see in water. The watery fluid in those eyes neatly eliminated the distortion of that bending effect. But for land animals, the light carries images from dry air into their still-watery eyes. That bends the light rays, causing all kinds of distortions. When our amphibious ancestors left the water for the land, their eyes, exquisitely evolved to see in water, were lousy for seeing in the air. Our vision has never been as good since. We like to think of our eyes as state of the art, but three hundred and 75 million years later, we still can't see things right in front of our noses, or discern fine details in near darkness, the way fish can. When we left the water, why didn't nature just 'start over again,' and evolve us a new set of eyes that were optimal for seeing in the air? Nature doesn't work that way. Evolution reshapes existing structures over generations, adapting them with small changes. It can't just go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. At every stage of its development, the evolving eye functioned well enough to provide a selective advantage for survival, and among animals alive today, we find eyes at all these stages of development. And all of them, functioning.

Tyson's main argument that selection and mutation can evolve anything focuses on the evolution of the eye.

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

For those that have missed either of the first episodes the FOX network is making them available online for approximately 60 days after the date it airs. You can view them at the following link.

COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY

If you are trying to catch them on the TV broadcast and you miss the airing on Sunday they rebroadcast on Monday. They are available on something like 10 FOX channels and 3 NatGeos.

(if torrents are your thing it should go without saying they are incredibly hot right now)

The first episode of COSMOS was premiered at several museums, planetariums, and science institutes (sorry DI, guess you didn't make the cut) as well as the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando. A one hour QandA session was held afterward with Tyson and the team of Executive Producers. The official version can be viewed at the link above by clicking on the "three bar" menu icon on the right and scrolling down to "QandA Event."

You can view a "clean" version of the QandA at this YouTube link without the "framing" they did in order to provide a live twitter feed alongside the video. (at least until a possible copyright claim takes it down)

COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY - Live Q&A

This is a common creationist misrepresentation of science. A couple of years ago I posted that natural selection was limited by several factors, including historical contingency. Some creationists were astonished that anyone would be so honest as to admit that there were limits to selection! All these guys can do is project their own deficiencies onto others. They never bother to learn the actual claims of science, attacking misrepresentations is good enough for them. The only surprise would have been if Luskin would have actually known what he was talking about, even though he supposedly just watched the program.

If you want to know the power of natural selection, just look at the diversity of life. There is overwhelming evidence that all of this diversity was produced by evolution, including random mutation and natural selection. If you want to know the limitations of natural selection, just look at the diversity of life. Some things are easier to evolve than others, some things are harder to evolve, some things are extremely unlikely to evolve and some things are virtually impossible to evolve, at least given the past three and a half billion years of the history of life. The same constraints do not apply to a designer, at least not to an all powerful one.

Good point. When I give talks about such things, I like to include images of odd creatures like Pegasus, the Chimera, and Ganesha, all with odd combinations that will probably never, ever evolve, because of that same historical contingency. Sure, horses are related to birds, but both developed their unique features long after the days of their common ancestor.

Maybe if Lateral Gene Transfer worked in vertebrates - but then, a human could eat a cheeseburger, and proceed to give birth to a calf.

I do wonder how Casey can live with such lies. I imagine he's so obsessed with ID that he can't even see he's putting the wrong words into Tyson's mouth, and by extension, the mouth of all science.

A little too early in the morning for such analogies, all for now!

TomS said: I'd mention that according to the Bible there were about 300 years between the Flood and Abraham, and, in the times of Abraham there were sheep and goats, species of the Bovidae family.

DS said: If you want to know the power of natural selection, just look at the diversity of life. There is overwhelming evidence that all of this diversity was produced by evolution, including random mutation and natural selection. If you want to know the limitations of natural selection, just look at the diversity of life. Some things are easier to evolve than others, some things are harder to evolve, some things are extremely unlikely to evolve and some things are virtually impossible to evolve, at least given the past three and a half billion years of the history of life. The same constraints do not apply to a designer, at least not to an all powerful one.

Scott F said: To heck with hyper evolution. Just think about the hyper reproduction required. Within something like 200 years after the flood, there was a human society large enough to support the building of the Tower of Babel, a structure taller than the Great Pyramids of Giza. In order to build a structure larger than the pyramids, it would probably require a population in excess of that of Egypt. Start with 8 people (4 women). Assume a 50% child mortality rate (not too unusual for the day), a ratio of men to women of 50/50, and a 20 year period of fertility for each woman (ages 15-35). It works out to requiring that every woman must have given birth to (on average) a little more than 3 live children every year for 20 years of her life, for every generation, for 200 years. And that's just to build the Tower of Bable. That doesn't even count repopulating Mesopotamia, the Americas, and the rest of India, Asia, and Europe. Not only did women live to be hundreds of years old in those days, they also bred like rabbits. Literally. Sure, with exponential population growth you can get to those kinds of numbers, no sweat. In the real world, we obviously did. But remember in the YEC world, there are these biblical time constraints. You don't have several thousand years to do this. You only have less than 200. And with bronze-age agriculture, you don't have the physical or caloric resources to actually support exponential growth.

We know you lurk Casey. Not so much as a hat tip to Dave? Suck it, Gerb.

david.starling.macmillan said:

Scott F said: To heck with hyper evolution. Just think about the hyper reproduction required. Within something like 200 years after the flood, there was a human society large enough to support the building of the Tower of Babel, a structure taller than the Great Pyramids of Giza. In order to build a structure larger than the pyramids, it would probably require a population in excess of that of Egypt. Start with 8 people (4 women). Assume a 50% child mortality rate (not too unusual for the day), a ratio of men to women of 50/50, and a 20 year period of fertility for each woman (ages 15-35). It works out to requiring that every woman must have given birth to (on average) a little more than 3 live children every year for 20 years of her life, for every generation, for 200 years. And that's just to build the Tower of Bable. That doesn't even count repopulating Mesopotamia, the Americas, and the rest of India, Asia, and Europe. Not only did women live to be hundreds of years old in those days, they also bred like rabbits. Literally. Sure, with exponential population growth you can get to those kinds of numbers, no sweat. In the real world, we obviously did. But remember in the YEC world, there are these biblical time constraints. You don't have several thousand years to do this. You only have less than 200. And with bronze-age agriculture, you don't have the physical or caloric resources to actually support exponential growth.

AiG's exciting and not-at-all far-fetched response.

John Harshman said: Not actually a response to Scott, as they talk only about reaching the current world population in a few thousand years, conveniently ignoring the uncomfortably low population that the exponential model predicts in the early years. Using their model, in fact, the world population at the time Scott talks about would be 20. Now, we have to suppose that everyone was gathered at Babel, as the confusion of tongues must predate any dispersal of people. So everyone was available to work on the tower. But that does seem like a small work force. And the inbreeding depression must have been fierce.

DS said: Right. And the inbreeding depression for every other animal and plant was even worse. There were only two of every kind, not eight. If anyone tried to start a human colony from this low a number, even if they were not related, they would be in for a big surprise.

If you want to know the power of natural selection, just look at the diversity of life. There is overwhelming evidence that all of this diversity was produced by evolution, including random mutation and natural selection. If you want to know the limitations of natural selection, just look at the diversity of life. Some things are easier to evolve than others, some things are harder to evolve, some things are extremely unlikely to evolve and some things are virtually impossible to evolve, at least given the past three and a half billion years of the history of life. The same constraints do not apply to a designer, at least not to an all powerful one.

This is a common creationist misrepresentation of science. A couple of years ago I posted that natural selection was limited by several factors, including historical contingency

AiG’s exciting and not-at-all far-fetched response.

John Harshman said: Not actually a response to Scott, as they talk only about reaching the current world population in a few thousand years, conveniently ignoring the uncomfortably low population that the exponential model predicts in the early years. Using their model, in fact, the world population at the time Scott talks about would be 20. Now, we have to suppose that everyone was gathered at Babel, as the confusion of tongues must predate any dispersal of people. So everyone was available to work on the tower. But that does seem like a small work force. And the inbreeding depression must have been fierce.

John Harshman said:

DS said: Right. And the inbreeding depression for every other animal and plant was even worse. There were only two of every kind, not eight. If anyone tried to start a human colony from this low a number, even if they were not related, they would be in for a big surprise.

