Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and director of the Natural History Museum’s Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He is also the host of Fox Networks’ new science series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Last Sunday, Tyson appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources program and spoke with Brian Stelter. During the program, Tyson talked about “the hypocrisy of people dismissing scientific theory while simultaneously embracing the fruits of scientific discovery ‘that we so take for granted today.’”
Tyson said that our civilization “is built on the innovation of scientists and technologists and engineers who have shaped everything that we so take for granted today. So some of the science deniers or science haters, these are people who are telling that to you while they are on their mobile phone. They are saying, ‘I don’t like science. Oh, GPS just told us to go left. So it’s time for people to sit back and reassess what role science has actually played in our lives. And learn how to embrace that going forward, because without it, we will just regress back into the caves.”
Stelter asked Tyson if he felt that the news media should feel a responsibility to portray science correctly—especially with regard to controversial issues such as climate change. Tyson said he thought the news media was wrong to give equal time to the “flat-earthers.” He thinks the media “should stop trying to ‘balance’ the debate on scientific issues by hosting people who deny science.”
Tyson said, “The media has to sort of come out of this ethos that I think was in principle a good one, but it doesn’t really apply in science. The principle was, whatever story you give, you have to give the opposing view. And then you can be viewed as balanced.” He continued, “You don’t talk about the spherical Earth with NASA, and then say let’s give equal time to the flat Earthers. Plus, science is not there for you to cherry pick.”
Tyson added, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it. Alright? I guess you can decide whether or not to believe in it, but that doesn’t change the reality of an emergent scientific truth.”
The great American science divide (CNN)
Recently, Tyson spoke about the new version of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Tyson said that science and religion should not be painted as being “diametrically opposed to each other.” He said there were many scientists who believe in God. He added, “The issue there is not religion versus non-religion or religion versus science, the issue there is ideas that are different versus dogma.”
Tyson explained, “If you start using your scripture, your religious text as a source of your science, that’s where you run into problems, and there is no example of someone reading their scripture and saying ‘I have a prediction about the world that no one knows yet because this gave me insight.’” He continued, “Enlightened religious people know this, and don’t try to use the Bible as a textbook.”
Chris Mooney of Mother Jones said that Tyson has emphasized that the stance of the science series Cosmos is anti-dogma—not anti-religion. Tyson was quoted as saying, “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.”
Katie Valentine of ThinkProgress noted that Tyson had spoken previously “about the need for the public to accept scientific facts rather than the talking points of politicians.” According to Valentine, the astrophysicist said in 2011 that climate change deniers should “be mature enough to recognize something can be true even if you don’t like the consequences of it. That’s what it means to be a mature adult.” Valentine also reported that while appearing on CNN in February, Tyson said that “he hopes America doesn’t wait until climate change has drastically changed the Earth’s landscape to realize that our policies haven’t done enough to prepare us.”
Tyson said that he doesn’t know what to say “when politicians start analyzing the science. “Are we going to wait until the coastlines get redrawn as the glaciers melt off of Antarctica and Greenland?”
Good question, Mr. Tyson, good question.
SOURCES
Neil deGrasse Tyson tells CNN: Stop giving ‘equal time to the flat Earthers’ (Raw Story)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson To Science Deniers: ‘Science Is Not There For You To Cherry Pick’ (ThinkProgress)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: ‘Enlightened Religious People Don’t Use The Bible As A Textbook’ (Huffington Post)
Paul:
One easy way to look for all articles submitted by an author is to look at just below the title of the article and you will see the hyperlinked name of the poster. Click on that and you will be directed to a list of their articles.
Note: This only works for the Weekend Contributors for articles submitted in the last part of January, when we went to the new format.
For articles before that period you can look at the Search Text Box at the upper right of this website.
In the search box type in the following format and click Search (including the parenthesis)
“Submitted by Elaine Magliaro” or other contributor
Hope that helps
Darren – thanks for the info. However, I was hoping there was a way to check for say all the posts I had made on this particular blog. This one, in particular, probably has a couple of hundred posts and to go through all those looking for just the ones I wrote is a pain. I have already tried it. 🙂 I do appreciate how to find the contributors though. Thanks.
Nick,
At least you state Elaine has ethics….. You should strive for even situational ethics…. That’d be a start….. Remember civility rules…..
Everyone think serenity….. Peace out…
Elaine:
I have no problem with your sources, some of them are interesting. And offer a different point of view from my sources.
Many of your sources are wrong, or so say my sources.
Paul, Too many folks here, and elsewhere, think that if the source corroborates their world view, then it MUST be reliable. That is from both sides of the spectrum. You are absolutely correct that the burden of proof is on the provider of the source. Elaine has been on both sides of this issue. When she challenges a source, she puts the burden on the provider, and vice versa in this case. Situational ethics!
dagda.
I see you took my hero Nick to India.
innuendo is the Italian word for Preparation H, what is the Indian word?
