OK. So a science program has an anti-theistic slant. This is a surprise? I’m still not getting the problem here.
It is odd that a great scientific series on the cosmos should open with an attempt to single out one victim of the Inquisition and hold him up as a martyr to science. For inexplicable reasons, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey begins not with Copernicus confidently proposing his heliocentric hypothesis or Galileo excitedly proclaiming his telescopic discoveries. Rather, it begins with the story of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a renegade Dominican friar executed in 1600 for persistently preaching heretical theological views about a wide variety of core Christian doctrines.Of course, in 2014 we don't burn people at the stake,… Christians don't cast about casually labeling any dissenting theological perspective as "heresy."
But Cosmos makes Bruno out to be a martyr who died heroically in the defense of early modern science, and this is a role he certainly did not play. Jole Shackleford details this nicely in his exploration of the myth that "Giordano Bruno was the First Martyr of Modern Science" in Ron Numbers' edited volume Galileo Goes to Jail and other Myths about Science and Religion (2009).
The idea of a reboot of the classic Cosmos series (1980) is exciting. The original series inspired in many people a deep and abiding love for science, and the revival has tremendous potential to expose a new generation to the wonder and value of science. I began watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey with great interest, in the hope of discovering some new perspectives on the fabulous story of our unfolding universe. Some new ideas are there indeed, and I will eagerly tune in to future episodes to see what else emerges. But I also saw -- among the compelling videos of the solar system and galaxies -- considerable slipshod history of science and a curiously antireligious bias.