That's actually a question I've never seen addressed. All the incest involving Adam's kids is excused because they all started with perfect genomes. But by the time of Noah everything is supposed to have degenerated to a sorry state comparable to today's. So why no problems with inbreeding? Do we need a special miracle? Would any of the house creationists like to take this one?

Karen S. said:

AiG’s exciting and not-at-all far-fetched response.

They don't discuss a mortality rate, do they? And how healthy could life have been after a global flood? What the hell can you eat?

Playing creationist: Remember all those dinosaurs on the Ark, that conveniently went extinct immediately after? They were there to feed the people (and other carnivores) for several years afterwards! Think of what a big feast you could make out of a brachiosaur, then how much jerky you could get out of the leftovers!

Playing creationist: Remember all those dinosaurs on the Ark, that conveniently went extinct immediately after? They were there to feed the people (and other carnivores) for several years afterwards! Think of what a big feast you could make out of a brachiosaur, then how much jerky you could get out of the leftovers!

david.starling.macmillan said: ...an exponentially-growing population with only four adult males...

But that also neglects the amount of labour that was required to feed a population, much before the mid-nineteenth century. The agricultural surplus in the Bronze Age was tiny. Sure, there were city cultures, counting anything with a thousand people as a city, but most people spent nearly all their time raising enough food to live, and most of the rest of it in daily necessities. Egypt was a special case, with its reliable flooding of the Nile, which produced a period of about four months every year when the peasantry had little to do, providing a huge labour force while the fields were inundated, but even in Egypt the population was limited by the amount of food that could be grown in the other two-thirds of the year, and it remained stable for millennia.

Sure, they built the ziggurats in Mesopotamia, but that was on the back of large agricultural populations. Tens of thousands of labouring peasants were needed to support a few hundred craftsmen and builders - and a ruling class.

And this would go many times over for a population exploding at the exponential rate they propose. There would be a higher proportion of children and infants, and they all had to be fed.

All the evidence about population growth we have from more recent times, links spurts in it to specific causes - favourable climate changes (with the converse if the climate changed for the worse, as with the effect of El Nino fluctuations on New World civilisations) and quite often to technological change, including new or improved crops or varieties through breeding, new farming techniques, sometimes machinery, sometimes transport, sometimes opening new land through irrigation or drainage or other means. Where no new factor is operating, populations reach equilibrium quickly, and then stabilise. There is none of the regular steady increase required by AiG.

Karen S. said:

Playing creationist: Remember all those dinosaurs on the Ark, that conveniently went extinct immediately after? They were there to feed the people (and other carnivores) for several years afterwards! Think of what a big feast you could make out of a brachiosaur, then how much jerky you could get out of the leftovers!

No, there was only one pair of the dinosaur kind. And they were juveniles. That's how they fit on the ark, remember? So they must have grown up, repopulated the earth, radiated by crossing oceans, diversified, and gone extinct pretty fast. Obviously.

Wait a minute. Yer all sorta making me doubt the historical and scientific truth of Genesis...

Karen S. said: And they were juveniles. That's how they fit on the ark, remember?

And if rabbits had been increasing their population exponentially, as AIG proposes that humans have, then the current population of bunnies would outweigh the Earth!

What? There are natural checks on animal population growth -- but not on people? Uh, yeah, right.

Just Bob said: Playing creationist: Remember all those dinosaurs on the Ark, that conveniently went extinct immediately after? They were there to feed the people (and other carnivores) for several years afterwards! Think of what a big feast you could make out of a brachiosaur, then how much jerky you could get out of the leftovers!

The dinosaurs thus began a new life in a new world. Along with the other animals, the dinosaurs came out to breed and repopulate the earth. They would have left the landing place of the Ark and spread over the earth’s surface. The descendants of these dinosaurs gave rise to the dragon legends. But the world they came out to repopulate differed from the one they knew before Noah’s Flood. The Flood had devastated it. It was now a much more difficult world in which to survive. After the Flood, God told Noah that from then on, the animals would fear man, and that animal flesh could be food for man. Even for man, the world had become a harsher place. To survive, the once easily obtained plant nutrition would now have to be supplemented by animal sources. Both animals and man would find their ability to survive tested to the utmost. We can see from the fossil record, from the written history of man, and from experience over recent centuries, that many forms of life on this planet have not survived that test. We need to remember that many plants and air-breathing, land-dwelling animals have become extinct since the Flood—either due to man’s action or competition with other species, or because of the harsher post-Flood environment. Many groups are still becoming extinct. Dinosaurs seem to be numbered among the extinct groups. Maybe one of the reasons dinosaurs are extinct is that we did not start our endangered species programs early enough.

Karen S. said: There was only one pair of the dinosaur kind. And they were juveniles. That's how they fit on the ark, remember? So they must have grown up, repopulated the earth, radiated by crossing oceans, diversified, and gone extinct pretty fast. Obviously.

Paul Burnett said:

david.starling.macmillan said: ...an exponentially-growing population with only four adult males...

Breeding females are the major limiting factor...it only takes a few males.

Dave Luckett said: But that also neglects the amount of labour that was required to feed a population, much before the mid-nineteenth century. The agricultural surplus in the Bronze Age was tiny. Sure, there were city cultures, counting anything with a thousand people as a city, but most people spent nearly all their time raising enough food to live, and most of the rest of it in daily necessities. Egypt was a special case, with its reliable flooding of the Nile, which produced a period of about four months every year when the peasantry had little to do, providing a huge labour force while the fields were inundated, but even in Egypt the population was limited by the amount of food that could be grown in the other two-thirds of the year, and it remained stable for millennia. Sure, they built the ziggurats in Mesopotamia, but that was on the back of large agricultural populations. Tens of thousands of labouring peasants were needed to support a few hundred craftsmen and builders - and a ruling class. And this would go many times over for a population exploding at the exponential rate they propose. There would be a higher proportion of children and infants, and they all had to be fed. All the evidence about population growth we have from more recent times, links spurts in it to specific causes - favourable climate changes (with the converse if the climate changed for the worse, as with the effect of El Nino fluctuations on New World civilisations) and quite often to technological change, including new or improved crops or varieties through breeding, new farming techniques, sometimes machinery, sometimes transport, sometimes opening new land through irrigation or drainage or other means. Where no new factor is operating, populations reach equilibrium quickly, and then stabilise. There is none of the regular steady increase required by AiG.

But the Bible says that the animals were taken, two by two, a male and his mate. Do juveniles have mates? (I wonder whether dinosaurs had mates. But that’s another issue. One might as well wonder whether a bull has a mate. Or a drone.)

The dinosaurs thus began a new life in a new world. [snip] Maybe one of the reasons dinosaurs are extinct is that we did not start our endangered species programs early enough.

AiG has not yet published an “Initial Estimate of Dinosaur Ark Kinds” (they have estimates for mammal kinds, bird kinds, snake kinds, and turtle kinds), but they would definitely claim more than one kind.

The Flood had devastated it. It was now a much more difficult world in which to survive. After the Flood, God told Noah that from then on, the animals would fear man, and that animal flesh could be food for man. Even for man, the world had become a harsher place. To survive, the once easily obtained plant nutrition would now have to be supplemented by animal sources.

Karen S. said:

AiG has not yet published an “Initial Estimate of Dinosaur Ark Kinds” (they have estimates for mammal kinds, bird kinds, snake kinds, and turtle kinds), but they would definitely claim more than one kind.

Just how many dino kinds can you fit on an ark? Wouldn't a sauropod kind couple fill the whole ark? And wouldn't a tyrannosaur kind couple eat the crew for lunch?

How about hermaphrodites? Did they have “mates?”

Karen S. said:

The Flood had devastated it. It was now a much more difficult world in which to survive. After the Flood, God told Noah that from then on, the animals would fear man, and that animal flesh could be food for man. Even for man, the world had become a harsher place. To survive, the once easily obtained plant nutrition would now have to be supplemented by animal sources.

But there is nothing for herbivores to eat. And eating all your breeding stock (e.g. 2 goat-kinds) would not be wise. Ouch! My brane hurtz!

