I did not watch much of COSMOS when it was brought back on the air this year. I enjoyed the first COSMOS with Carl Sagan when I was a kid but there are so many science shows on the air now I didn’t feel the need to walk down nostalgia lane. So I missed all the excitement when people in the science community called “foul!” on Dr. Tyson’s show for changing the facts of history.
A new Website I just learned about says that Dr. Tyson lied to his audience to promote atheism. I’m not sure if the show denounced God or just made Christians out to look like they murder scientists, but Discover Magazine took exception to Dr. Tyson’s history lesson. The COSMOS team’s response to the story was filled with more historical inaccuracies.
So it seems that COSMOS was not all it was cracked up to be, although atheists must have been applauding the unprecedented attack on Christianity, which is the world’s dominant religion. Atheism (which I consider to be a religion) is about the smallest in the world. Most people believe in God. Only 41% of scientists don’t believe in God or some higher power. I wish that number were broken down by discipline. That same page says that only 17% of scientists identify themselves as “atheist”. I’m not sure what the other 24% are doing with their faith(lessness).
Somehow what seemed to spark this latest tirade against Dr. Tyson’s atheistic lies was an unrelated article about how skeptics have failed to disprove paranormal ideas. Pew says 23-30% of Americans believe in ghosts and psychics, which is a very sizable minority. Maybe that is why we have so many television shows about ghosts and psychics now.
Stepping back a bit, I think it’s wrong for any world-class scientist to intentionally mislead people. Dr. Tyson should be censured by whatever professional societies he is enrolled with for creating a black mark on science. Science is supposed to be apolitical. Sure, it has its politics (just look at the climate warming debate). But I think when you are handed a television show on a prime network and you use it to deliberately falsify the record you have crossed a line in the public trust.
And if this is the best that COSMOS can do to honor Carl Sagan’s legacy I think they should walk away from his name and plow their course into darkness and evil without dragging him along.