Putting the Cosmos in its Place

With Cosmos, big science is back on network TV. Unfortunately, so are some unnecessary frictions with religion that will likely make it harder for pious viewers to stomach what is being preached about climate change.

I am just old enough to have some fuzzy memories of Carl Sagan discussing the “billions and billions” of stars in the original 1980 PBS series. Now, some 34 later, an updated Cosmos is on the tube again. Surprisingly, it’s not on PBS, but Fox (perhaps as a form of penance for pioneering “reality” shows such as Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? and Temptation Island).

Fortunately, the old formula hasn’t been too Foxified. We are not walked along the sands of time by a buxom bikinied model reading from a teleprompter. Instead, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, a familiar face to regular watchers of PBS, has stepped into Sagan’s presenting role and the series plays out much like a NOVA episode with a larger graphics budget.

In the most recent episode, “The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth,” Tyson walked viewers through several hundred million years of a living Earth’s traumatic history. Life’s relationship to a changing atmosphere—lots more oxygen in the air once let scorpions grow as big as people—and the cascading dominoes, like oceanic methane releases and the disruption of currents, that led to past mass extinctions and are in the air again were major themes. It was, therefore, no great surprise when the show culminated in a rather preachy plea to face the perils of anthropogenic global warming today.

Personally, I had no major qualms with the sermon. Cosmos made the valid point that humanity has thrived in an interglacial period of climatic stability, but by converting the buried residues of ancient life into carbon dioxide we are changing the atmosphere at a rate not seen since past cataclysms that triggered deadly chapters in the story of life. This is a big roll of the dice, and the timeframes in which we normally operate are so anthropocentric and compressed that the broad swath of pre-history covered by Cosmos offered a rare opportunity to see the last two hundred years through a more relevant lens. Our post-Industrial Revolution carbon explosion may have more in common with a dinosaur killing comet collision than we might care to admit. Just because it’s apocalyptic doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Still, it is a lot to swallow, and the producers did themselves no favors by beating the less supportable drum of materialistic philosophy. Science is a good system for understanding the physical world, but it gets itself in trouble when it assumes that its subject is all there is or could be. That’s exactly what happened in the original Cosmos, where Carl Sagan declared, “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” (Thanks to Jay Richards’ Money, Greed, and God that I just happened to be reading a few hours after watching the show for that quote.)

Tyson intoned a similar theme as Sagan by repeatedly describing the powers that have shaped our planet and the life on it as “random” before boldly declaring that these defining forces “do not care” about us or our well being. We are the unlikely present culmination of a long chain of being that is ultimately purposeless. If we want to stick around as a species, it is up to us to change our ways, but even that is no guarantee of success. Another comet might come out of the blue and rearrange everything on the table of life.

Thus, rather than serving the heavy meal of climate change with a theistic teaspoon of sugar (or even the water of neutrality), Cosmos first rammed down a bitter pill of hopelessness. Then, the producers seemed to expect the audience to open wide again and drink the elixir of human ingenuity and so be energized to take on the task of remaking our fossil-fuel based society. That’s an unlikely one-two punch to land successfully.

Indeed, for Christians, the combination approach likely proves less effective than a single climate change jab would have been. If these godless scientists-turned-philosophers are wrong about the universe’s purpose, the argument goes, then why should we listen to them on anything else. When you blow your credibility taking on big questions outside your realm of knowledge, it is hard to be convincing even when you are dealing with matters more within your expertise.

Sagan faced these hurdles as he took up the activist scientist mantle, campaigning first against atomic weapons that he theorized would devastate all humanity through a “nuclear winter” and later working to combat global warming before his death in 1996. Yet, instead of being persuadable and open to his data, many believers could not get beyond the irreligious mouthpiece. Sadly, history seems to be repeating itself. Messengers matter as does the manner of messaging.

Declaring that life and death on planet earth are merely the result of uncaring, random forces attempts to answer a question that extends beyond science. There are, of course, other possible answers. For example, the recent movie Noah included an interpretation of the Genesis creation story highlighted by a visually powerful montage portraying evolution as being fueled by a deliberate Creator. Such a view is not just the musings of a creative filmmaker but also draws support from scientists at least as prominent as Dr. Tyson—Francis Collins, he of the Human Genome Project, comes quickly to mind.

Moving from a controversial film to a controversial book, the Gospel of John famously declares that “God so loved the world” and, incidentally, the Greek word for that object of affection is pronounced cosmos. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul offers a Christological crescendo on the relationship of Jesus to “all things.” Christ is the creator and sustainer who by the cross has reconciled all things to himself. This is a messiah whose work is cosmic in scope, intentional, and purposeful; a vision clearly at odds with Tyson’s uncaring and random natural forces.

I am not contending that a discussion of these and other teleological alternatives was necessary for the program, merely that Cosmos would have better served its audience (and, frankly, its more narrow climate activism mission) by not making a broad truth claim that was sure to run counter to the beliefs of many viewers and was irrelevant to its overall theme. One can lay out the story of life and death on planet earth and even take a speculative glance into the future without addressing questions of purpose. Such questions may naturally arise in the human mind, but are better suited for a prequel of their own. I’d be happy to see I Wanna Marry “Harry” replaced by What’s Behind the Cosmos? but I’m not holding my breath.

John Murdock writes from a little corner of the universe in Texas.