“Reliable” in in the eye of the beholder.
annie – could not agree more. Except some sources are almost universally accepted as reliable. That does not include the ones that Elaine is using on this blog. 🙂
Elaine – the onus is on the poster to use reliable sources.
Byron,
If someone has a complaint about the sources I use, it should be about the information provided by those sources. The onus is upon the person who lodges a complaint to prove the information in those sources is incorrect. The same thing goes for my posts.
gbk:
Paul Schulte does have a point, you almost never post anything but a few sentences. And when you do post it is usually some sort of slight/insult.
As far as me being a swine, I have rarely ever seen any pearls from your keyboard. Which may be my fault but it is rather hard to figure out your meaning in a good bit of what you post.
I disagree with Skip and do understand your post about Paul but your perspective is quite a bit different than his and I am not sure why you think he is wrong in saying that many of Elaine’s post are partisan? Most are from progressive sources.
We all have our prejudices.
I am glad you see me as a swine, I love pork BBQ and have a screen saver which is the picture of a happy pig smoking a cigar and saying “Capitalist pig and proud of it.”
Byron – I would go so far as to say almost all of Elaine’s posts come from partisan sources. I would say all, but there may be one that is not. 🙂 However, I do not know how to collate her posts to find out. If there is a way, I would appreciate someone teaching me the technique, it would be very handy in finding my own comments without swimming upstream. 🙂
Yes, “Cosmos” Fans, Creationists Also Deny the Science of Comets
Last night on “Cosmos,” Neil deGrasse Tyson explained how comets work, and why they’re not bad omens. They are for creationists, though.
—By Chris Mooney
| Mon Mar. 24, 2014
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/neil-tyson-cosmos-comets-creationists
Excerpt:
Last night, Fox’s Cosmos series yet again waded into a bizarre politico-scientific controversy. This time, though, it wasn’t about evolution, or climate change, or even the Big Bang.
No. This time, it was about comets.
The Cosmos episode was about what comets are, and why they are not, as humanity believed until quite recently, evil omens. Before the age of science, explained host Neil deGrasse Tyson, “comets were portents of doom” across cultures. Tyson also pointed out that the word “disaster” itself means “bad star” in Greek. The show then dove into the history of science to tell the story of Edmund Halley, who realized how comets work and that the comet that now bears his name returns roughly every 75 years (most recently in 1986; next up, 2061). Halley also inspired Sir Isaac Newton to publish what may be the most important book ever in the history of science, the Principia Mathematica.
So why does the science of comets irk some creationists?
To understand that, you first need to understand that Young Earth creationists don’t just deny the science of evolution; they deny all science that suggests that either our planet or anything else in the universe is more than a few thousand years old. That includes comets, of course, many of which are not exactly young.
On the latest Cosmos, Tyson explained that some comets come from the Oort Cloud, an extremely distant region of icy bodies far beyond Pluto, but still in orbit around our sun. There are as many as 2 trillion of these frozen objects, and occasionally, one will get knocked off its course and travel on a very long journey into the inner part of the solar system. As an object nears the sun and heats up, the sublimation of ice and gases give it a tail, and if it is close enough to Earth, we see it as a comet. Other comets, meanwhile, come from the Kuiper Belt, the neighborhood of Pluto, which also contains a huge number of icy bodies.
But here’s the problem for creationists: According to NASA, “The objects in the Oort Cloud and in the Kuiper Belt are presumed to be remnants from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.” The Oort Cloud extends from about 5,000 to 100,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, according to NASA, where each AU is equal to the distance between Earth and the sun, or 93 million miles. That means that it also takes these comets very long periods of time to travel into the inner solar system, earning them the name of “long-period comets.”
Comets that are vastly older than creationists believe all of creation to be present a bit of a problem. Hence, if you visit the website of creationist Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis and search for “Oort Cloud,” you will find multiple articles providing a creationist take on the origins and nature of comets. In one of them you will find the assertion that there is “zero observational evidence that the Oort cloud exists,” followed later by this observation: “but if the solar system is only thousands of years old, as God’s Word clearly teaches, there is no problem.”
Elaine M. – when Tyson deals with the Uncaused Cause wake me up.
Elaine, I hope you don’t believe these articles of sophistry. Comets do not “irk” creationists. Young Earth Creationists love comets because their existence is supportive of a young universe. It is an established fact of science that these comets would not exist if they had been in orbit for billions of years. I suspect your science teacher never taught you that.
gbk wrote – “Paul Schulte, “fyi Your last sentence does not make sense, which is just sad.” What’s sad is that it was written, addressed to you, and you can’t extract any meaning from it. Maybe you should read it again.”
gbk – now I see your problem; your comprehension level is low. I understand everything Paul Schulte writes and he is right, you seldom if ever say anything of value but only attack and criticize, using uncivil methods and logical fallacies against those that do.
Keep it up!!!!!!!!!!
Paul Schulte,
“fyi Your last sentence does not make sense, which is just sad.”
What’s sad is that it was written, addressed to you, and you can’t extract any meaning from it. Maybe you should read it again.
