If you have not checked out The Federalist, then you should do so. It produces some great content. In fact, a clear sign that The Federalist is a force to be reckoned with is the fact that Wikipedia has been throwing Orwellian temper tantrums over the website’s recent reporting. The reason: Congregants in the Church of Neil deGrasse Tyson are unhappy to find out that their god has a habit of pulling facts out of deGrassian black holes that no one else can verify.
Just one example (there are quite a few) includes the scientist’s repeated claim that George W. Bush said “Our God is the God who named the stars” after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to find a way of intellectually divorcing Christianity from Islam.
Mr. Tyson has said the following in multiple speeches:
TYSON: Here’s what happens. George Bush, within a week of [the 9/11 terrorist attacks] gave us a speech attempting to distinguish we from they. And who are they? These were sort of the Muslim fundamentalists. And he wants to distinguish we from they. And how does he do it?
He says, “Our God” — of course it’s actually the same God, but that’s a detail, let’s hold that minor fact aside for the moment. Allah of the Muslims is the same God as the God of the Old Testament. So, but let’s hold that aside. He says, “Our God is the God” — he’s loosely quoting Genesis, biblical Genesis — “Our God is the God who named the stars.”
Unfortunately, that turns out not to be true. At all. The Federalist did some digging, and it did find that former President Bush said the following after the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003:
George W. Bush: In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see, there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power, and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”
The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.
One would think that if Mr. Tyson was going to charge people to see his presentations, then he would get his facts straight — or not, if the point was smear others while making himself look like a witty guy. The Federalist then smacks Tyson down for his blatant fabrication.
Tyson butchered the quote. He butchered the date. He butchered the context. He butchered the implication. And he butchered the biblical allusion, which was to the prophet Isaiah, not the book of Genesis (you can tell Bush was alluding to Isaiah because he explicitly said he was referencing Isaiah).
Bush’s statement about the Creator had nothing to do with making “us” look better than “them”: it was an attempt to comfort the families who lost loved ones in the crash. They weren’t nameless creatures who passed anonymously; their ultimate Creator, the one who knit them together in their mothers’ wombs, mourned them by name.
In response to Sean Davis’ reporting, Mr. Tyson’s Wikipedia page has repeatedly been scrubbed of his lies and outright distortions — again, there are enough to be rather troubling for a man whose profession relies on accuracy — and now there are even attempts to throw The Federalist’s Wikipedia page down the Memory Hole.
The Washington Examiner reported Sept. 26:
Three weeks after the oft-cited TheFederalist.com accused a popular scientist of making up quotes and numbers in a speech, Wikipedia has moved to eliminate the conservative news site.
In a surprise move, the hugely-trafficked Wikipedia posted a notice that the Federalist was “being considered for deletion” after an unknown critic said it “does not pass the threshold for notability.” Wikipedia asked users to comment on the decision, though it in the end it will not be made on a “majority vote.”
The claim shocked the new site’s staff, especially since the Federalist has been featured in mainstream media such as MSNBC and CNN.
As I have said before, when people deny God they always find a way to replace Him with someone or something else. That idol then must be protected at all costs, which is one of the reasons why Communism’s body count is roughly 100 million…but I digress.
The ease with which those who edit Wikipedia pages entertain their inner police state censorship czar is incredibly frightening, and should be exposed. However, it is also important to note that Mr. Tyson has gone out of his way to avoid telling the truth.
Here is what he said on Facebook regarding his imaginary Bush quote:
I have explicit memory of those words being spoken by the President. I reacted on the spot, making note for possible later reference in my public discourse. Odd that nobody seems to be able to find the quote anywhere — surely every word publicly uttered by a President gets logged. …
FYI: There are two kinds of failures of memory. One is remembering that which has never happened and the other is forgetting that which did. In my case, from life experience, I’m vastly more likely to forget an incident than to remember an incident that never happened. So I assure you, the quote is there somewhere. When you find it, tell me. Then I can offer it to others who have taken as much time as you to explore these things.
Translation: How dare you question the all-powerful Neil deGrasse Tyson! Be gone with you, mere mortal! Be gone!
How bizarre is it that a scientist would sneer at a reporter over the time he or she spends verifying…facts.
Mr. Tyson’s behavior is so weird that even Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed was forced to call him out, saying “Just admit you either misremembered or made up a Bush quote @neiltyson. This denial [flies] in face of scientific method.”
The next time you hear a Neil deGrasse Tyson tale that sounds too good to be true, just remember: it probably is. Why? Because it’s apparently okay to lie as long as more people subscribe to his worldview in the end. As the scientist said after getting caught red handed: “If this article contains the entire critique of my presentation to Tableau Software — the contents of 2 out of 60 slides — then I consider the talk to be a success, even to eavesdroppers.”
Why does it matter if a scientist makes up quotes about someone if the end result is more people who believe in Global Warming, right Mr. Tyson? Actually, it matters a lot. Intellectually honest people understand that. Most disciples in the Church of Neil DeGrasse Tyson apparently do not.
Douglas Ernst Blog 