The Ultimate Crackpot Review of “Cosmos”

Even your Curmudgeon, who routinely reads and critiques the ranting of hopelessly crazed creationists for amusement, is stunned by this one. We can’t determine if it’s a joke or a lunatic’s manifesto. We found it at an extremely dubious website calling itself TopekasNews, which simulates the appearance of being a genuine news site located in Topeka, Kansas, but we’re not sure what it is. Anyway, that’s where we found this: COSMOS, The First Atheist Brainwashing Sitcom Reviewed.

The author is someone named Haywood Bynum III, described at the end as “Leading the charge of faith at Bible Fellowship Church.” That suggests he’s a preacher of some kind, but we can’t find anything about him or his church. We’ll refer to him as “rev” anyway, because for our purposes it doesn’t matter whether: (a) he attended the Billy Bob Water Dowsing and Bible College; or (b) he bought a mail-order theology degree; or (c) he’s a self-anointed holy man suffering from some kind of overdose.

So be warned, dear reader. This whole thing is suspicious. We don’t recommend relying on that website or its authors for anything other than fun. Okay, having said all that, here are some excerpts from the rev’s review of Cosmos, with bold font added by us:

Cosmos is an atheist propaganda sitcom that first reached its zenith during the confusing, fearful Cold-war obsessed 1980s. The show featured three anarchists who presented scientific theory as fact and jaded an entire generation of viewers. Remember that during the 1980s, tv audiences were vulnerable and desperate for a meaning in life, because they lived in persistent fear of nuclear annihilation.

It is no coincidence that only several weeks after the former Soviet Union wowed the world with Olympic splendor, then made shake the stability of peace by invading Crimea, that we see this relic from Cold War exploitation propaganda rise again, this time hosted by yet another anarchist scientist bent on destroying Western values and morality, using glitzy special effects and cold, shocking language as the vehicle of preaching.

There is nothing to say except Aaaargh!! Stay with us, that was only the beginning:

As concerned families quickly realized in the 1980s, Cosmos is one thing: anti-theist brainwashing. Yes, the crazy scientific theories may make one feel better and that we control the fate of Earth’s future, but alas, it is not true.

We can’t even find a wrong thread running through all this. If Cosmos is supposed to be anti-communist, anti-Soviet propaganda, the rev is the first creationist we’ve encountered to oppose it (along with science in general) for that reason. Let’s read on:

On the surface, the show purports to be a thrilling, high-budget Big Bang archetype where a friendly Bill Cosby/Professor Klump hybrid scientist invites us on a magical journey of knowledge and understanding. Much like a young Kal-El [that was Superman’s original name on Krypton] experienced when learning his people’s history and coming out more intellectually powerful, the show tries to give us a visual journey of similar proportion, the narrator scientist’s voice guiding us ‘to reason from the darkness of our current understanding.”

Again we say: Aaaargh!! The rev continues:

The introduction to this show plays out like a Led Zeppelin video. There are flashy neon colors, stars everywhere, weird cartoons and a man doing things that not even a fictional god would find possible. We see them symbolically display the tree of life, show an anime man flying in mid-air and even travel to the ‘Eye of God’ in space, all aboard an imaginary spaceship. The entire introduction is just full of sinful symbolism.

That deserves a third Aaaargh!! Then there’s a video which we haven’t seen, presumably it’s something from Cosmos, which is preceded by this, with the rev’s original red font, bold, and all caps:

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO FEATURES NON-CHRISTIAN BRAINWASHING. PLEASE DEMAND ANY WOMEN/CHILDREN IN THE ROOM IMMEDIATELY LEAVE AND THEN PRAY BEFORE VIEWING. READ GENESIS AND REVELATION AFTER VIEWING TO REMIND YOUR BRAIN THE TRUTH OF MANKIND’S ORIGIN AND END.

Then he attacks string theory:

If the “Big Bang’ theory was not preposterous enough, there is another LSD inspired theory that claims the universe is actually 10-dimensional.

He dismisses that as “hogwash,” and then advises us:

Isn’t it much easier to understand ‘in the beginning, God created heavens and the Earth?’ That tells you all you need right there. Astrophysicists like the show’s host, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, want us to believe all these crazy theories so we will buy them things like the Large Hardon [sic] Collider and the Space Station, so they can do all sorts of experiments for companies like Apple and Boeing and make themselves billions of dollars ‘taking mankind to new horizons’.

After that he goes after Carl Sagan, who hosted the original Cosmos series. Observe how the rev cleverly distorts his name:

Carl Pagan is to this bizarre new Cosmos astrophysics as L-Ron Hubbard is to Sciencetology [sic].

[…]

Carl Pagan forwarded and popularized the string theory I lectured you about in the prior stanza. String theory is responsible for much of the brainwashing that took place in the 1980s and Clinton’s sudden, random election over George Bush Sr. in 1992.

The rev has earned a fourth Aaaargh!! Here’s his final paragraph:

The cool special effects will attract millions of views and I can see the show is going for the heart of America by airing on Fox. If it manages to warp the mind of our nation’s most important demographic, then I can only hope we don’t get a replay of the dark ages of the late 80s-early 90s playing out again. Beware this show, my friends.

So there you are. We don’t know if that was an extreme spoof, or if the rev is serious. Either way, it was certainly entertaining.

Copyright © 2014. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article