Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why his Christmas tweet wasn’t ‘anti-Christian’ [View all]

[cbayer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/29/neil-degrasse-tyson-explains-why-his-christmas-tweet-wasnt-anti-christian/

By Abby Ohlheiser December 29 at 10:17 AM


Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (Patrick Eccelsine/FOX)

“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.”

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted that factoid on Christmas Day, which also happens to be Newton’s birthday (depending on which calendar you use, but we’ll get to that later). Some people weren’t happy about it, accusing Tyson of a Dickensian dismissal of Christmas spirit.

The backlash was enough to prompt Tyson to weigh in on the ordeal the following night.

Neil deGrasse Tyson ✔ @neiltyson
Follow
Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.
6:05 PM - 26 Dec 2014

His tweet was followed by a lengthy Facebook post. “Well. It’s official. Far and away my most re-tweeted tweet appeared Christmas day,” he began, adding:

My sense in this case is that the high rate of re-tweeting, is not to share my enthusiasm of this fact, but is driven by accusations that the tweet is somehow anti-Christian. 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.

As of Monday morning, the tweet in question had surpassed 77,000 retweets.

more at link