Bill Nye Boo'd In Texas For Saying The Moon Reflects The Sun
Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.
As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.
But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.
Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.
But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."
The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.
At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.
This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarrassment.
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/04/06/040620...
-
Comment by William C. Walker on April 26, 2011 at 10:51am -
Why do you think it's called Waco ?
-
Comment by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on April 26, 2011 at 2:54pm -
[...] Really? Un-fucking-believable! - Just when I thought my country couldn't get any stupider. -
*head-desk*
-
Comment by Mr. Dubious on April 26, 2011 at 9:20pm -
This anecdote really encapsulates my major beef with religion. Once you start accepting things on "faith", you have to check your critical thinking at the door and defer to another authority to tell you what to believe. (Speaking for myself, I'm not handing that power over to anyone.) And once you have accepted that authority's dogma, no amount of evidence can cause you to change your view, as long as you continue to cling to your faith.
This is why religion and science can never really be reconciled without major contortions.
-
Comment by Jess Knight on April 26, 2011 at 9:31pm -
Wow, Christianity. Your attempts to once more look not crazy failed.
-
Comment by atheistrising on April 26, 2011 at 11:58pm -
wow.
-
Comment by David Brown on April 27, 2011 at 1:46am -
which philosopher stated " the greatest threat to mans' survival is the lack of rational thought amongst its populations" (or something close..............)? How true.
-
Comment by Alex Conyers on April 27, 2011 at 2:50am
-
While I completely agree that their response to this situation was ridiculous, it seems like Bill brought this upon himself by baiting the crowd with Bible quotes in the first place. It's as if he cited Star Wars and then said in actuality the existence of Wookies has never been proven.
-
Comment by BearBait2011 on April 27, 2011 at 4:25am
-
Hey mcm, could you give the Hebrew word for slave? Since you are going to be single handed defender of the faith, I really could use some clarification on the whole slaves and which girl children it is OK to plunder after I slaughter her whole village in the name of your god.
Life will actually become better for you when you realize you are the victim of brainwashing. And I bet you sing the praises of free will too, don't you?
-
Comment by William C. Walker on April 27, 2011 at 11:10am
-
Pathetic. I feel so sorry for the children of boobs who procreate & pass on their ignorance to defenseless children
-
Comment by Matthew R. Glenn on April 27, 2011 at 1:19pm
-
I'm with Johnny on this one. Luminous can certainly mean to reflect light but then any word can be made to mean something else, for example. 'And the Lord God said, damn that car is hot' Did he mean it has a high temperature? Did he mean the car is cool? So you're saying he said the car is a high temperature to indicate that it is a low temperature? So let's assume a high temperature is 100 degrees c and a low temperature is 0 degrees c. Thus we conclude that 100 degrees Celsius and 0 degrees Celsius are the same thing because God said so. SO, after twisting the words to our liking, we can now read the passage as, 'And the Lord God said, damn that car is either hot or cool, whichever better fits your belief system because they're both the same thing if you take the 4th definition down on dictionary.com and then type it into thesaurus.com and pick the twelfth synonym.'
What's new today
Forum
Why do atheists ask for so much proof to believe in God?
Started by Mercedes in Welcome to Think Atheist. Last reply by archaeopteryx 8 minutes ago. 459 Replies 0 Likes
Blog Posts
Why Respect Relgion - A Post From FB.
Posted by Robert Karp on May 21, 2013 at 10:34am 2 Comments 0 Likes
Events
Services we love
Check out our new mobile/tablet version of Think Atheist! www.ThinkAtheist.com/m
© 2013 Created by Morgan Matthew.
You need to be a member of Think Atheist to add comments!
Join Think Atheist