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I've watched about four episodes, all on "on demand." I've thoroughly enjoyed what I've seen but I also agree with you. However, aside from the "common man," they were also trying to appeal to children, and people who might not be very interested in science. It was a difficult task that, so far, I think they've don't a pretty good job with. We'll see as I try to make my way through all of the episodes.
Was the first episode of 'Cosmos' focused too much on dismissing 'young earth creation' ...or just laying out the facts? I did think they spent way too much time on Giordano Bruno (who I hadn't heard of) and wondered if that was a dig at religion and young earth creationists. I would have preferred if they had discussed Chinese & other non Christian beliefs about the cosmos (heliocentric, geocentric, flat earth...) but they stayed with Christian persecution and torture. I did like the calendar year ending - if the Big Bang was January 1st and we are now at December 31st then man didn't appear until the last minute of the last day. I don't know how anyone can watch Cosmos and still believe in a 6,000 year old Earth - this isn't shoddy get-ratings 'Ancient Aliens' speculation.
You do realize Giordano Bruno a member of a monastic order was burned alive at the stake for his belief that GOD created many worlds with life on them. He felt that Man should not be so presumptious to believe that GOD only created one Earth. You should also be aware there are a few Americans who think Neil DeGrasse-Tyson bears the mark of Cain. So anything he says is Satan's work.
I guarantee you anyone who still thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth (25% according to the study) is not watching Cosmos. One can only imagine they are the same people who can't name the current Vice President or which country lies on the southern border of the United States. They are hopelessly stupid, or willfully ignorant, or both.
The great science correspondant for the BBC James Burke once speculated what would it look like if the Sun revolved around the Earth instead of the Earth rotating as it revolves around the Sun. Burke's answer was they would at least in the gross details look the same. It is only when you get the means to look at some of the details you then can throw one hypothesis out and adopt a very different World view.
The Ancient Greeks of the Ionian Period largely had it right and the simple tests, observations and cleaver use of logic and geometry got them there and every student of science should work through how they did it. Somehow it was all lost but several thousand years later we go it back and more. Burke was saying that people back in 1300 who accepted the Church or Arsistole's Canon and the Ptolomaic Cosmos were not stupid or ignorant their World view made sense to them and didn't let them think otherwise.
I recommend James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed" produced by the BBC from 1985. It will give a good idea of how we got our Modern Western frame of mind and do some of the strang things we do without a second though. It also shows how very different our World would be if one or two major changes in Western thought had not happened. What if Roger Bacon, Rene Descartes or Charles Darwin had never lived.
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