Creationists are freaking out about part II dealing with evolution:

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/03/science-deniers-cosmos-neil-tyson

But here's a recent item that supports evolution as Tyson discussed:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140318113816.htm

Actually, the requirement was for Noah to bring sevens of the “clean” animals

Just Bob said:

The dinosaurs thus began a new life in a new world. [snip] Maybe one of the reasons dinosaurs are extinct is that we did not start our endangered species programs early enough.

Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article."

Karen S. said:

AiG has not yet published an “Initial Estimate of Dinosaur Ark Kinds” (they have estimates for mammal kinds, bird kinds, snake kinds, and turtle kinds), but they would definitely claim more than one kind.

Just how many dino kinds can you fit on an ark? Wouldn't a sauropod kind couple fill the whole ark? And wouldn't a tyrannosaur kind couple eat the crew for lunch?

Karen S. said:

The Flood had devastated it. It was now a much more difficult world in which to survive. After the Flood, God told Noah that from then on, the animals would fear man, and that animal flesh could be food for man. Even for man, the world had become a harsher place. To survive, the once easily obtained plant nutrition would now have to be supplemented by animal sources.

But there is nothing for herbivores to eat. And eating all your breeding stock (e.g. 2 goat-kinds) would not be wise. Ouch! My brane hurtz!

david.starling.macmillan said: They want us to believe that enough seeds survived the GLOBAL inundantion (on floating log mats and whatnot, apparently) to have provided immediate fodder for the ~20,000 animals by the time they left the Ark.

david.starling.macmillan said: They want us to believe that enough seeds survived the GLOBAL inundantion (on floating log mats and whatnot, apparently) to have provided immediate fodder for the ~20,000 animals by the time they left the Ark.

They want us to believe that enough seeds survived the GLOBAL inundantion (on floating log mats and whatnot, apparently) to have provided immediate fodder for the ~20,000 animals by the time they left the Ark.

Miracles all the way down.

Which prompts the question: Why didn't God just do ONE simple miracle and kill all the evil people at once? It's not like all those sinners were given a chance to 'learn their lesson' and reform by watching their children die, then struggling until they, too, drowned.

I wonder if the new Noah movie is going to show any graphic scenes of all the babies and toddlers being drowned.

Karen S. said:

They want us to believe that enough seeds survived the GLOBAL inundantion (on floating log mats and whatnot, apparently) to have provided immediate fodder for the ~20,000 animals by the time they left the Ark.

Yes, indeed. Even though the flood was violent enough to push continents around, which would have caused tsunamis.

Either way, it's the complete destruction of the terrestrial biosphere.

Either way, it’s the complete destruction of the terrestrial biosphere.

As if Cosmos isn't difficult for creationists to stomach, they will soon have to face Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish, a 3-part series which premieres April 9, 2014.

Karen S. said:

Either way, it’s the complete destruction of the terrestrial biosphere.

Except for the dry seeds

david.starling.macmillan said:

Karen S. said:

They want us to believe that enough seeds survived the GLOBAL inundantion (on floating log mats and whatnot, apparently) to have provided immediate fodder for the ~20,000 animals by the time they left the Ark.

Yes, indeed. Even though the flood was violent enough to push continents around, which would have caused tsunamis.

Well, in the usual YEC model, it was the moving of the continents that caused the floodwaters, not the other way around.

Karen S. said: As if Cosmos isn't difficult for creationists to stomach, they will soon have to face Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish, a 3-part series which premieres April 9, 2014.

Karen S. said: As if Cosmos isn't difficult for creationists to stomach, they will soon have to face Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish, a 3-part series which premieres April 9, 2014.

Scott F said:

david.starling.macmillan said:

Karen S. said:

They want us to believe that enough seeds survived the GLOBAL inundantion (on floating log mats and whatnot, apparently) to have provided immediate fodder for the ~20,000 animals by the time they left the Ark.

Yes, indeed. Even though the flood was violent enough to push continents around, which would have caused tsunamis.

Well, in the usual YEC model, it was the moving of the continents that caused the floodwaters, not the other way around.

I thought it was that humans crossed to the Americas after the dispersal from the Tower of Babel, and only then did the Americas take off running away from Africa and Europe at about 8 miles per year, right up until 1492, at which point they suddenly stopped.

The Bible and all the old books on which we rely...explain that God has accomplished the creation in six days (or, of course, six times), so there is a certain interval of one day to the other, that is indisputable. But what is the reason for this gap? Nothing was impossible with God, he could do everything in one day, one time; his supreme will, which is the cause of everything that exists, does not need to rest to reflect what it will do tomorrow. It is obvious, and the ancients recognized, that the Creator wanted to mark the passage of an interval of one "day" to another or from one period to another, and we will see that this interval was necessary. It is necessary for man to sleep after the day's work, to acquire the rest by new strength for the day as it is necessary to land have rest from one year to the other when it produced a crop. Only the man for whom the day was twenty -four hours, needs only six hours of rest. Relatively, the globe, for which days were three hundred centuries will need at least sixty centuries of rest, but the rest of the world or sleep was not of the same nature as that of man: the world was still turning on itself, its functions continued their relationships with other stars; its rest or relative inertia took place in its interior by a weakening of labor after the great cataclysm.

What is the species which appears first, which may survive on soft ground where the material is only a muddy paste? These are the shells, it is precisely this ground that suits them and their multiplication will be enormous, and the species is divided into a plurality of classes, each class will multiply and divide into races of all shapes and sizes. The earth would for a long time be the kingdom of shells, with their outer shields protecting them against shocks and violence of the currents that will roll them from one side to the other on the planet, and they all find the same elements of substinence. With the shells appeared polyps, these beings half minerals and half plants, that grow in the mud and form their body rocks, benches, etc. The muddy nature of the soil also admits producing a kind of flabby plants, such as cacti, reeds, ferns, etc., the heat of the soil will grow even at very large sizes, and the entire circumference of the planet was filled.

The animals which then formed on the muddy ground were also an indecisive nature, and seemed rather more of the stone than of the animal kind. These kinds of beings were first created by the water, together with shells, and these kinds of creatures multiplied prodigiously. These animals, stones, of a simple nature, which have neither brains nor spinal cord or respiratory organs or vessels for the circulation of fluids, with only one opening for both mouth and anus; these animals, seemingly insignificant, have always been and still are the most numerous in nature, and it is to their influence that we owe the consolidation of minerals and solid crust surrounding the globe. These creatures, commonly called the family of polyps, was divided by naturalists into several classes, including corals. These little creatures seem most weak, most fragile; they played, however, the largest role in the formation of the globe, for it is the union of these little creatures , seemingly so futile that produced shoals and rocks against which the sea had to retreat. These small animals formed reefs which centuries later became islands and continents, and still arise today in the middle of the sea.

November 18, 2349 years before the common era, the 1680 comet, returning to its perihelion, passed a short distance from the Earth and extended its his tail, formed by water vapors expanded by the heat of the sun. The earth attracted a portion of the vapors, which condense and fell as rain, lasting forty days and flooding the entire surface of the globe. (This is recorded as the flood of Genesis.)

The analogy of the land or soil layers and the fossils discovered in America, as in Europe and Asia, to show the most perfect evidence that these continents were still one to the end of the fifth epoch of formation of our planet. We shall soon see the time and cause of separation and division in different parts of globe.

Before leaving the fifth epoch, consider how it gave rise to the greatest animal -- man, who would thenceforth inhabit the earth, and what sort of man it was. This animal had a body covered with fur for protection against accidents, temperature, attacks by small animals, insects, etc. These still exist, but in their lower forms: orangutans and monkeys. But in the fifth epoch, as the climate changed and the atmosphere was more purified, and birds and animals multiplied, man emerged. He emerged in forms more sophisticated, as it should be, in accordance with the law of progress of nature; he had a larger and more perfect form than an outdoor monkey, orangutan, or any other animal near to the human species. This animal has, like the others, undergone changes and improvements in its form, over the progress of centuries, so that the in this epoch the human race is found much more beautiful than when it appeared at the beginning of the same period.

