The Emmy-winning scientist angered a few audience members when he criticized literal interpretation of the biblical verse Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”
He pointed out that the sun, the “greater light,” is but one of countless stars and that the “lesser light” is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light.
A number of audience members left the room at that point, visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.
“We believe in a God!” exclaimed one woman as she left the room with three young children. – ‘The Science Guy’ is entertaining and provocative at MCC lecture
So do I, lady, but that doesn’t mean I have to have my head so far up my posterior that I take a poetic description of creation written by humans and translated a bazillion times by humans as a literal representation of the facts of nature.
Geez, why does it have to be one or the other with everyone these days? Can’t God be big enough to come up with a more complex universe than *poof!* “there it is!”? Or is God nothing more than a magician with a really big hat?
[ via Stupid Evil Bastard ]
i often wonder the same thing. it seems these days you have to be on one side or the other, science or religion. in my mind, they can co-exist.
I figure that some people never really bought into the whole “omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent” part — their God is only a little bigger than they are. How does the finite comprehend the infinite anyway?
They are just scared. Honestly, I don’t think much of faith that can’t tolerate being disagreed with. That’s not faith, that’s an opinion.
You mean people who talk to an invisible man in the sky don’t really comprehend scientific fact? Amazing! {ducking}
Seriously, why is it that some folks can’t allow for the fact that people who lived at the time the Bible was written probably didn’t have the resources to make more scientific observations about their world, without it affecting their faith?
This “moon being a reflection of light” thing is painfully obvious, yet that mother can be so offended that she has to “protect” her children by leaving? Still more proof of how doomed we are as a society…. (Or put more rudely, “in the animal kingdom, the stupid ones die.”)
Seriously. This taking sides thing has just gone too far. But what gets me is that people who had obviously taken a side got annoyed when they went to see Bill Nye the Science Guy. Um, duh?
It’s nearly impossible to have intelligent discourse with people who are threatened by any hint of science, fact or reality. They just don’t want to hear it; it is terrifying to them because it disrupts their view of the universe.