Paul Schulte,
“You have not advanced a thought of your own in this blog but have attacked me continually.”
I have attacked you continually?
Really? Point out this constant attack presented by me.
As to thought, I don’t cast pearls before swine — Bron/Byron taught me the folly of this.
The bulk of your posts on this thread are complaints of attack, nothing more — you have offered little but childish demands of what you consider agreeable sources as a substitute for argument.
gbk – I taught Research Methods and one of the things I taught was biased sources. Your compatriots have been using biased sources. Stop using biased sources and I will stop complaining about them.
Paul Schulte,
“. . . one of the things I do not do on these blogs is be a grammar nazi, which you seem to be.”
Don’t you mean, “do not do on THIS blog,” as opposed to “do not do on these blogs”, or do you do “this” a lot on “those” blogs? There is a difference between “this” and “these.”
Yeah, I understand your angst of grammar, given its paucity, but thanks for taking the easy bait that I proffered.
I suspected it would be all you read of my post, which is why I put it up front and center, and in your righteous fervor you responded in kind — which was expected.
There are a few things I’ve learned in reading and commenting on this blog for six years — and that is one can discern the quality of a posters thought by the words they choose in expressing those thoughts.
By this I don’t mean philosophical bearings, nor political — I mean the ability of one to express their ideas in an accurate fashion, where the accuracy is contained within the posters writings.
Your false claims for civility are merely complaints that expose your own deficiencies of thought and expression of.
gbk – ahhh you made me laugh. You have not advanced a thought of your own in this blog but have attacked me continually. Because of this I think you are not the one to make any claims about me concerning civil or uncivil discourse.
BTW, it is poster’s not posters.
And your writing lacks clarity which is always the problem when you overwork your thesaurus. I do appreciate the effort, though and I am impressed by your ‘call to authority.’ However, I taught communications for years and I am aware of all the little tricks you are trying.
fyi Your last sentence does not make sense, which is just sad.
Paul Schulte,
“. . . I was trying retorting at a slightly less uncivil level . . .”
Retorting is not uncivil, though bad grammar is.
I see your most current post as a peculiar choice of words; words that reflect the baited antagonism in your earlier retorts after finding the shallow alliances of nick and dm2.
I don’t laugh at strangers, but dm2 apparently does; as do you. That you consider your responses here as “civil” tells me much.
gbk – one of the things I do not do on these blogs is be a grammar nazi, which you seem to be. I over look things because people are in a hurry and do not have the time to check their spelling and grammar.
I have no alliances with anyone except porkchop, who I meet on here. We are working on putting wheels on a Lay-z-Boy and riding it down a steep hill. Also doing the Gravity Ride in SF.
Now I know that some people have alliances, but I am not one of them.
dagda,
“. . . I just would like some variety in the politics behind the posts.”
You are free to read any source out there in the world so as to satiate your need of variety, and to post what you find here.
This blog is not a news service for your convenience.
———————————————————————————–
Paul Schulte,
“. . . I was being attacked by a variety of poster with varying degrees of uncivility [sic].”
This claim is laughable, especially considering your retorts in kind.
gbk – There was one blogger in particular who made me his target de jour. I finally had to go to Prof Turley to get some relief. I was trying retorting at a slightly less uncivil level, but that did not seem to work. You can laugh all you want, but don’t strain yourself.
gbk – I was being attacked by a variety of poster with varying degrees of uncivility.
Paul Schulte
“gbk – did you not get the memo on civility?”
Of course. There are, however, many variations to civility, and I’ve seen no standard set by you in this thread.
Your “civility” is barely contained disgust, which all can read for themselves.
Demanding that people post links that you “agree” with is nothing but a thin veneer of “civility,” one that you are oblivious to.
gbk – I do not demand that people post links I agree with, I just would like some variety in the politics behind the posts. Using the same liberal/progressive sites over and over shows a lack of broadened reading.
You are free to post whatever you like.
skip,
“As always gbk, your worthless comments show your distain for you fellow human beings under the pretense of intelligence; that of being a child.”
My comments only seem worthless due to your own pretensions. As I’ve noted to Bron, (now sometimes Byron), over the years, there is more common ground than either of you suspect; however your own bile as exhibited in this thread speaks volumes as to what you accuse me of.
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don’t hold up
Jun 17, 2002
By John Rennie
Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/
Excerpt:
When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution’s truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere–except in the public imagination.
Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as “intelligent design” to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a “wedge” for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.
Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.
To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common “scientific” arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty–above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution–or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter–they are not expressing reservations about its truth.
In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.'” The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.
All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists’ conclusions less certain.
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.
“Survival of the fittest” is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Gal¿pagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article “Natural Selection and Darwin’s Finches”; Scientific American, October 1991].
The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.
This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time–changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.
These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant’s studies of evolving beak shapes among Gal¿pagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms–such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization–can drive profound changes in populations over time.
The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not–and does not–find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.
Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.
It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.