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Creationists Demand Equal Airtime With 'Cosmos'
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Travis Gettys reports that creationist Danny Falkner appeared Thursday on "The Janet Mefford Show" to complain that the Fox television series and its host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, had marginalized those with dissenting views on accepted scientific truths. "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," said Falkner of Answers In Genesis who also complained that Tyson showed life arose from simple organic compounds without mentioning that some believe that's not possible. "I was struck in the first episode where he talked about science and how, you know, all ideas are discussed, you know, everything is up for discussion – it's all on the table – and I thought to myself, 'No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem." To be fair, there aren't a ton of shows on TV specifically about creationism says William Hamby. "However, there are entire networks devoted to Christianity, and legions of preachers with all the airtime they need to denounce evolution. Oh, and there was that major movie from a few years back. And there's a giant tax-payer subsidized theme park in Kentucky. And the movie about Noah. And entire catalogs of creationist movies and textbooks you can own for the low low price of $13.92.""
TV is not a government entity, you want equal time, pay up. You have no rights of speech with a privately owned business. You want your time in the spotlight during prime time, go out and make a show that doesn't suck, then pay for its spot to air. Its quite simple. Quit with the 'entitlement' mentality already.
Yes, i do realize the FCC says you have to give SOME time away to public interest to get a broadcast license, but not equal time.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Equal time to creationists on Cosmos, equal time for actual knowledge (read: science) on all televangelist broadcasts. That sounds like a fair compromise.
not a debate you would have anywhere in europe, not even in Rome....
the vast majority in europe would just start crying in laughter at the idea of creationism, because it's just so incredibly infantile...
Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to follow Sagan's old show and lines of reasoning. This means the worst is yet to come for "special creationists".
If we demanded equal time in church gatherings. I mean fair is fair right. So you creationists wouldn't object to that? In that case I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem.
Because Cosmos is a science show.
It's fairly easy to show how the eye evolved. That's been debunked ages ago.
Actually the eye is a perfect proof that it WAS evolution rather than creation. Because our eye is perfected for seeing under water, a smart creator (and I guess God is supposedly not an idiot according to creationists) would have created an eye that's better suited to seeing on land rather than increasing the work overhead for the brain to compensate for the shortcomings of the eye we have.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Religion, magic, witchcraft, and other hocus pocus have no part in science.
If they want to sell the fiction that 'flu strains don't change and pests can't get resistant to pesticides ...
That is not what creationists believe. They accept that organisms can adapt to their environment. They just deny that these adaptions can lead to entirely new species.
Believing that something is not possible is not good enough grounds to warrant inclusion in anything. There are reasons why some things are not discussed on shows about science, and that is because they are either irrelevant to the subject at hand or proven to be untrue. I don't know where this idea of every point of view being equal has arisen from, but it's fucking terrible in its ignorance. The whole reason every moron and his puppet made of hair and excrement wants their claims discussed as an equal to scientific claims is because of science's epistemic integrity. If their ideas had epistemic integrity of their own, they wouldn't care about science as an authority.
"No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem."
Nice try, except scientists have considered creationism. For instance, Stephen Jay Gould has written screeds analyzing creationism scientifically. The issue isn't a lack of consideration, but rather that such scientists have thoroughly refuted creationism. I actually wouldn't mind a series scientifically analyzing creationism in principle, perhaps along the lines of some of Gould's work, but I somehow doubt that such a public flaying would satisfy the good folks at AiG.
Naw, the eye thing is passe for creationists. Their new tactic is claiming that "intelligence only comes from intelligence". It's from the book "Darwin's Doubt" from the Discovery Institute. Big best-seller on the god-botherer circuit.
Here's the way the argument goes (I'm not kidding): "A human brain is like a computer. And only intelligent entities can design computers. Thus...Intelligent Designer!" In other words, "there is too much information in DNA for it to have come from anywhere but the mind of Jehovah because screw Hindus".
