Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, cosmologist, science communicator and author, caused sparks to fly after sending out a tweet deemed "anti-Christian" by many tweeps. Tyson wrote on Facebook that he is just a servant of "cosmic curiosity" and is astonished by the number of re-tweets.
On Christmas Day, Tyson's tweet seemed to have enraged some Christians.
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
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 25, 2014
Dec. 25 is most well-known for the birth of Jesus Christ. Even though Newton shares his birthday with Jesus Christ, very few people know the fact. Many Christians feel that Tyson's tweet is trolling Christmas Day. The tweet has been re-tweeted over 75,000 times; even Tyson was astonished to find the high number of tweets he has received.
Tyson revealed on Facebook that the average re-tweet he gets is about 2,500 and 3,500. He quoted that some of his "fun tweets" can also cross 10,000 re-tweets and his "boring" tweets rarely reach up to 1,000. However, the Christmas day tweet has received the highest number of re-tweets. Tyson also mentioned that some of his previous tweets may have been more offensive to Jesus and Christians than the latest Newton tweet. However, the older tweets never received the number of re-tweets in comparison to his latest Newton tweet.
"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," wrote Tyson on Facebook. He then quoted another tweet he threw to the twitterverse.
Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them. — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 27, 2014
Many people think that Tyson's tweet is disrespectful to Christians and their sentiments. A Twitter user also posted that Tyson owes an apology to Christians for being insensitive.
The Newton tweet may not be the only one that has bemused many social media followers. On Dec. 25, one's of Tyson's tweets also said that Dec. 25 was a pagan holiday before Christ (BC); it became a religious holiday after the death of Jesus (AD) and has become more of a shopping holiday in the U.S today.
Another one of Tyson's tweets on Dec. 25 also said that Muslims and Jews share a common name with other religions for this year's Christmas: Thursday.
