'Cosmos' Controversy And Why It's Ridiculous

After years of absence and a subconsciously upset consumer audience, popular TV show Cosmos returned, hosted by astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson and produced by comedy writer Seth MacFarlane. For my younger crowd, the original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage ran for a stint of 13 episodes in 1980 when it was hosted by Carl Sagan and garnered worldwide acclaim as the most-watched series by PBS in history. It was broadcasted in 60 countries and allotted 500 million viewers. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

The show works to introduce science to the mainstream viewer crowd. While not very in-depth, it interests the general consumer in the sciences so that they may look further into the topics covered which include DNA, the Theory of Relativity, black holes, and of course-- evolution.

This venture into "unsavory" territory has sparked controversy by creationists who believe they are not getting their "equal airtime." Talking Points Memo published an article called "Creationists Complain Neil deGrasse Tyson's 'Cosmos' Isn't Giving Them Airtime" which can be found here.

Danny Faulkner, founder of Answers in Genesis, criticized the show by saying, "Creationists aren’t even on the radar screen for them, they wouldn’t even consider us plausible at all." He cited how "so many scientists... simply do not accept Darwinian evolution" as the prime reasoning why it should be covered, especially in the first episode where "Tyson talked about all views being up for discussion in the field of science" which obviously is not the case.

First of all, "so many scientists" are not as many as creationists are led to believe. In 2009, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that 97% of scientists "say humans and other living things have evolved over time.”

Furthermore, Tyson responded to this criticism by saying

"I think the media has to sort of come out of this ethos that I think was in principle a good one, but doesn't really apply in science. The ethos was, whatever story you give, you have to give the opposing view, and then you can be viewed as balanced... you don't talk about the spherical earth with NASA and then say let's give equal time to the flat-earthers."

Creationism and intelligent design are widely regarded as a pseudoscience and the idea that these theories should be given airtime in a science and fact-based television show is almost laughable.

While I do not watch Cosmos on a regular basis (since it is directed at those with almost no knowledge of science so it is not in-depth), I think it is a wonderful way for people to actually get interested in the sciences (How cool are the special effects?) and I hope that it does not cancelled due to a few vested interests.