{"id":2116,"date":"2014-03-11T16:45:51","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T22:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?p=2116"},"modified":"2014-03-13T08:29:02","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T14:29:02","slug":"a-pagan-watches-cosmos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/03\/a-pagan-watches-cosmos.html","title":{"rendered":"A Pagan Watches Cosmos"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><figure id=\"attachment_2118\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2118\" style=\"width: 252px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2014\/03\/505px-Neil_deGrasse_Tyson_at_Howard_University_September_28_2010.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2118\" title=\"505px-Neil_deGrasse_Tyson_at_Howard_University_September_28,_2010\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2014\/03\/505px-Neil_deGrasse_Tyson_at_Howard_University_September_28_2010-252x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"252\" height=\"300\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2118\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Neil deGrasse Tyson \u2013 photo by Bruce F Press,<a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Neil_deGrasse_Tyson_at_Howard_University_September_28,_2010.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"> via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>I watched the new <em>Cosmos <\/em>science TV show on Sunday night.\u00a0 It\u2019s an update of the 1980 13-episode series featuring Carl Sagan.\u00a0 Like the original, it\u2019s designed to make big scientific concepts interesting and accessible to ordinary people.\u00a0 Here are some of my random impressions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I can\u2019t speak to his accomplishments as an astronomer, but as the public face of cosmology, Neil deGrasse Tyson is a worthy successor to his mentor, the great Carl Sagan, who died in 1996.<\/li>\n<li>Sagan\u2019s fingerprints were all over the show, including his beautiful statement \u201cwe are made of starstuff.\u201d\u00a0 Tyson\u2019s story about meeting him when Tyson was 17 illustrated how Sagan wasn\u2019t just a good scientist, he was a good person.<\/li>\n<li>The original series ran on PBS.\u00a0 This is on Fox and will be repeated on Mondays on National Geographic.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t pick up any of Fox News\u2019 anti-science bias and the producers say the network has been easy to work with.<\/li>\n<li>The visual effects were amazing and beautiful.\u00a0 But I found the \u201cspaceship of the imagination\u201d to be a distraction and would have preferred it to remain imaginary.<\/li>\n<li>The zooming out of \u201caddress lines\u201d from planet to solar system to galaxy to local group to universe to multiverse really drove home how unimaginably large the cosmos is, and how small we are.\u00a0 I already knew this, but seeing it made it much more real.<\/li>\n<li>So was the \u201ccosmic year\u201d illustrating just how old the universe is and just how recently humans came into existence.<\/li>\n<li>While I\u2019m happy they talked about Giordano Bruno, I don\u2019t think giving him a whole segment was a good use of air time.\u00a0 Bruno was a martyr for religious tolerance and possibly for pantheism \u2013 he was not a scientist and was not a martyr for science.<\/li>\n<li>Calling Venus (average temperature over 800\u00b0 F) \u201ca kind of hell\u201d was a poor choice of words.<\/li>\n<li>None of my complaints will matter one bit if people \u2013 especially kids \u2013 actually watch the show.\u00a0 American scientific literacy and respect for the results of the scientific method is abysmal.\u00a0 Simply presenting information in an intellectual context isn\u2019t enough \u2013 we need a compelling story.\u00a0 <em>Cosmos<\/em> may be the story we need.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2014\/03\/Cosmos2014_620.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2120\" title=\"Cosmos2014_620\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2014\/03\/Cosmos2014_620-300x193.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"193\"><\/a>As a Pagan who seeks to form and strengthen a reverent relationship with Nature, I love science.\u00a0 Science is how we learn the facts of Nature.\u00a0 Science is how we test and refine our theories \u2013 and how sometimes, we throw them out because the evidence contradicts them.\u00a0 Science \u2013 and its mathematical cousin, statistics \u2013 is how we learn to separate cause from correlation from coincidence.<\/p>\n<p>For all my love of mysticism, spirituality, and the Otherworld, the vast majority of my life is spent here, in this world.\u00a0 I want to know as much about this world \u2013 about the cosmos \u2013 as I can.\u00a0 I respect the findings of science, and it disturbs me that far too many people <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/02\/lessons-from-the-nye-ham-debate.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">use their religion as an excuse<\/a> to discount scientific discoveries they find uncomfortable.<\/p>\n<p>As I was watching the show, I heard the voice of my naturalistic friends in the back of my head.\u00a0 They said \u201cthe universe is so vast and so old you only think you can comprehend it.\u00a0 It is beautiful and terrible, creative and destructive, and we who are so tiny and weak and brief are a part of it all.\u00a0 Why do you need anything <em>more<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I need <em>more<\/em> because I\u2019ve experienced <em>more<\/em>.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2014\/02\/why-i-am-a-devotional-polytheist.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">I\u2019ve experienced the Gods<\/a>, ancestors and spirits.\u00a0 I\u2019ve experienced magic.\u00a0 I\u2019ve experienced Unity.\u00a0 I can\u2019t ignore those experiences or rationalize them away and I don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n<p>One of the concepts that really drove home the size of the Universe is the cosmic event horizon.\u00a0 As Neil deGrasse Tyson explained, there are parts of the Universe we can\u2019t observe (not with instruments and certainly not with our eyes) because they\u2019re so far away light from them hasn\u2019t reached Earth yet \u2013 even though the Universe is 13.8 billion years old.<\/p>\n<p>Think about that for a minute.\u00a0 If we had a telescope with infinite magnification, we could focus it on the edge of our solar system, or the edge of our galaxy, or on some galaxy far far away.\u00a0 We could keep focusing on objects farther and farther out, but eventually all would go black \u2013 not because there was a boundary or because there was nothing there, but because light from those objects hadn\u2019t had time to reach us yet.<\/p>\n<p>There are very real objects that science can\u2019t observe or measure.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, there are very real things in our lives that science can\u2019t observe or measure.\u00a0 Science can tell us what we are, but it can\u2019t tell us who we are.\u00a0 Science can explain what happens to our brain chemistry when we fall in love, but it can\u2019t explain the experience of being in love.\u00a0 Science can tell us how we live, but it can\u2019t tell us how we should live or what our lives mean.<\/p>\n<p>Science is a wonderful servant, but it is a soulless master.<\/p>\n<p>The cosmos is amazing and it fills me with wonder and awe. The new <em>Cosmos<\/em> is beautiful and fascinating and I hope the whole country watches it. We need a greater appreciation for science and a greater respect for the findings of science.<\/p>\n<p>But I remain a polytheist and a pantheist, a Druid and a priest.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new <em>Cosmos<\/em> is beautiful and fascinating and I hope the whole country watches it. We need a greater appreciation for science and a greater respect for the findings of science. But I remain a polytheist and a pantheist, a Druid and a priest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":2120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[342,340,343,64,341,4,5],"class_list":["post-2116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-carl-sagan","tag-cosmos","tag-giordano-bruno","tag-nature-2","tag-neil-degrasse-tyson","tag-pagan","tag-paganism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Pagan Watches Cosmos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The new Cosmos is beautiful and fascinating and I hope the whole country watches it. We need a greater appreciation for science and a greater respect for the findings of science. 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