I'll say right up front here that if the moderator decides to delete this post, he/she has my full understanding.
Because I just feel the desire to post the following, and it does of necessity at least touch on religion. Not in a pro/con sense, but just on how the Cosmos series is referencing religion...
After watching three episodes so far, I must say I'm very surprised about how heavy-handed it has been regarding religion. I'm not a zealot by any means. And I'm very much enjoying the series. But I've never had any difficulty at all believing in currently accepted science and still believing in the possibility that there is a god behind it all.
Assuming that man eventually figures it all out...that we come up with Einsein's dream and modern science's much sought after Theory of Everything...how can we possibly know what put it all in place in the first place. I mean...no matter how far back you go in time...to the beginning...to the Big Bang if that was indeed the beginning...what about the instant before that. Ad infinitum.
I don't know. It just seems presumptuous...on a scale beyond description...to think that just because we come up with some math to describes things...that we know how it all came about in the first place. It may not be God (or a god). I don't think we can ever prove it is. But I think it's just as impossible to prove it is not.
Again...this is just my personal observation regarding how Cosmos deals with religion/god and modern science. Nothing more. I guess I feel like the religious references could have been left out entirely without compromising the quality or content of the show, regardless of one's beliefs.