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{"id":51492,"date":"2014-03-11T14:36:14","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T21:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=51492"},"modified":"2014-12-29T02:10:38","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T09:10:38","slug":"tom-mcdonald-on-the-dishonesty-of-the-new-cosmos-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2014\/03\/tom-mcdonald-on-the-dishonesty-of-the-new-cosmos-series.html","title":{"rendered":"Tom McDonald on the Dishonesty of the New “Cosmos” series"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The man is right, of course<\/a>.\u00a0 Plus, he works in a Star Trek<\/em> ref, so Shea approves.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny.\u00a0 The original Cosmos<\/em> perpetuated the myth of the Christian destruction of the Library at Alexandria <\/a>because Sagan, as a historian, was a good science popularizer, but a lousy historian.\u00a0 Apparently the creators of the reboot had that pointed out to them.\u00a0 But in obedience to some unspoken convention in the pop sci subculture, they felt they needed *some* kind of \u201cWar on Science by Evil Catholics\u201d creation myth.\u00a0\u00a0So we get the new myth that Bruno (a purveyor of mystic woo woo of the highest order)\u00a0was a \u201cmartyr to science\u201d from the Evil Science-Hating Church of Science Hatred.<\/p>\n

And, by the way, why does no one ever stop to ask where Bruno got his copy of Lucretius.\u00a0 Hint:\u00a0 it was not from the public library.<\/p>\n

My hope is that having chanted its creation myth, the makers of Cosmos<\/em> will get on with actually talking good science instead of crap history.<\/p>\n

Oh.\u00a0 And let\u2019s dispose of a big fat red herring: The question at issue is not \u201cWere medievals and Renaissance types wrong to kill people they regarded as guilty of thoughtcrime?\u201d\u00a0 If it comes to that, so are a lot of moderns, including atheists (we will glide over the unfortunate Himalaya range of 20th century corpses killed for thoughtcrime that dwarfs the piddling body count of the medievald Renaissance world).\u00a0 If you want to talk about whether it was wrong to burn a quack like Bruno, I\u2019m happy to agree with you since I reject the death penalty.<\/p>\n

But:<\/p>\n

1) I\u2019m also enough of a grown up to realize you judge people by the standards of their time and culture, not by your provincial suburban conviction that you are the measure of all things; and<\/p>\n

2) Cosmos<\/em> is supposed to be a show about the history of science, not about medieval standards of justice.\u00a0 So the *only* questtion that should be at issue here is whether Bruno was persecuted *for science*.\u00a0 He was not.\u00a0 If they want to make a show about how mean and crude medievals were in comparison to our enlightened culture that rips babies limb from limb, turns veterans out to freeze to death in the snow, incinerates entire cities, and racks up a body count in excess of 100 million human sacrifices to atheistic communism, they certainly can.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not what Cosmos<\/em> is supposed to be.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"