The Bible...provides us with a chain of succession without interruption from Adam to Noah. Historians have wanted to argue that the duration of this period was precisely 1,656 years as indicated by the generative age of each patriarch, instead of taking successive ages of these patriarchs, whose addition amount to 8575 years. However, the latter figure would be more in line with the truth, because in 85 centuries one could conceive the growth of a large population that the text suggests. In only 16 centuries, the result of population there should be minimal and not well related to these extravagances of immorality. Accordingly, we respect the Bible regarding the historical and religious part, but as to the chronology and gaps in the secular historical part, we do not think God ever intended to prohibit research and rankings relating thereto.

While Noah his family rested in the ark, and the people disappeared in the cataclysm, the world was reduced to the shape and dimensions that it is even today. The details of these changes will be explained in the morning sixth day. But first, we examine one of the most serious results of this cataclysm. Upon the land, which still appeared as a single mass on the fifth day, and which had during previous disasters developed cracks more or less wide, experienced during the universal deluge complete separation at least on the surface. This violent separation moved to various distances the portions of the land which previously formed a single mass, which now appear in several forms, still attached to the same crust, but in isolated masses, according to their size: either continents or islands. This separation provides a complete change on the Earth's surface . The largest, longest and most important crevasse was from north to south, and though it was already clearly visible and wide at the dawn of the sixth day, it did not prevent the communication of people from one side to the other. This rift has been perhaps half a league wide, it divided the earth almost to half in the direction indicated. They could have foreseen that a separation was inevitable, that the greater mass would remain in place, because of its weight, and the least heavy mass would be moved a distance far enough to establish a proportional balance. In the great mass of land with the crack extending from north to south, there was a violent movement to the west, and that land moved still further west. This mass formed itself a great continent that we now call America. The mass of the continent, now the United States, which had formerly been attached to the main mass (or the ancient world from southern Africa to the north pole), was suddenly stopped in its movement. It was stopped by its own weight where it was necessary to balance the globe. At the same time, the water from the ocean, having found a rift between modern Spain and Africa, opened a path that the Greeks called the Straits of the Pillars of Hercules and filled the Mediterranean, Adriatic Sea, and Black Sea. The far east took its separation from that side in smaller fragments, which explains the large number of islands and archipelagos we see in the Pacific Ocean and the seas of China, Japan, etc. As the continent of Australia, it was visibly detached from Africa and Asia, to the point that formed the Indian Ocean, and in the work of its separation, it left along the path many of its own pieces, which are now islands and archipelagos such as Malaysia, etc. Northward, the most important separations were Iceland and Great Britain, which became detached. Ireland continued to remain close to Great Britain. Coastal cliffs on each side, in England as in France, are in relation to height and leveling on several points, and the quality of the land is the same, only the bottom in the UK, has more than coal beds, because this part of the world had a larger amount of forests.

DS said:

Karen S. said: As if Cosmos isn't difficult for creationists to stomach, they will soon have to face Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish, a 3-part series which premieres April 9, 2014.

The promo looks really good. Thanks for the link. The creationists will really be having a cow over this one (or maybe a fish). I guess the only good thing they can say about it is that it will air on PBS, so I guess they can hope that not many people watch it. Then again, anyone who does watch it will probably be struck by the enormous explanatory and predictive power of the modern theory of evolution. Apparently, Neil is going to explain why our bodies are the way they are due to evolution, something that everyone will be able to relate to.

Karen S, I second on a thanks for the link, didn’t even know about this upcoming tv series.

Tenncrain said: Of course, these days you don't have to watch something only during the limited time schedule that a network presents a show, and not only on that network per se.

Sigh. After fighting through several layers of noscript blocking, I finally got the fox video applet working, only to get an "only available in the U.S." message on it.

Sometimes I dream about lining up all the world's media executives in a row and giving them all a good punch to the kisser.

I watched Cosmos episode 2 last night with my sons on their computer. We do not have Noscript installed at home, and it worked pretty well. They want to watch episode 1 tonight, having clicked on the wrong video last night. We are in the U.S.

The video streams smoothly, but for some reason the commercials have short pauses. There is a message at the top of the Jeep commercials saying "Your content will resume in NN seconds," where NN down-counts to zero. Seeing the same Jeep clip over and over was indeed annoying, but it got shorter after the first playing, and that's the price we pay for free content. The Superhero commercial for some credit card was amusing even on the fourth showing.

There is a message at the web site saying that episode 1 expires in 45 days, episode 2 in 52 days:

http://www.cosmosontv.com/watch/195050051992

Question for you clever people: Suppose I want to watch a half-hour now and the second half-hour later? Is there a way to skip ahead? The progress bar at the bottom of the screen seems to have some breaks in it, but I could not see a way to jump to the second half-hour.

It's a great program! Very informative, very compelling, very true.

Carl Drews asaked: Is there a way to skip ahead? The progress bar at the bottom of the screen seems to have some breaks in it, but I could not see a way to jump to the second half-hour.

Umm...Carl Drews asked...

gnome de net said:

Carl Drews asaked: Is there a way to skip ahead? The progress bar at the bottom of the screen seems to have some breaks in it, but I could not see a way to jump to the second half-hour.

Hover your mouse pointer over the progress bar at ca. the half-way point and left-click. You can then fine-tune by trial and error.

At http://www.fox.com/full-episodes, I don't have any commercial interruptions, just occasional brief black-screen pauses. Maybe due to my Firefox add-ons?

AltairIV,

I'm sure somebody will be sneaking Your Inner Fish up on YouTube. PBS has already put clips of the show there, like this one about tails

Check alt.binaries.documentaries just after it airs (where you can find the Cosmos episodes as well).

A lot of creationists can't get past the 1st episode of Cosmos, especially the part concerning Bruno.

Episode 3 of Cosmos is called "When Knowledge Conquered Fear." One of the topics covered is comets, which were viewed as evil omens by the ancients. Looking forward to it!

“Cosmos” is the new TV series exploring space and time, but how does its evolutionary bias derail real scientific discussion? Janet will get some thoughts from Dr. Danny Faulkner, resident astronomer for Answers in Genesis.

Falkner: “I don’t recall seeing any interviews with people – that may yet come – but it’s based upon the narration from the host and then various types of little video clips of various things, cartoons and things like that.” Mefferd: “Boy, but when you have so many scientists who simply do not accept Darwinian evolution, it seems to me that that might be something to throw in there,” ”You know, the old, ‘some scientists say this, others disagree and think this,’ but that’s not even allowed.”

That whole “we need to discuss actual evidence” thing just never seems to come up, does it?

Karen S. said: If creationists want to discuss evidence they should come up with some.

And the explanation that "We just can't imagine how this could have happened without intelligent designers" doesn't count.

Karen S. said: And the explanation that "We just can't imagine how this could have happened without intelligent designers" doesn't count.

As long as those fake numbers aren't irrational, transcendental, imaginary, or even complex...

Karen S. said: And the explanation that "We just can't imagine how this could have happened without intelligent designers" doesn't count.

When they say that, or even “It could not happened without intelligent designers”, the appropriate response is, “How could it happen with intelligent designers?”

stevaroni said: On Thursday, Danny Faulkner, AIG's "resident astronomer" appeared on the Janet Mefferd show ( a talk radio show syndicated on the Christian format Salem Radio Network ). Unsurprisingly, he thinks he should have equal time to "discuss the controversy".

Mike Elzinga said: These ID/creationists are parasites trying to live off the work and reputations of legitimate scientists while blubbering and sobbing to their rubes for more money. All they ever do is sit in their plush, rube-funded offices and make up more crap to sell to their rubes.

Episode 3 of Cosmos is on this evening!

Mike Elzinga said:

stevaroni said: On Thursday, Danny Faulkner, AIG's "resident astronomer" appeared on the Janet Mefferd show ( a talk radio show syndicated on the Christian format Salem Radio Network ). Unsurprisingly, he thinks he should have equal time to "discuss the controversy".

This is so typical of ID/creationists. Ever since the 1970s, ID/creationists – every one of them – have wanted to climb on the backs of some high profile spokesmen for science in public debates; and that is exactly what they are whining for now. They NEVER do any work; they NEVER write research proposals and submit them for peer-reviewed funding. They NEVER have any research ideas; only apologetics papers that attempt to hijack and distort the work of real scientists who have actually done something. These ID/creationists are parasites trying to live off the work and reputations of legitimate scientists while blubbering and sobbing to their rubes for more money. All they ever do is sit in their plush, rube-funded offices and make up more crap to sell to their rubes. Look how Ham and his minions are exploiting the “debate” with Bill Nye.

