Creationists are mad at Seth MacFarlane’s Cosmos reboot for not giving any airtime to their God-centric theory of the universe. Despite the fact that an estimated 99.99999 percent of scientists—including Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson—absolutely don’t believe in creationism or think it at all possible, groups like Answers In Genesis are claiming that their beliefs should be included. According to Answers’ Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, the show promotes “blind faith in evolution… in an effort to create interest in science.” (Of course, that’s a rather unfortunate choice of words, considering Answers’ actual faith-based rhetoric, as well as science’s centuries-long history of hypotheses, theorems, and burdens of proof.)
In Cosmos’ defense—not that it needs one—the show does actually address the issue of religion in a smart, realistic way. As The Wire notes, the show “doesn't deny the compatibility of faith, or the notion of God, with the scientific method… Instead, Cosmos posits that belief, any belief, trumps an individual or a society's ability to question, to accept and evaluate different ideas. Historically, those institutions limiting scientific advancement have included organized religion.” Indeed, in the series’ first episode, Tyson told the story of Giordano Bruno, a 16th-century cosmologist who believed the theory that God created the earth in seven days was too limiting. Rather, he believed that God was so great that he could have potentially created all space, not just the planets and stars we can see and touch.
