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Friday, March 14th, 2014

Astrophysics Should Threaten Fundies More Than Biology

Author:     AMANDA MARCOTTE
Source:     The Raw Story
Publication Date:     Thursday, March 13, 2014 15:57 EDT
 Link: Astrophysics Should Threaten Fundies More Than Biology
Stephan:   Once in debating a creationist at a university I asked him, "What is wrong with the speed of light?" He answered, "Nothing." Then how, I asked, "can we be seeing light come from millions of light years ago?" Astronomy and astrophysics are far more dangerous to Creationism and Biblical inerrancy than evolution. This apparently was not obvious to an Oklahoma television station, as this report describes, which ran the new Cosmos and edited out the evolution reference. This story also demonstrates how powerfully the Theocratic Right censors media over science in Red value states in a conjoining of the Willful Ignorance and the Great Schism Trends.

It’s hard to believe it’s an accident, I’ll say that much. The Fox affiliate-not Fox News, but just Fox-in Oklahoma City cut out the last 15 seconds of the airing of the new version of Cosmos featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, which just happened to be when he mentioned that human beings evolved just recently in relation to the universe.

You can click the link to see the original clip. If this was intentional and not a mistake, so many questions arise, starting with, ‘Well, how will they deal with the next episode?” You know, the one he was talking about that’s coming up next, where the history of human evolution promises to be dealt with at length? Or why was this particular 15 seconds more offensive to fundamentalist sensibilities than the entire segment leading up to it, which is about the age of the universe, which is just as lethal a scientific theory to the biblical understanding of humanity as the theory of evolution is.

Not that this contradiction suggests anything, really, about whether this was an accident or deliberate. One of the things I find most peculiar about the creationist movement is they focus so much on attacking biologists when, if […]

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