Yep. That's it. Game over. Pwned. Until you suggest that it means the Intelligent Designer must have also come from a previous Intelligent Designer so we're looking at polytheism all the way down. Then, the argument rapidly devolves into, "The Christian Deity is the only possible explanation".
I'm telling you, I prefer the Young Earth creationists, who at least put their mythology right up front. They're honest about "God made it". These ID people are trying to subvert reason and science to get to the same place as the Young Earthers in the most dishonest way possible. All while pushing this notion of "teach the controversy", which is basically code for allowing people to proselytize for a particular religion in public schools.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's hard to get equal time considering the material.
"And now we will take some time to discussing the evidence that supports the theory of creation.
(long uncomfortable pause)
Well, that's done. Back to science!"
Providing equal airtime leads to people thinking that each side has equal weight and so that the real answer is a compromise between the two extremes, a form of false compromise[1]. This leads to thinning in effect that the anti science side is mostly right, if they play their rhetorical cards right. This is a problem even with non partisan moderation but for fox news.... will the climate scientist get anything like even treatment? Why should a climate scientist support an interview that will, at best, undermine him and portray an "armchair expert" as his equal by its very nature?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
It's not hate, it's recoil. Time and time again, Creationism seeks to undermine legitimate scientific thought in order to shout its psychobabble at us and expect us to call it 'legitimate science.' Those who recoil aren't doing it out of hate or disgust, but well-founded fear-- the fear of what will happen when religious ignorance dresses up as science for Halloween and people actually take it seriously. It's not just ignorant though; it's irresponsible, because it affects public policy. Texas representative Joe Barton SERIOUSLY said that the 'great flood' from the Bible was evidence of climate change not being influenced by human activity. These are the ideas that are truly terrifying because they poison people's minds and any responsible scientific mind would do everything it could to assist in debunking these ridiculous ideas. Again-- not hate, recoil-- recoil out of fear on behalf of the whole of society.
What about *equal* tax exemption status for Science organization that the Churches have been enjoying?
Yes, science is intolerant of stupidity. It has to be or it wouldn't work.
Science requires critical thinking, learning, knowledge (not to be confused with belief, a frequent problem among religious and stupid people). It is based on reason and facts in the form of data. It recognizes the limitations of that data and seeks to improve it through more study, research, and experiment and will quickly throw away old ideas when they are shown to be wrong.
Yes, it is discriminatory. Yes, it is intolerant. These are both characteristics of disciplined intellectual effort and minds. These characteristics have led to all the technological advances that the human race currently enjoys, and many of the miseries (including AGW).
I've given up on the name of most channels being accurate. None of them really show what they claim. Hell, even the guide channel isn't just a guide, it's a commercial with some guide information on it.
I go to Comedy Central for News, and Fox news for comedy. Syfy is B movies and wrestling, and Discovery/History/A&E have shows about guys who make duck calls, and wackadoodles talking about aliens. CSPAN is to see rich white politicians argue for their purchased opinions, if they bother to show up to work. Well, no other channel can you watch a mostly empty stage for hours on end. It's almost like reading Slashdot and expecting News for Nerds.
The only channel I ever expect to be as advertised is "Off", and I lose fewer IQ points watching it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
John
Noah?
Somebody call?
Whoompa, whoompa, whoompa
Noah!
Who is that?
It's the Lord, Noah
Right!
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
Yes yes yes this this THIS times a million!
We need to start taxing 'religious' organizations the same way we tax every other business -- because that's what they are: businesses. Have been for a long, long time now, and it's time everyone stopped sticking their heads in the sand and admitted that. "Oh but that money is to do charitable work!" some are going to say, but I call bullshit on that. Know what they do with that money? They spend it on politics, and on building extravagant churches! Enough's enough, time for them to pay up like everyone else, and time for them to get their religious noses out of politics.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
offering weekly moral instruction to children
Particularly laughable. In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine. Not appropriate 'moral instruction' for a modern era. Keep the fairy tales out of science programming, end of story.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Particularly laughable. In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine.