The stance of Cosmos, Tyson emphasizes, is not anti-religion but anti-dogma: "Any time you have a doctrine where that is the truth that you assert, and that what you call the truth is unassailable, you've got doctrine, you've got dogma on your hands. And so Cosmos is…an offering of science, and a reminder that dogma does not advance science; it actually regresses it."

- The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into secular and religious, is rejected. - By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.

But Kenny said he loves science. Was he just lying? Say it isn't so!

Scott F said: There's a piece up on Mother Jones by Chris Mooney, from 3/14. The money quote:

The stance of Cosmos, Tyson emphasizes, is not anti-religion but anti-dogma: "Any time you have a doctrine where that is the truth that you assert, and that what you call the truth is unassailable, you've got doctrine, you've got dogma on your hands. And so Cosmos is…an offering of science, and a reminder that dogma does not advance science; it actually regresses it."

From the AIG "Statement of Faith" [emphasis added):

- The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into secular and religious, is rejected. - By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.

By their own definition, AIG (including Ken Ham) declares that all knowledge is "religious" knowledge. By their own definition, AIK is not doing "science".

Scott F said: There's a piece up on Mother Jones by Chris Mooney, from 3/14. The money quote:

The stance of Cosmos, Tyson emphasizes, is not anti-religion but anti-dogma: "Any time you have a doctrine where that is the truth that you assert, and that what you call the truth is unassailable, you've got doctrine, you've got dogma on your hands. And so Cosmos is…an offering of science, and a reminder that dogma does not advance science; it actually regresses it."

From the AIG "Statement of Faith" [emphasis added):

- The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into secular and religious, is rejected. - By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.

By their own definition, AIG (including Ken Ham) declares that all knowledge is "religious" knowledge. By their own definition, AIK is not doing "science".

QED said: Check alt.binaries.documentaries just after it airs (where you can find the Cosmos episodes as well).

stevaroni said: On Thursday, Danny Faulkner, AIG's "resident astronomer" appeared on the Janet Mefferd show ( a talk radio show syndicated on the Christian format Salem Radio Network ). Unsurprisingly, he thinks he should have equal time to "discuss the controversy". I'll make the story short. The synopsis:

“Cosmos” is the new TV series exploring space and time, but how does its evolutionary bias derail real scientific discussion? Janet will get some thoughts from Dr. Danny Faulkner, resident astronomer for Answers in Genesis.

The whining:

Falkner: “I don’t recall seeing any interviews with people – that may yet come – but it’s based upon the narration from the host and then various types of little video clips of various things, cartoons and things like that.” Mefferd: “Boy, but when you have so many scientists who simply do not accept Darwinian evolution, it seems to me that that might be something to throw in there,” ”You know, the old, ‘some scientists say this, others disagree and think this,’ but that’s not even allowed.”

That whole "we need to discuss actual evidence" thing just never seems to come up, does it?

SLC said: Well, if equal time is to be given to creationists nutcase, they should also give equal time to flat earthers and geocentrists.

SLC said: Well, if equal time is to be given to creationists nutcase, they should also give equal time to flat earthers and geocentrists.

TomS said:

SLC said: Well, if equal time is to be given to creationists nutcase, they should also give equal time to flat earthers and geocentrists.

I wouldn't be surprised that creationists (even those who are not flat earthers and geocentrists) would accept that. So there is even less time to talk about science, it is a small price to pay, if evolution is avoided. I'd suggest rather that equal time be given to Calvinball.

heh-heh...Halley:"Put up, or shut up."

The animations, I'm sad to say, are just bad. They detract mightily from the quality.

You can view Cosmos 3 here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10bel4_cosmos-carl-sagan-a-personal-voyage-episode-3_tech

There is onscreen text...possibly Martian..

In another post here NoScript was mentioned as if it was a hindrance to viewing the video. Simply allow Daily Motion and
KRXD.net scripting and you are good to go. If I had to choose only one security program it would be NoScript...

Shiisssh...that's Carl Sagan's Cosmos 3....big oops.

IMO part 3 wasn't as good as part 2...and I say that having a stonger background in physics than in biology. The material about Halley's role in publishing Newton's Principia was interesting, but I think some of that time could've been spent better discussing more sciencey stuff. Newton's Mercury problem, for instance, and what it teaches us about not positing entities just because our mechanistic explanations are incomplete.

Charley Horse said: Shiisssh...that's Carl Sagan's Cosmos 3....big oops.

fnxtr said: Full-contact, aussie rules Mornington Crescent.

TomS said:

SLC said: Well, if equal time is to be given to creationists nutcase, they should also give equal time to flat earthers and geocentrists.

I wouldn't be surprised that creationists (even those who are not flat earthers and geocentrists) would accept that. So there is even less time to talk about science, it is a small price to pay, if evolution is avoided. I'd suggest rather that equal time be given to Calvinball.

Or full-contact, Aussie-rules Mornington Crescent.

The keytops on my keyboard are wearing out ..... "Humphrey Lyttleton"

The American Scientific Affiliation, a group of conservative Christians working in the sciences, has set up a special forum just for commenting on (ripping) Cosmos. You have to be a member to leave comments. Most comments are negative. (Are you surprised? Neither am I.) Episode 2 taught that mutations are random and of course they had a fit. But what else do they want Tyson to say? That God pushes genes around, even causing genetic diseases? They are also kind of paranoid, seeing everything as a dig against religion.

Karen S. said: They are also kind of paranoid, seeing everything as a dig against religion.

Just Bob said:

Karen S. said: They are also kind of paranoid, seeing everything as a dig against religion.

They have constituted their religion so that almost everything related to reality and the natural workings of the universe IS a dig against it. A sort of self-imposed victimization.

Karen S. said: The American Scientific Affiliation, a group of conservative Christians working in the sciences, has set up a special forum just for commenting on (ripping) Cosmos. You have to be a member to leave comments. Most comments are negative. (Are you surprised? Neither am I.) Episode 2 taught that mutations are random and of course they had a fit. But what else do they want Tyson to say? That God pushes genes around, even causing genetic diseases? They are also kind of paranoid, seeing everything as a dig against religion.

Karen S. said: The American Scientific Affiliation, a group of conservative Christians working in the sciences, has set up a special forum just for commenting on (ripping) Cosmos. You have to be a member to leave comments. Most comments are negative. (Are you surprised? Neither am I.) Episode 2 taught that mutations are random and of course they had a fit. But what else do they want Tyson to say? That God pushes genes around, even causing genetic diseases? They are also kind of paranoid, seeing everything as a dig against religion.

What worries me George, is that the producers seem to be taking the tack that in order to promote the value of science, it is useful or necessary to denigrate "the opposite view" namely religion. I agree with your points about the lack of real definition of science, which is really the way to go. It is not only false and misleading to promote the warfare model, it is in my view counterproductive. This is not supposed to be a series about the virtues of atheism. The implied conflation of atheism and science is just plain wrong. Both factually and morally.

He doesn’t like the model of warfare between science and religion. Neither do I. We are planning to watch Episode 3 this evening.

From the Salon article: He [Tyson] also stated that there is an issue of teaching scripture-based science in schools and said there’s no history of scientists or “even atheists” harping on Sunday schools to have them teach scientific views.

Karen S. said:

He doesn’t like the model of warfare between science and religion. Neither do I. We are planning to watch Episode 3 this evening.

Except that they're not promoting the model of warfare between science and religion. Here's an article from Salon about the show. I am familiar with some of Sy Garte's views. He thinks that God sent the asteroid that killed off the non-avian dinos.

SLC said: Nuclear physicist David Heddle, who teaches at Christopher Newport Un. in Newport News, Va., also has expressed the view that god sent the asteroid for the purpose of eliminating the dinosaurs to open the niches for mammals and eventually intelligent apes.

Karen S. said:

He doesn’t like the model of warfare between science and religion. Neither do I. We are planning to watch Episode 3 this evening.

