Bill Nye, the harmless children’s edu-tainer known as “The Science Guy,” managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.
As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.
But don’t tell that to the good people of Waco, who were “visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence,” according to the Waco Tribune.
Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College’s Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.
But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up 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.”
The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.
At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled “We believe in God!” and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they’d always suspected.
This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarrassment.
Great, now we have another crop of uneducated hillbillies to deal with. I suggest that will call them the 'mooners' If they can't believe that the moon reflects light then they can never be convinced of any other scientific 'fact' you tell them.
Why is it that the stupid story of 'Noah Ark' is totally taken without question by these people just because it is written in a book of Bronze Age fairy tales?
Can't they see the sheer impossibility of loading up all those species in a relatively small boat and surviving at sea for forty days? They weren't there to verify the truth so why believe that balloon juice in the first place?
Why are the reflective proberties of the moon even an issue for these chuckleheads? Are they afraid that if they give into one proven scientific facts (like evolution) then the whole stack of cards they have build their belief system upon will suddenly crash to the ground?
Is the word of nine men who have stepped on the moon and reported that the surface does not give off light just another conspiracy? The level of ignorance here is astounding.
Let's not even get into the topic of evolution. How does one explain the fact that there were no dinosaurs mentioned in the bible? Was God holding that piece of information back so that the movie 'Jurassic Park' would be a more interesting?
I feel most sorry for the students who are denied a proper understanding of their world because such fairy tales are taught as historical fact. How many kids will never have developed the critical observation skills they will need as an adult?
We can see the kind of people these children grow up to be. They are the ones being manipulated by the political right for political gain. They are not interested in learning about both sides of the issue because they can't believe for a second that the god-fearing politician talking to them could ever be wrong. It says so in the bible. This is no longer the superstitious Middle Ages, people. I just wish you would pull yourself into the 22nd Century.
Is is all just so stupid.
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11 comments:
that's the really sad thing; that their kids will grow up to believe the same shite. Amazing that people still hold to such ignorant views.
as for the ark, there is no way 40 days would've gone by without somebody eating somebody else. just sayin.'
That is the exact thing that I always say - somehow the carnivores would have gotten onto the herbivore floor and a massacre would have happened. And what was the criteria for selecting which two animals got on this cruise? First come first go or could only the prettiest pair make thecut. Was there a lottery system of some kind? How pissed would you be if you were a lion and other lions would be chosen over you? It's all just so stupid.
Waco? Wacko!
Apparently these people won't even listen to actual science if it conflicts with anything they think they believe! Unreal. And sad.
The reason they objected has nothing to do with the moon, most likely, and everything to do with the fact that Nye cited Genesis, then proved it wrong.
If tolerated, this would be a slippery slope to the truth and THAT is what the problem was.
If he had just mentioned the moon doesn't emit light and then moved on, I doubt anyone would have cared.
I'm not defending them, just making a psychological hypothesis here.
I was stunned when i first read this, i have never heard of believing the moon made it's on light in this or the last century or two, this is crap from the dark ages.
I think i saw a science show once that said the Earth's atmosphere couldn't rain for 40 days all over the planet and there couldn't be a flood of the whole planet because of the way water acts etc etc.
Just seems there are so many more stupid people in the world now.
Both Bill Nye and the Wackos are assuming every word in the Bible must be literal. The moon is just called a "lesser light". It doesn't say it is a burning light or how it works as a light.
It also says man was made in God's image. It doesn't say what kind of image so people make up their own mind as to what that means. Solomon said, "There is nothing new under the sun." So my cousin believes that in ancient times there were airplanes and atom bombs. I think that is a crazy interpretation. Why oh why does the Bible make people think irrationaly?
Jeez, don't tell them that the earth revolves around the sun either. The Bible says otherwise, which was the basis for the persecution of Galileo.
I suspect Greg Christopher is correct. Waco is somewhere near the buckle of the Bible Belt. When you're telling those people something you really need to be a little more sensitive to their feelings. It's not pandering, it's just common sense. If you want them to listen to what you have to say, don't begin by telling them their cherished beliefs are untrue.
For reals? Jesus wept.
Even in a place like Waco, it hardly seems fair to fault Bill Nye for not assuming that there would be die-hard Biblical literalists in the audience of his science lectures at a local college. If some church asked him to give a science demo to the kids, that would be one thing. This seems a tad different. I'm not sure what the offended people were expecting here.
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