(Transcript from comic)
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Now I'd like to tell you all the most beautiful thing I learned from decades of being an astrophysicist. It's about where we all come from .
Neil deGrasse Tyson: We now believe the elements were created in the centers of high mass stars.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: These stars went unstable and exploded and scattered their contents across the galaxy ...
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Which sprinkled into gas clouds that then collapsed and formed our stars and planets and life billions and billions of years.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: And so the beautiful thing is, the atoms that make up our bodies come from stars...
Neil deGrasse Tyson: So we are all quite literally STARDUST
Audience Member: Sir do you think maybe God exists and he created the universe and all of us?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Haha what a ridiculous fairy tale.
31 comments
Stellar nucleosynthesis. The supporting theories have been developed over the last century by many scientists and confirmed by observation. The ratio of abundance of elements in the galaxy is as predicted by theory. Galaxies very far away (and thus further back in time and younger) show fewer heavy elements, again, as predicted by theory.
The products of this process are poetically referred to as "stardust" because of the profound realization that our constituent atoms were once spread far across space. Personally, I find it to be a beautiful thought. It lends a bit of natural grandeur to our existence. But the field of stellar nucleosynthesis doesn't exist to provide feel-good stories about life. "Stardust" is an inspiring human thought that fits with the science, not vice-versa.
Now, where are the nuclear theories and spectrometer measurements that point to a god in heaven?
While Neil deGrasse Tyson is rather a hero of mine, I prefer the term mythology to fairy tale as being more accurate. Having said that, it's only a matter of turn of phrase, I admit. Keep up the awesome work N.d.G.T.!
While I think that Mr. Tyson is a cool guy, his answer there was more than a little arrogant. It's a common failing in atheist and theist alike. He could've expressed his disagreement without being a dick about it.
EDIT: If this isn't an accurate quote (and a rereading indicates it may not be) then please disregard this comment.
I had a quick look at the site. As far as I can tell, it is pretty much literally a fundie version of the Oatmeal, so I'm pretty sure this is not the real Neil deGrasse Tyson, although I suspect the inspiring speech part might have been copied from him.
Pule Thamex
@ #1895035
And the fact that you have to be wilfully ignorant, something like a fearful, quaking ancient or a superstitious fundamentalist to advance such a fatuous argument in the face of compelling evidence. Kids, laugh at this ignorant numpty, if that's the best that he can do. Tell this clown that you're better than him. Don't drown in his drool.
image
Well, what's stopping your 'God' from proving Mr. deGrasse Tyson wrong: now , o Adam1 d?
Your 'God' can't even calculate Pi to beyond 3, nor count the number of legs on an insect properly. Prof. Stephen Hawking can prove the existence of at least eleven dimensions .
...meanwhile, reprising the late great Carl Sagan's classic quote from "Cosmos": 'We are all made of star stuff'. Your argument is valid , Neil. b^_^d
I suspect this is supposed to be funny or clever, but it's actually realistic. Maybe it needs the plot of a chain email where the audience member crushes Tyson with faulty arguments and then witnesses to the rest of the audience for an hour after Tyson runs off stage.
STARDUST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeFeLaEsHBs
We already know that exploding stars create higher elements. We've seen it happen by the characteristic light produced as the radioactive elements decay in sequence right on schedule, just like the do here on earth in laboratories.
Did God create the universe? Well, it's possible; after all, once you postulate an all-powerful being who can do anything by magic, there's no way to disprove anything. We could have been created last Thursday, complete with false memories and evidence of a long past. But certainly isn't likely to be like it was described in some books by a bunch of Bronze Age Arabs.
Ah, the Neil DeStrawman Tyson argument....for people who never had a brain.image
The stuff until the last two lines sound genuine and quite cool....but the last two, with the guy asking about God is obviously added later by the cartoonist/OP.
Also, even if we're hairless bipedal apes made of stardust, why would that disprove a supreme being?
Of course, in my worldview, all creation (an eternal, constantly self-creating/dissolving/regenerating continuum of material, astral & spiritual) and the Supreme Being are one and the same. God's not some super guy "out there", it's an archetype "in here".
@SpukiKitty
If all this stuff can come about by natural understood-by-humans processes why do we need god? The fundie god becomes irrellevent, then in the next generation nonexistent. Do we need a god to throw lightning bolts, 250 years after Franklin flew his kite? Do we need to brown-nose this god so he won't zap us?
@ Mister Spak
I don't believe in a literal superperson or persons in the sky. It's nonsense.
But I can't see why the spiritual/the afterlife couldn't be a reality. You don't need literal Deities creating everything ex-nihilo. All-that-exists is an eternal, phoenix-like thing.
Tyson would never express himself in such a dismissive way.
@SpuriKitty: Nicely done. You sound like Lucilius. (Roman Lucilius, not fstdt Lucilius.)
@ Old Viking
Also, I can't help but think of an old hippie rock tune that goes "We are starlight....we are golden...."
While Neil may have never said that Verbatim I've heard him laugh and seen him smirk at the idea of a God. And why not? It is ridiculous, so ridiculous that creationist always try to sell the idea of a God first, because a God we know nothing of is slightly less ridiculous than their personal God and his book BS.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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