Except that they're not promoting the model of warfare between science and religion. Here's an article from Salon about the show. I am familiar with some of Sy Garte's views. He thinks that God sent the asteroid that killed off the non-avian dinos.

Nuclear physicist David Heddle, who teaches at Christopher Newport Un. in Newport News, Va., also has expressed the view that god sent the asteroid for the purpose of eliminating the dinosaurs to open the niches for mammals and eventually intelligent apes.

Karen S. said: But let's just butcher the rest.

Of course they don't like THIS model of warfare - when they're the imagined victims. Just disregard the years of buying congressmen to sneak religious fundamentalism into high school science. Just disregard the "religious" voting for these same congressmen and school board members. Disregard the gerbil squad whose mission is to poison education with known myth and holy allegory. Years go by, and the "religious" intentionally nibble away at the public's confidence in science. And the "religious" who don't do any of these things? They stand by, quiet enablers, uplifted when a new "academic freedom act" is introduced. Where is their indignation when their sons' and daughters' hopes for a decent future are at stake? When the economic future of the country is at stake? And then one day, a new Cosmos, a stand for real science is made, and each word is dissected with excruciating projection, to protest that the "religious" are "offended." The "religious" don't get a fair break. The "religious" must have not only the right, but the divine right, to claim science a fraud. Welcome to reality. Just woke up? A pity.

I did more than “harp on” a Sunday School to quit teaching non-scientific views. They refused to quit, so I left that church. In the new church, I definitely taught scientific views to the adult Sunday School class, along with a Christian PhD physicist and astronomer. Does that count? :-)

And to make it really fun, let’s have most of them die agonizing deaths in forest fires or by suffocation or starvation. Maybe some freezing would be nice, too.

Carl Drews quoted a post by S. Garte

What worries me George, is that the producers seem to be taking the tack that in order to promote the value of science, it is useful or necessary to denigrate "the opposite view" namely religion.

SLC said: Nuclear physicist David Heddle, who teaches at Christopher Newport Un. in Newport News, Va., also has expressed the view that god sent the asteroid for the purpose of eliminating the dinosaurs to open the niches for mammals and eventually intelligent apes.

After all, humanity didn’t even know the Chixalub event occurred until, what, the mid 60’s?

• I watched the show online with my 10-year-old and 14-year-old sons.
• The cartoons are fine. Lighten up, people! (Isn't there some rule to test all science presentations with a teenager?)
• Edmund Halley is my new science hero.
• Don't try to find hidden messages in the Bible! (Except maybe Revelation.) Don't make up alleged linguistic rules involving ordinal numbers and yom. The Gospel message is supposed to be simple.
• We loved hearing about the Royal Society's book about fish. I want a copy. I actually have Napoleon's Description de L'Egypte, which has some beautiful engravings of Nile fish from his 1799 expedition.
• "I have calculated it." -Isaac Newton, referring to the elliptical shape of planetary orbits. I was quite pleased to see this famous declaration included verbatim.
• We liked seeing history's close calls, where Principia Mathematica almost did not get written or published. (Something would have gotten published anyway.)
• What, no apple falling?
• The commercials for University of Phoenix had 20-second freezes every 2-3 seconds. All the other ads ran smoothly. Someone needs to do some load balancing on their servers.

Carl Drews said: Cosmos could have stated Newton's view: that God set the physical laws in place to govern His universe, and those laws wait for mankind to discover them. Those laws make our world a reliable and predictable place. I would have said something like that.

Karen S. said:

After all, humanity didn’t even know the Chixalub event occurred until, what, the mid 60’s?

Indeed, for some it's become almost an article of faith. I find it SO strange!

I am awestruck. On a lighter note, I used to enjoy Humphrey Lyttleton's insightful jazz programs on the BBC World Service in the 1980's.

Carl Drews said: could have stated Newton’s view: that God set the physical laws in place to govern His universe, and those laws wait for mankind to discover them. Those laws make our world a reliable and predictable place. I would have said something like that.

No, not faith, it’s just that some see a clear preponderance of evidence. Shocked quartz and layers rich in iridium are not something you have to believe in, they are things you can go and objectively measure, It’s just a matter of what inference you draw from the observation, and whether your model is justified in light of the evidence at hand.

Newton's great achievement was that he showed that the world was comprehensible and that humans were intelligent enough to understand it. An omnipotent god has nothing to fear from such a revelation. However, fear mongers who point to the night sky and cry that the appearance of a comet means that god wants you to repent your evil ways, those are the people who won't be able to fill the pews any more, once science has explained the phenomena.

Now people like Floyd will always find something that science cannot yet predict with enough accuracy and they will still scream about how the earthquake was a sign from god that homosexuality or something else they don't like caused the disaster. But anyone who has studied the history of science knows that it's better to go out and study nature and find out how it works, rather than hide under the desk and pray to some vengeful god to not send lightning to strike you dead. The only hope for the fear mongers is to denigrate science and pretend that we can't really understand anything. Once people throw off the shackles of ignorance and realize that we don't have to live in constant fear anymore, they lose all of their power.

Funny thought about creationism -

The thing is, if you accept Genesis as explanatory metaphor and rationalization of human experience with the universe, it's pretty good and interesting at doing that. That's why it persists in influencing people.

There is a perhaps accidental insight into the fact that sex is related to death. Sex is, in a profound sense, the cause of individual death as experienced by humans. Sexual reproduction generates greater uniqueness of offspring than mitosis. Even with passing around of plasmids. You can kill bacteria with ease, but does an individual bacterium that has cloned itself a few times ever die as an individual?

Genesis has a dream, or sometimes nightmare, quality, which is also found in other primal explanatory/rationalization mythology. As I've said before, the real meaning of the Noah story is trying to make sense of disasters. It's my educated guess that you don't start by randomly inventing a god and then saying that the god makes floods. You start with the experience of a human community devastated by flooding and then rationalization explains it as god's anger, and eventually a highly symbolic myth is generated.

On the other hand, if you try to make Genesis into a literal, factual document, it fails miserably.

It wasn't just that the world was comprehensible, it's also important to realize that the same laws that governed mundane, earthly motion and physics were also at work on the celestial bodies. Because common experience seemed to be so different from what we saw in the stars for hundreds of thousands of years, it was usually assumed that the stars didn't behave like things here on Earth, and weren't MADE of the same stuff as things here on Earth. This helped impart upon them the mystical and supernatural associations, with the idea that they were literally of a higher order of existence than the world of mankind.

People used to think that the stars were of a fundamentally different substance that obeyed fundamentally different laws, and that they represented the higher, Heavenly order in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. The Greeks imbued them with all the baggage of perfection according to their notions. Medieval Europeans took this kind of thinking and further saw in them glimpses of the abode of God and the Holy Host. The celestial "spheres" with their seeming permanence, beauty, and ordered motion were among the first of the Heavenly planes of existence; separate, holier, and purer than our world here on Earth.

It took the work of Newton and Halley to start building the bridge between the world in which we live and the sky above. Realizing that the stars moved the same way that things on Earth moved, and for the same reasons, allowed us to move past the literally un-Earthly view of the skies we'd had since time immemorial. There were a lot of stop-gap ideas along the way, already mentioned in the thread and some of which are still being held by some today. But overall the ideas that Newton and Halley pioneered have not just been vindicated, but taken further than either of them dared, and a unified set of physics tells us not just about the motion of the night sky but also about its very mundane materials and make-up.

The stars aren't shining lamps of Empyrean fire, they aren't composed of supernatural fluids being guided by supernatural powers. One of the most amazing realizations we've had is that the stars are made of the exact same stuff as everything else down here on Earth. They don't just move like we do, they are the things we are. Only their scale is different, not their metaphysical qualities or their substance. And this leads us to the same powerful revelation Carl Sagan treated us to in the original series, echoed by Tyson today: "We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

The knowledge that the stars are actually made of familiar components moving according to familiar laws doesn't make them less wondrous. If anything, the opposite is true. Not only for the inspiring quote above, but also because this knowledge has been the key to unlocking mysteries and revelations we use every day to better our condition. It has also led to new wonders that are still magnificent despite their principles being more accessible. We're stupefied when confronted with the scale of the stars, the idea of other worlds as complete and unique as our own existing in the trillions, the mysterious properties of neutron stars that compress a small mountain's worth of matter into a teaspoon, the existential problems posed by black holes, the incredible power of quasars that can spew incandescent particles out of its poles in jets longer than their host galaxy. Many of these new mysteries and surprises are only conceivable once we've de-mystified the laws and substances of the sky.

