Posted on 09/16/2014 11:15:57 AM PDT by Mount Athos
We’ve already established that a newspaper headline touted for years by Tyson likely doesn’t exist. We’ve also established that the exact quote he uses to bash members of Congress as being stupid also doesn’t exist. And then we established that the details within one of Tyson’s favorite anecdotes — a story of how he bravely confronted a judge about his mathematical illiteracy while serving on jury duty — seem to change every time Tyson tells the story.
In addition to those two highly questionable quotes and one highly questionable story, we now have another blatantly false quote peddled by Tyson. He has peddled this quote for years (including at a presentation on Sunday night at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle).
According to Tyson, in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush uttered the phrase, “Our God is the God who named the stars.” According to Tyson, the president made that claim as a way of segregating radical Islam from religions like Christianity or Judaism. Here’s Tyson:
TYSON: Here’s what happens. George Bush, within a week of [the 9/11 terrorist attacks] gave us a speech attempting to distinguish we from they. And who are they? These were sort of the Muslim fundamentalists. And he wants to distinguish we from they. And how does he do it?
He says, “Our God” — of course it’s actually the same God, but that’s a detail, let’s hold that minor fact aside for the moment. Allah of the Muslims is the same God as the God of the Old Testament. So, but let’s hold that aside. He says, “Our God is the God” — he’s loosely quoting Genesis, biblical Genesis — “Our God is the God who named the stars.” ---
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s story has three central claims: 1) Bush uttered that precise phrase, 2) in the days immediately after 9/11, 3) in order to distance American religion from that practiced by radical Muslims.
As you have probably already guessed, every single claim is false. Every one! Then there’s Tyson’s aside that Bush’s quote was a “loose quote” of the book of Genesis. Yep, that’s false, too. Add embarrassing biblical illiteracy to Tyson’s list of accomplishments on his CV.
First off, Bush never uttered the quote attributed to him by Tyson. He did, however, include a separate but similar phrase in a February 2003 speech immediately following the Columbia space shuttle disaster:
In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see, there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power, and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”
The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home. ---
I don’t have a Ph.D. in physics, but I’m pretty sure February 2003 did not happen in the week after 9/11.
Tyson butchered the quote. He butchered the date. He butchered the context. He butchered the implication. And he butchered the biblical allusion, which was to the prophet Isaiah, not the book of Genesis (you can tell Bush was alluding to Isaiah because he explicitly said he was referencing Isaiah).
Bush’s statement about the Creator had nothing to do with making “us” look better than “them”: it was an attempt to comfort the families who lost loved ones in the crash. They weren’t nameless creatures who passed anonymously; their ultimate Creator, the one who knit them together in their mothers’ wombs, mourned them by name. Heck, that same Creator even gave up his one and only Son that those lost souls might one day be reconciled to God through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. It was a message of hope and unity, not a message of division authored in the fog of war.
Tyson’s falsehoods didn’t stop there, though. After deliberately slandering Bush by attributing to him a quote he never made, Tyson launched into another tirade about how he was selected, by Bush, mind you, to be on a committee to select recipients of the National Medals of Science and Technology. The point of that story? That Tyson is way smarter than Bush, who was too stupid to even read the citations of the awards. But if you watch the video of the event, you’ll notice that the reason he didn’t read the citations is because he was too busy personally awarding the medals and shaking the hands of the guests of honor:
According to Tyson, Bush’s unfortunate God quote came long before Tyson was in Bush’s Rolodex — long before he was selected to serve on commissions to advise the president — otherwise the all-knowing Dr. Tyson would’ve set him straight and prevented him from ever saying such a stupid thing. Seriously, Tyson claimed that.
Except that’s also false.
When Bush allegedly uttered Tyson’s fake quote — within a week of 9/11, according to Tyson — Tyson had already been selected by President George W. Bush to serve on a White House Commission. On August 22, 2001, the White House press office announced that the president would appoint one Neil deGrasse Tyson of New York to serve on the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry. Again, I’m no physics Ph.D., but I am fairly certain that August 22, 2001, came weeks before September 11, 2001.
