Seth MacFarlane, well known atheist and cartoonist, is the executive producer of the remake of Cosmos, a television series which recently made its national debut.
The first episode featured, along with the science, an animated feature about the 16th century Dominican friar Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake by Church officials. A statue of Bruno stands today in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome on the spot where he was put to death.
In MacFarlane’s cartoon, Bruno is portrayed as a hero of modern science, and Church officials are, without exception, depicted as wild-eyed fanatics and unthinking dogmatists.