I used to be fascinated with the mystical ideas about the stars. But once I learned what scientists had won from the dark oceans of ignorance to bring into the light of human knowledge, I found the old ideas to be intensely limiting, dull, small, and less than useful. Gods, crystal spheres, and life-directing constellations can't compare against the real nature of the stars, as discovered by science.

The story that I heard that it was the stability of the universe against gravitational collapse that led Newton to the God hypothesis.

The problem of the orbit of Mercury could be solved by some patch-work, like a unknown planet, etc. But the collapse of the universe under its own gravity was a big deal, so I was told.

Carl Drews said: Cosmos 2014 episode 3: Knowledge (of comets) Removes Fear Bottom line: Does this episode promote the "warfare model" between science and religion? No! Random points:

• I watched the show online with my 10-year-old and 14-year-old sons.
• The cartoons are fine. Lighten up, people! (Isn't there some rule to test all science presentations with a teenager?)
• Edmund Halley is my new science hero.
• Don't try to find hidden messages in the Bible! (Except maybe Revelation.) Don't make up alleged linguistic rules involving ordinal numbers and yom. The Gospel message is supposed to be simple.
• We loved hearing about the Royal Society's book about fish. I want a copy. I actually have Napoleon's Description de L'Egypte, which has some beautiful engravings of Nile fish from his 1799 expedition.
• "I have calculated it." -Isaac Newton, referring to the elliptical shape of planetary orbits. I was quite pleased to see this famous declaration included verbatim.
• We liked seeing history's close calls, where Principia Mathematica almost did not get written or published. (Something would have gotten published anyway.)
• What, no apple falling?
• The commercials for University of Phoenix had 20-second freezes every 2-3 seconds. All the other ads ran smoothly. Someone needs to do some load balancing on their servers.

We kept watching and waiting for the "warfare" thing to show up. Is this segment it? No - no - no - then aha! Here it is. What followed was maybe 2 or 3 minutes of Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining how Newton's laws changed people's outlook on the natural world. He was walking in front of some old English mill. My first thought was, "Hey! Tyson is quoting straight out of Panda's Thumb! Without attributing us! No fair!" Tyson said something like the following: "Newton's scientific laws swept away the need for a clockmaker." In other words, they swept away the need for the god of Intelligent Design. When you attribute all unexplained phenomena to God, scientific investigation comes to a dead stop (NdGT was probably quoting Dave Luckett or DS there, I'm not sure). I can see why an ID advocate would not like that part. There was no promotion of the general warfare model that I could see; Karen S and Salon are correct. Tyson said that Isaac Newton was a "churchman." Cosmos could have stated Newton's view: that God set the physical laws in place to govern His universe, and those laws wait for mankind to discover them. Those laws make our world a reliable and predictable place. I would have said something like that. But this show is not Theistic Astronomy, it's Cosmos. I thought Cosmos 2014 episode 3 was great, and I look forward to Episode 4.

eric said: I agree with Karen and Carl (and disagree with S. Garte), saying episode 3 presents a "warfare model" is undeserved. They clearly talk about Newton's other religious interests. And the whole 'clockwork' conversation was not focused on the point that it leaves God out, it was focused on the point that this allows science to make remarkable predictions - it was a lead-in to the fact that Halley predicted the exact timining and course of his comet 50+ years in advance of its next traverse. THAT was the point - that Newton's laws give us that type of unprecedented insight into how nature works. If there was any 'warfare' presented in the episode, then it was between Newton and Hook. You'd have to be blinded by bias to see any other conflict as being the focus of that episode.

Carl Drews said: could have stated Newton’s view: that God set the physical laws in place to govern His universe, and those laws wait for mankind to discover them. Those laws make our world a reliable and predictable place. I would have said something like that.

I wouldn't have minded that one bit. As I said above, I think the episode could've been made better by using a few minutes to make these points: 1. Newton's laws failed to account for the orbit of Mercury. This greatly flummoxed Newton. 2. Newton, being a Godly man, thought God put the laws in place. This religious perspective also lead to believe that Mercury's deviation must be the result of divine action (angels pushing it around). 3. The problem of Mercury's orbit went unsolved for about 150 years. It had to wait for Einstein to discover general relativity, which correctly predicted Mercury's orbit. 4. The lesson we can take from Newton's angelic explanation is that "we don't know how this works" does not imply "God did it." Negative evidence for one explanation is not positive evidence for another, and gods-of-the-gaps arguments are no good in science. We could not expect Newton to come up with relativity, and it's not a failing on his part that he didn't. Modern scientists do not bang on him for being unable to explain Mercury's orbit. But it WAS a failing of his when he inferred - without any positive evidence of the divine - that the unknown causal explanation behind Mercury's deviation was divine action.

TomS said: The story that I heard that it was the stability of the universe against gravitational collapse that led Newton to the God hypothesis. The problem of the orbit of Mercury could be solved by some patch-work, like a unknown planet, etc. But the collapse of the universe under its own gravity was a big deal, so I was told.

Thank you. My memory was mistaken.

There's a creationist on Science League of America who actually seems to be saying that the stars are little holes in the roof of heaven. He hasn't actually gone that far explicitly, but he does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator. So I think he's getting pretty close.

david.starling.macmillan said: ...human beings were so hungry that they immediately hunted most of the dinosaurs to extinction.

scienceavenger said:

david.starling.macmillan said: ...human beings were so hungry that they immediately hunted most of the dinosaurs to extinction.

Uh huh. Hunted a T-Rex did they? With bronze-age weapons? Even larger and carnivorous Spinosaurus? 100 ton Argentinasaurus? That I'd like to see.

If Mercury's orbit was changed by divine action, it must have been Hermes that did it!!!

scienceavenger said:

david.starling.macmillan said: ...human beings were so hungry that they immediately hunted most of the dinosaurs to extinction.

Uh huh. Hunted a T-Rex did they? With bronze-age weapons? Even larger and carnivorous Spinosaurus? 100 ton Argentinasaurus? That I'd like to see.

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who actually seems to be saying that the stars are little holes in the roof of heaven. He hasn't actually gone that far explicitly, but he does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator. So I think he's getting pretty close.

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who actually seems to be saying that the stars are little holes in the roof of heaven. He hasn't actually gone that far explicitly, but he does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator. So I think he's getting pretty close.

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who actually seems to be saying that the stars are little holes in the roof of heaven. He hasn't actually gone that far explicitly, but he does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator. So I think he's getting pretty close.

harold said: Things like this must have been original once, but at this point, almost nothing is original in creationism.

Is that so because there is so little thought is given to it, that there is so little can be said, or the arguments are handed down from the only original thinkers before the science of the couple of centuries?

The next episode of Cosmos is called“Hiding in the Light”
and is about "The emergence of the scientific method. Light and enlightenment."

Science allows one to make predictions. So are there any predictions about what AiG, the DI, BioLogos or the ASA will fault? I predict that they will complain about MN excluding divine actions. And they will jump all over the enlightenment. (Still, they would not appreciate a doctor who attributes a child's seizures to demon possession)

TomS said: You people who believe that stars are Suns, I have one question: "How you know? Are you there?"

TomS said:

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who actually seems to be saying that the stars are little holes in the roof of heaven. He hasn't actually gone that far explicitly, but he does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator. So I think he's getting pretty close.

You people who believe that stars are Suns, I have one question: "How you know? Are you there?"

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said:

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who actually seems to be saying that the stars are little holes in the roof of heaven. He hasn't actually gone that far explicitly, but he does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator. So I think he's getting pretty close.

You people who believe that stars are Suns, I have one question: "How you know? Are you there?"

No, but I know some photons that were; and they bring direct knowledge without lying about it. I've tested their veracity in thousands of other situations and it has never failed.

TomS said:

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said:

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who actually seems to be saying that the stars are little holes in the roof of heaven. He hasn't actually gone that far explicitly, but he does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator. So I think he's getting pretty close.