Literally not a single thing about Tyson’s Bush story is true. Not a single thing! He couldn’t even deliver a joke about Bush’s brain without bollixing up the facts. We already have evidence of Tyson fabricating a quote to prove journalists are dumb, as well as evidence of him fabricating a quote to prove politicians are dumb. As I previously noted: these are not propositions that should require fake evidence. Of course politicians and journalists are dumb. Now we have evidence of Tyson fabricating a quote in order to make George W. Bush look dumb. As my friend Mollie Hemingway noted on Twitter:
.@BrianFaughnan @seanmdav If you have to distort a quote and its context to make yourself seem smarter than GWB, you’re doing it wrong.
Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 15, 2014
At this point, I’m legitimately curious if any quotes or anecdotes peddled by Neil deGrasse Tyson are true. Over the last week, I’ve examined only four, and every single one appears to be garbage. The “above average” headline. The “360 degrees” quote from a member of Congress. The jury duty story. And now the bogus George W. Bush quote. These are normally the types of errors that would be uncovered by peer review. Blatant data fabrication, after all, is the cardinal sin of scientific publishing. In journalism, this would get you fired. In Tyson’s world, it got him his own television show. Where are Tyson’s peers, and why is no one reviewing his assertions?
Somebody seriously needs to stage an intervention for Neil deGrasse Tyson. This type of behavior is not acceptable. It is indicative of sheer laziness, born of arrogance. Please, somebody, help him before he fabricates again.
Tyson doesn’t believe in God anyway, so why should he really care. Just another liberal Bush basher...
OBTW Tyson, I tried to watch Cosmos, but your condescending tone and orgasmic spewing of evolution caused me to turn the channel and delete the series from my DVR. You sir are a douche and a pinhead.
I had to Google him; didn’t know who he is ...
And that is why I did not watch Cosmos with host Tyson. I bet even his name is fake.
The Muslims worship a moon god, not the God Who made the heavens, the earth, the moon, and the rest of the universe.
Tyson's attempts to pretend he's a moderate by claiming GMOs are safe is also annoying. He spends little time attacking the liberals' claims, but spends much of Cosmos advocating the global warming religion, Darwinism, and the lie that Giordano Bruno was unjustly persecuted. He is one of the most dangerous liberals alive today, as he is good at getting the normally apolitical and apathetic to believe in absolute claptrap which furthers the liberal agenda.
“Allah of the Muslims is the same God as the God of the Old Testament. So, but let’s hold that aside. He says, “Our God is the God” — he’s loosely quoting Genesis, biblical Genesis — “Our God is the God who named the stars.” -—
My Bible says that the LORD God who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He’s the same God who sent His Son into the world to deliver people from sin.
So many lies...tells me his father is the father of lies—the devil himself.
After devoting a quarter of his first episode to Christian bashing, I didn't watch another.
Tried to watch Cosmos.... I usually like these science and space shows but that was way too boring.
That is such a funny graphic. I’m sure he never said that, but so what. He likes making up quotes by other people.
“I had to Google him; didn’t know who he is ...”
Think Barry Obama, circa 2004.
This guy is a Harvard and Columbia type, who has been thrust into increasingly important roles, quite frankly because he is a minority. And, he has broken into popular culture with appearances on late night talk shows, etc....and now he has his own show.
The libs view him with great reverence - after all, he believes in evolution, global warming, etc...and since as a black man (actually half black making him even more like Barry) who has succeeded in a white dominated scientific world, he must be the smartest guy on the planet. He cannot be questioned - it would be ignorant and racist.
His credentials? Harvard and Columbia - again just like Barry. Harry Reid might even call him magic.
Anyway, for the foreseeable future, he will be put up as the ‘smart guy’ to dismiss all the racist redneck hicks in flyover country who don’t toe the line on global warming, etc.
Tyson Tyson and Dyson
The wholey three of blabberhood.
Tyson gets a pass because he is one of the few scientists foolish enough to agree with the “New Atheists” on the fallacy that science disproves God. So of course, the atheists think he must be a rare genius for agreeing with them, rather than the common dunce that he really is.
Lmao, did he actually say that, or is that just a clever parody?
What??? Show me where he said that because it beyond stupid ...its mathematically impossible.. so ever if i don’t like the guy i would have think he just misspoke
More atoms in the galaxy than atoms in the universe? Nothwithstanding the fact that each star is composed of more atome than there are stars in the universe. Perhaps that is what he meant to say.
Where is the Smoking Hot Spot?
No smoking hot spot1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
More stars than atoms??? Please tell me he didn’t really say that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.