Stephen Colbert's take on O'Reilly's ignorance of tides:
BILL O'REILLY (1/5/2011): Sun comes up, the sun goes down. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. It always happens. Never a miscommunication.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Now like all great theologies, Bill's can be boiled down to one sentence:
There must be a God, because I don't know how things work.
The point is, there is a God, because we don't know what causes the tides, and we can never know what causes them. My best guess is that the ocean levels rise when God gets in the bath, and lower again when he gets out. And he takes two baths a day, because cleanliness is next to Him-liness. So get used to it, atheists. There is a God, he created the tides, and no one can explain what causes them.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Actually, Stephen, I can.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, Neil deGrasse Tyson?!? Neil, thanks so much!
TYSON: Hello!
COLBERT: Hey, so, Neil, what are you doing here?
TYSON: Well, so I was in the planetarium in my office, and I overheard your confusion about tides, so I rushed right over.
COLBERT: How did you get here so fast?
TYSON: I have a wormhole.
COLBERT: Wow.
TYSON: So Stephen, the changing tides are caused by a couple factors, but mostly the Moon.
COLBERT: The Moon makes the tides change. So the oceans are werewolves, that makes sense. OK, thanks for stopping by, Neil.
TYSON: No, no, Stephen, Stephen, that's not right. As the Moon orbits the Earth, the gravitational force exerts a pull on the side of the Earth closest to the Moon, and that raises the tides.
COLBERT: So the Moon controls the tides.
TYSON: Exactly.