Ask True Believers about this, and they reply with variations on "Oh, that part of the bible does not count." Really.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
@plover...
In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it.
After all the bible tells them to do it!
... once all of the science organizations start running various charities, food shelves, hospitals, orphanages, offering weekly moral instruction to children ...
You mean like finding answers to health, nutrition, construction problems the way scientists, physicians and engineers do? Or like passing on modern ideas on philosophy and morality in stead of ancient and outdated scripture, the way academia does?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Being a scientific organization is one of the major listed justifications for tax exempt status - assuming the other criteria are met.
The part in bold there is kind of the point. Scientific organizations--actually educational organizations of all kinds--can indeed apply for non-profit status, but they have to prove they meet the standards. Churches are assumed to qualify a priori.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Funny that they have a fit if you dare even suggest taxing churches but didn't their own book say "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's"?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"Yes yes yes this this THIS times a million! "
No, no, no... billions and billions of times. (Yes, I know: Sagan never actually said that.)
Here's the problem with that, and it's such a HUGE amount of history that it shouldn't even need to be mentioned. But it seems that it does, so here goes:
History says very clearly that once you allow government to get involved with religion, or religion with government, pretty soon you have government-mandated religion, or religion-run government. And both of those are Very Bad. Religions have never -- ever, ever -- been good heads of government. And it's pretty obvious why government-mandated religion is just as bad.
That is why we have effective separation of Church and State in the US. But many people misunderstand it.
Contrary to what many people seem to think, the reason for that separation is not to "keep religion out" of everything. At all. It is intended to prevent any kind of official government sponsorhip of a particular religion. Our Founders were intimately familiar with religious persecution, and it was their intent to prevent it. But it was not their intent to suppress religion.
Example: a nearby city government had prayer before every meeting. The prayers were generally given by a Catholic priest, probably just because there was a big Catholic church just down the street. Some people objected, and it went all the way up to the State Supreme Court. This is what the court said (paraphrase):
"There is no law or clause in the Constitution preventing you from having prayer. However, you ARE prohibited from supporting any PARTICULAR religion. Offering Catholic prayer before every meeting is de facto government sponsorship of a particular religion."
The city's answer: now, any religion that wants to participate can get put on their list. They either rotate through the list or draw them at random... I'm not sure which. But the upshot is that they still have prayer before every meeting, but it isn't necessarily Catholic or even Christian. I remember once they had prayers from the local Baha'i faith.
Now, nobody has any reason to object and there are no problems. Even the atheists don't seem to have a problem with it.
In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine.
I get that you might have some difficulty accepting that its not to be taken literally, its a common disorder among techies, we have a difficult time accepting that not everything means exactly what it says sometimes since we tend to work in technical absolutes as much as possible ... but if you are so utterly stupid that you think it 'approves' of those things then I realize I'm wrong, you're not that stupid, you're that ignorant.
Let's just take a look at mass murder. I'm sure you remember the story about the walls of Jericho, right?
Then the Lord said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.["] ... Joshua commanded the army, "Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be devoted* to the Lord ... so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys... Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house... So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.
Maybe that doesn't fit the exact description of genocide, but it is GOD commanding mass murder.
This is my favorite sentence from that chapter:
All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.
See, the Creator of the Universe needs some cold hard cash, similar to today. You'd think he'd be even better than the fed at printing money being the all powerful ruler of everything, but alas, no.
Regarding the actual definition of genocide, this is him saying to commit genocide:
For the day has come to destroy all the Philistines and to remove all survivors who could help Tyre and Sidon.
Show me where, in anything that I just posted, that it says not to take it literally, because it looks literal to me. Or do you mean that your pastor told you not to take it literally?
The bible as a work of literature has its exemplary moments, and I would encourage everyone to read it, from start to finish. But as a book on morality it is severely lacking in that you can never tell what to take literally, and what to not take literally. I guess use your own judgement? Well, you don't need the bible to do that.
*The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them
Look where all this talking got us, baby.