Neil DeGrasse Tyson Explains His Christmas Tweet

140Mandak262Jamuna writes Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweeted on christmas day what appeared to begin as a tribute to Infant Jesus, but ended up celebrating Isaac Newton. Apparently this was retweeted some 77000 times, far above his average of 3.5K retweets and caused many to be angry. He doubled down on it by tweeting about people being offended by objective truths. Then wrote a fuller explanation.

Comments

Re:Only people offended

[Millennium]

My wife was offended, and she's not even Christian. I am, but I wasn't offended. It's almost like you can't paint people who think differently from you with a broad brush.

Re:Kind of disappointed in him.

[TheCarp]

a) You know that "hamstering" isn't a word, right?

Hamstering is indeed a word, ffs it was used in the previous two posts, this now being the third. It is now an established word.

Re:No group "owns" any day on the calendar.

[SuiteSisterMary]

That's the thing; a lot of 'christians' do, in fact, think it to be a literal birthday.

The fact that they're so incorrect about a basic tenant of their faith is telling.

Also, anybody who claims Christianity is pro-family obviously hasn't read Luke.

I've always wanted to make a movie that was Matthew, Mark, Luke and John getting together to reminisce about the good old days, then getting into arguments over the differences in their gospels. 'Wait, that's not how *I* remember it...'

Back to the Future

[williegeorgie]

This whole thing reminds of the Back to the Future movie. I was 10 or 11 or so when it came out and I distinctly remember seeing that movie with a kid raised in a fundamentalist baptist household. When Doc Brown said "so do you want to see the birth of Christ" and then set the time machine to Dec 25 0000 I laughed quite hard. The other guy asked me why I thought that was so funny and I spent about 45 minutes trying to explain it to him after the movie. He never got it and was somewhat offended that I found it so funny. After another couple of days discussing this and other things (like creation in 6 days etc.) I finally realized how deeply misinformed people become by being taught about literal interpretation of the bible. I was absolutely amazed at that understanding of the world and it was my first real exposure to this insanity. Up to that day I had always understood bible stories as being just stories (I was raised mildly Catholic but my family was really just going through the motions). It actually makes me very sad to think back to that experience.

Re:tonight at 11

[morcego]

to tell people something fascinating and true that really happened

Of course, he had to use the Julian Calendar to make it "true", since under the Gregorian Calendar, Newton was born in January of 1643....

Actually, that is both right and wrong. Newton was born on Christmas day. You can't change the frame of reference for just one, while leaving the other intact.

Re:No group "owns" any day on the calendar.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

TBH, it doesn't matter, though you are incorrect on more than a few points: Saturnalia ends a few days prior to Christmas. Traditionally, Christmas begins on December 25th and lasts until Epiphany (January 8) - well outside of most pagan calendars, which centered around or ended on the Winter Solstice (Dec. 21).

You fudged the dates a bit. "Dies Natalis Solis Invicti" (Birthday of the unconquered Sun) was celebrated on Dec 25th. It was replaced by Christmas during the reign of Constantine.

Re:Kind of disappointed in him.

[operagost]

According to your logic, we should also despise Newton because he was a follower of Jesus. At the very least, we should also despise Newton if anyone who ever favored him committed a crime.

Re:No group "owns" any day on the calendar.

[meglon]

If you're "life" is almost entirely constructed by committee to serve as a figurehead, as Jesus' was at the Council of Nicaea, there's a pretty good chance that most all of it is nothing more than bullshit. The Romans kept fantastic records, and were probably on that border between anally retentive and accountant level.... yet they have no records of any of the bullshit that makes up the new testament. The only remotely contemporary is a notation in one of Josephus' works, except that is widely considered to have been added in by someone else at a much later date (the information was not found in previous works by Josephus, and the writing style is radically different than Josephus). For such a massive event that the Bible portrays it to be, you'd think someone there would have written down something like: "Socialist hippie rises from the dead; papyrus at 11."

Martthew 24:10

[wcrowe]

I'll throw my two cents worth into the noise. I am an Orthodox Christian clergyman, and I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson's tweet is humorous, as well as objectively true. I am at a complete loss why anyone would be angered by it. People are so quick to hate these days, for no reason whatsoever. Truly we are in the end times.