You people who believe that stars are Suns, I have one question: "How you know? Are you there?"

No, but I know some photons that were; and they bring direct knowledge without lying about it. I've tested their veracity in thousands of other situations and it has never failed.

I was suggesting that the way of attempting to discount knowledge of the past (calling it "historical science" rather than "observational" - or whatever jargon they use) works as well (that is, not at all) to discount knowledge of distant events.

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said:

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said:

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who actually seems to be saying that the stars are little holes in the roof of heaven. He hasn't actually gone that far explicitly, but he does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator. So I think he's getting pretty close.

You people who believe that stars are Suns, I have one question: "How you know? Are you there?"

No, but I know some photons that were; and they bring direct knowledge without lying about it. I've tested their veracity in thousands of other situations and it has never failed.

I was suggesting that the way of attempting to discount knowledge of the past (calling it "historical science" rather than "observational" - or whatever jargon they use) works as well (that is, not at all) to discount knowledge of distant events.

And I was mocking Ken (Were you there?) Ham’s arbitrary reliance on human political intrigue, lying, and killing in order to write a “history book” as they wanted it to be read. Ham wasn’t there and neither were any of his “trusted sources.”

TomS said: And there is this. We are told that human standards are to apply with actions which we would call murder or robbery if a human did so. We are told that designs which, if a human did them, would be called "bad design". When telling us things which, if a human told us, would be called "lies" or "half-truths" or "not being fully candid", why are we to expect that now human standards are to apply?

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said: And there is this. We are told that human standards are to apply with actions which we would call murder or robbery if a human did so. We are told that designs which, if a human did them, would be called "bad design". When telling us things which, if a human told us, would be called "lies" or "half-truths" or "not being fully candid", why are we to expect that now human standards are to apply?

Deities are often used as rationalizations for bad behavior. If enough people are conned into believing what their religious leaders tell them, then it’s okay to behave like a psychopath if the leader asserts that the deity demands it.

Mike Elzinga said: No, but I know some photons that were; and they bring direct knowledge without lying about it. I've tested their veracity in thousands of other situations and it has never failed.

Mike Elzinga said: Deities are often used as rationalizations for bad behavior. If enough people are conned into believing what their religious leaders tell them, then it’s okay to behave like a psychopath if the leader asserts that the deity demands it.

Why so many bible movies in 2014? "It just has to be that God is moving. There's no other explanation for it," says Son of God's producer Mark Burnett.

Noah's stirred up the ire of some conservative Christians who suspect [screenwriters] Handel and Aranofsky of using a story about environmental catastrophe to push a liberal message about climate change and conservation. But Handel says, the biblical Noah is a tale essentially about stewardship.

Why so many bible movies in 2014? “It just has to be that God is moving. There’s no other explanation for it,” says Son of God’s producer Mark Burnett.

Yeah, right. And the success of the Thor movies? Why, it has to be that Odin is moving. There’s no other explanation for it. I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the various successes of all the super hero and mega disaster movies of late, all with blockbuster special effects.

There is also this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Not_Dead_%28film%29) movie, released recently.

The critical reaction has been at best luke-warm, but that will only stoke the Christian right's fears of atheist persecution. Atheists are so overwhelmingly powerful, you know. They've taken over the courts, the colleges, science, the Presidency, and even the Legislature. The Time of Tribulation is come! Prepare for the final struggle against the Deceiver and his minions!

Oh, and the picture on the NPR piece of Noah’s “boat” from the movie? Looks rather like a poorly designed, and even more poorly executed 4 story log house, lashed together.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Ship of the Imagination" is just a Tardis with a fancy makeover. :-)

Scott F said: Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Ship of the Imagination" is just a Tardis with a fancy makeover. :-)

EPISODE 4 IS ON TONIGHT!!!

Dave Luckett said: There is also this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Not_Dead_%28film%29) movie, released recently.

Karen S. said: EPISODE 4 IS ON TONIGHT!!!

Still don't like those cartoons. Sagan's Cosmos did it so much better with well-done live action sequences, e.g. the segment about Kepler. Avoiding phony English-with-an-accent dialogue was a smart move, too. Now we have cartoon characters WITH unrealistic dialogue.

But they did connect with a body blow to the 6,000-year-old-universe folks and the distant starlight problem with a brief but clever visual of the tiny area of our galaxy that is within the YEC limit.

Hmm... was Herschel pere voiced by Patrick Stewart? Sounds like him.

And yes, the animation blows goats.

So far seems like a pretty good series. Maybe they will do the history of geology, including how we know the age of the earth and things like continental drift. People will have a chance to learn real science and see that religion doesn't provide answers to scientific questions. Looks like a win win situation once again, just like the Noah movie where people could see both the physical impossibility of the story as well as the utter stupidity and moral depravity of such a god.

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator.

scienceavenger said:

david.starling.macmillan said: ...human beings were so hungry that they immediately hunted most of the dinosaurs to extinction.

Uh huh. Hunted a T-Rex did they? With bronze-age weapons? Even larger and carnivorous Spinosaurus? 100 ton Argentinasaurus? That I'd like to see.

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said: You people who believe that stars are Suns, I have one question: "How you know? Are you there?"

No, but I know some photons that were; and they bring direct knowledge without lying about it. I've tested their veracity in thousands of other situations and it has never failed.

david.starling.macmillan said:

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator.

I've heard creationists say that the cosmic microwave background is the "light" created on Day 1. The theory goes something like this: God created the earth, then said "let there be light" so that Earth could have a day-night cycle. The next few days passed, and then God decided to create the sun and stars and so forth, so he "stretched out the heavens" and filled them with stars and planets and galaxies...this also stretched out the original light across the universe as a perfect blackbody radiation spectrTm that happens to match the one predicted by the Big Bang theory. Convenient, no?

Scott F said:

david.starling.macmillan said:

John Harshman said: There's a creationist on Science League of America who does say that nothing in the universe is more than 10,000 light years from earth and that the stars shine not by fusion but by transmitting the light of the creator.

I've heard creationists say that the cosmic microwave background is the "light" created on Day 1. The theory goes something like this: God created the earth, then said "let there be light" so that Earth could have a day-night cycle. The next few days passed, and then God decided to create the sun and stars and so forth, so he "stretched out the heavens" and filled them with stars and planets and galaxies...this also stretched out the original light across the universe as a perfect blackbody radiation spectrum that happens to match the one predicted by the Big Bang theory. Convenient, no?

It's always amusing (and telling) how every Creation Science "discovery" is post-hoc handwaving. There's no predictive power.

Did Creation "Scientists" predict the microwave background radiation prior to its discovery? I'm betting that if they addressed the issue at all, they would have denied its potential existence.

I thought last night's episode (on light) was excellent. First 15 minutes were a bit slow, but after that there was lots of good content presented in a cool and interesting manner. I could almost feel Tyson's pain when he said "Newton, nooooo!" :)

david.starling.macmillan said: Back when I was a full-on YEC, I heard a person argue that the Milky Way was probably only 12,000 or so lightyears across and everything beyond it was just a reflection of some kind. That one really took the cake.

What are the stars? [...] They are bits of fire a few kilometers away.

According to the blurb at the end of the last episode, they will discuss the origin of life in the next episode. There is nothing that gets creationists upset more than that topic. I can't wait. Between this and the inner fish series they are really taking a beating. If only they would have used their intelligence to search for the truth instead of trying to design some scam.

TomS said:

david.starling.macmillan said: Back when I was a full-on YEC, I heard a person argue that the Milky Way was probably only 12,000 or so lightyears across and everything beyond it was just a reflection of some kind. That one really took the cake.

George Orwell's 1984 has take on that. O'Brien says (in Part III, chapter 3):

What are the stars? [...] They are bits of fire a few kilometers away.

He makes the argument similar to the "How do you know? Were you there?" And suggests the term, "collective solipsism".

The last episode was about the age of the earth and how we know that it is 4.5 billion years old. Sorry YECs, you are just plain wrong. Deal with it already.

DS said: If only they would have used their intelligence to search for the truth instead of trying to design some scam.

The last episode was about the age of the earth and how we know that it is 4.5 billion years old. Sorry YECs, you are just plain wrong. Deal with it already.