I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed this 6 episode series. It is absolute eye-candy in 4k and and ear candy since the GOAT of all iconic voices, Morgan Freeman, narrates it. What strikes me is how different it is from normal shows. Either you watch something on astronomy/cosmlogy like The Universe or you watch a nature video like Planet Earth. This combines them into one and shows how the history of the universe, gravity, the big bang and so on shape life. It also at several moments mentions some of the pure chance occurrences that happen to shape life as we know it today on earth.
It really struck a cord with me about the awesomeness of God and the care and providence of our creator in making such a universe. The whole six episode arc was Psalm 19:1-4 in action for me the entire duration. It made me appreciate God and creation more.
I just did a unit on gravity in physics and showed the final episode (43 minutes) which featured gravity as a theme. In our unit on cosmology I will probably show the first episode which was called chasing starlight. I rarely ever show a movie but I feel it is that well done.
Psalm 19:1
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
Off topic comments moved to private message as not relevant to posted topic,
I did watch the first episode of Our Universe last night, and thought it was well done. I look forward to being able to see the rest. I thought the story line of the cheetah hunting for energy sources (meat) that had their origin in the Big Bang was interesting.
I don’t have Netflix, Vinnie. Where we live, Internet is quite dodgy.
What were some highlights or points that really struck you?
(Besides Morgan Freeman’s magnificent voice, of course.)
Just watched the first one. I caught a few places where a better science editor could have improved things, but overall it was a creative way of looking at the sun to earth to life link.
I just liked how it wasn’t a wildlife video and it wasn’t a universe video. They combined the two. Combined with a narrator that has one of the most iconic voices ever and some amazing eye candy…. It was just different for me.
It’s meant for a wide audience. Discussing the inner details of Hawking radiation probably isn’t on that menu. It’s not perfect and occasionally the connections seem tenuous but I thought they tried to get the idea of nucleosynthesis and the idea that we are truly stardust and adapted to our environment really well. It’s probably a misconception people have that some of the laws of physics are «out there.” This show the big picture of how some of them influence life.
For some reason the show is a little polarizing. My wife and I really enjoyed it.
I started to watch it, but just like most science based shows distributed to the masses they are presented as fact, but are really nothing more than current theories. Showes like this give the uniformed viewer a false version of reality. What really perturbed me was the statement, “chemical elements from across the cosmos have created life” that statement was nothing short of absurd, elements do not create anything they are just elements. After hearing that I could watch no longer and decided I must counter this misinformation that leads people to believe they are nothing more than accidents created by random events in the universe - who and what we think we are has consequences.
As a youth I was naturally gifted in understanding scientific topics, and I made a living in scientific fields. As I progressed in my career I learned that many of the things I had been taught as fact, with lead statements like “we now know”, were just theories that were later overturned. The scientific field at large lacks humility, and too often pushes out their theories as facts.
That’s not so much the scientific field as science journalism – and they’re too constrained by time and space limits to be able to go into probabilities and uncertitude (beside the fact that then their stuff wouldn’t sell as well).
I think this might be more just a generally human thing rather than a narrowly “scientist habit” thing. No doubt we all can have deficits of humility, and perhaps some fields can be guiltier than most, even - due to riding on perceived past successes. But some of this also just needs to come from having a better feel for how science just tends to get popularly communicated (by non-scientists or by scientists in casual moments). Of course nobody strictly “knows in a formally, logically proven sense” much anything spoken of. But we can have such high, evidence-based confidence in some things that we just speak of them as “being known” and use that certitude in actionable ways and of practical necessity. This would not include philosophizing about things like teleology or purpose that hearkens to Divine agency (or lack thereof) - so most mature readers easily just gloss over those non-scientific claims as relics of an era of enthusiastic scientism and philosophical over-reach. But I can hear your concern of what impressionable young minds then get from immersion in that. I guess my only answer to it is that they’re immersed in it anyway - and it might as well be stated where it’s then exposed for cross-examination. And then we should model for them how we don’t “throw the baby out with the bath water” and develop unwarranted knee-jerk rejections of science just because some parts of science communication have been sloppy and shown over-reach.
Of course, in science that is all we have, and theory approaches fact very closely or else it becomes a failed theory, replaced by a better one, must as Newtonian physics does very well at explaining most stuff, but ultimately, relativity was found to be a more accurate explanation of how things work on larger scales. Still, that is hard to convey in a show for the masses, so the colloquial usage tends to equate the two.
That seems a valid criticism. Again, probably due to the one putting it together not using the right words. They probably should have said something like “Life arose from chemical elements formed across the cosmos.”
I would agree with Merv, in that lack of humility is a common human trait. Our pastor preached this past Sunday on how Paul was grieved and distressed at being worshiped as a god in Acts 14 after healing a cripple, and how that type of humility should be our attitude in life. It is easy to find scientists, politicians, theologians, pastors and old retired guys like me that struggle with that.
I like your comments, but I would add that life does not arise from chemical elements, life does not come from non-life. The lengths to which people will go to edge God out is quite remarkable. GK Chesterton said it very well when he said “when people stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing; rather, they become capable of believing in anything.”
I generally expect someone watching a science documentary to have the intellectual capacity to understand hyperbolic language. I don’t think any of the writers thought any of the elements in stars or those resulting from them are conscious and choose to create life. They are inanimate objects controlled by physical laws to these scientists and most of the rest of us.
Like many scientists, the writers probably just make terrible philosophers (e.g. Neil degrasse Tyson) and use words poorly or like to hear themselves talk about things they shouldn’t at times. All I think they were trying to say is that we are star dust, made of elements and atoms from prior stars that came into being through nucleosynthesis. I suspect they are strictly referring to efficient and material causation but use loaded language for dramatic effect. I’ve used loose language and told 9th graders elections “want” to have a full outer shell and be like a Noble gas to teach ionic bonding. This is an anthropomorphism to help students remember things. I am not teaching nor expecting them to believe a chlorine atom has desires or needs like a human being or is jealous of a noble gas.
Now I do agree that they have assumed that life is a result of purely natural processes (abiogenesis) and though it’s a common position, it seems premature to present it as a pure fact. I don’t see the show as saying “elements created life, God did not.” I see the show as talking about the efficient and material causes of the stuff making up life. It is scientists presenting science with a lot of cool information and eye candy. I think most scientists work with the assumption that life developed from non-life. At some point in the past the universe did not have life. It does now. So at some point it arose and given scientists seek scientific explanations, abiogenesis is the answer to them. I agree though that this is still only a working hypothesis in science. Presumption is doing the heavy lifting but a potential defense is we all tend to assume natural explanations elsewhere. So are we engaged in special pleading for life?
Vinnie
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“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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