Neil deGrasse Tyson's "pronouncements" on religion...

[Hop David]

3. Here's a Tyson pronouncement

"When you start basking in the glory of God ... you're kind of no good any more]"

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He's saying this of Isaac Newton of all people.

Supposedly Newton could have easily done n-body perturbation theory in an afternoon. It would have been crumbs for Newton, after all -- he invented calculus in two months! Why didn't he? Because he was content with the explanation that God intervened and kept the solar system stable.

A lot wrong with Tyson's story.

1) Newton did make substantial efforts to model n-body systems. So Tyson's claim that it would have been easy for him is demonstrably false from the get go.

2) Other great mathematicians tried. After Newton made his attempt Euler took a crack at it. Then Lagrange. More than a hundred years later Laplace built a satisfactory model. But he built on the efforts of Newton, Euler and Lagrange.

3) Newton did not singlehandedly invent calculus in two months. Fermat, Cavalieri, Barrow, Descartes and others had laid the foundations in the generation before Newton.

The history of Hamid al Ghazali is another fiction Tyson delivers to support a rant against religion.

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Tyson will chide Dawkins for being too caustic. He will distance himself from the more vocal atheists and say he doesn't care what people believe.

Then he turns around and invents histories to bash religion.

Dawkins may be brash but his stuff is accurate (so far as I know). On the other hand Tyson bears false witness in a warm, friendly voice.