C'mon Guys, Lighten Up

On Christmas day, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the popular astrophysicist, tweeted birthday wishes to Isaac Newton:
“On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642”
It became his most popular tweet…and also the most contested one. Big surprise!

The objections were on two grounds:
1)      The obvious set who felt he was taking a shot at baby Jesus;
2)     Ancient calendars are so misaligned with present day ones that the dates wouldn’t match at all.

Tyson responded to the backlash. The short version (aka another tweet):
“Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.”
The longer version of his response came on, where else, Facebook! I loved this line from his response:
“If a person actually wanted to express anti-Christian sentiment, my guess is that alerting people of Isaac Newton’s birthday would appear nowhere on the list.”

The reaction to the original tweet shows the ignorance of those who thought it was a shot at baby Jesus since, as this site pointed out:
“Newton was quite religious and thought the mechanistic universe an expression of rather than rebuke to god’s design.”

In any case, the world would be a lot better place if more people followed this guy’s take on the whole episode on Slashdot:
“Everyone has the right to mock, and everyone has the right to be offended. Some mocking is silly, and some offense-taking is silly. As a dispassionate third party observer, I'm having a hard time deciding why I should care about this episode.”
But sadly, the norm seems to be issue a fatwa against Satanic Verses and to protest against Tyson’s tweet.

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