The Center of Truth

This is discouraging:

http://www.catholicintl.com/products/books/gwwprint.htm

"The internet doesn't make you stupid, it just makes your stupidity more accessible to others." -- Anonymous

If every star in the Universe orbited the Earth once every 24 hours, they would be traveling at impossible speeds and experiencing centrifugal forces that would make them utterly flat...never mind the idea of trying to imagine the Milky Way galaxy spinning around an axis located near the outer edge of the galaxy and not the obvious center of this SPIRAL galaxy!



Ugh! I can't believe I'm wasting words in my blog reminding people of why the Universe does not orbit the Earth! If humanity cannot even grasp science enough to let go of a theory like Geocentrism, then Intelligent Design is going to be with us forever!

Human beings have almost a limitless ability to rationalize anything. This makes us so vulnerable these "scienticians" who either willfully or ignorantly do not accept the ability of mankind to acquire significant truth through any means but divine revelation.

They use science only as a tool for uncovering the mysteries of scripture and in doing so pervert the scientific method by limiting all outcomes to those which have already been accepted on faith as being the truth!

Those outcomes that support their point of view, however few and however tortured they may be, are sifted out like bits of treasure from great mounds of disagreeable facts. They seek Divine science to rationalize their world view in modern terms so they don't look like anachronistic fools. Their lofty goal is nothing less than to eventually build a formal and legal defense of Creationism (and apparently Geocentrism) on rationalistic grounds rather than on traditional faith.

A fortress with 100 soldiers looks as formidable as a fortress with 10,000 soldiers...IF you put those 100 soldiers in all the visible spots. Likewise Creationism can appear to be a worthy challenge to Evolution when Creationists need only produce enough material to fill the limited attention span and understanding of the audience.

Put Creationism on equal footing in the classroom, and our propensity to rationalize will take care of the rest.

Creationism is bothersome enough as it is, but I had no idea the forces of scientific Geocentrism were still alive as kicking. Perhaps this is the logical conclusion of passionately applying "science" to a literal interpretation of scripture. If you take one seriously, you have to take them both seriously. There is every bit as much (and more) scripture to support Geocentrism as there is to support Creationism.

In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. - Hebrews 1:10

Who has established all the ends of the earth? - Proverbs 30:4

He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. - Psalm 104:5

The world is firmly established, it can not be moved. - Psalm 93:1 & 1 Chronicles 16:30

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Who marked off its dimensions? Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - Job 38:4-6

For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he set the world on them. - 1 Samuel 2:8

When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm. - Psalm 75:3

Therefore I will make the heavens tremble; and the earth will shake from its place
- Isaiah 13:13

...the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. - Rev. 6:12,13

If you take the Bible literally and proclaim than a "day" is truly a day (and God created the world in 6 days), then you have to also conclude that a "pillar" is truly a pillar and this Earth is literally fixed in space with physical restraints...and apparently it is also a flat structure having a "cornerstone".

Well, if Geocentrism and Creationism are congruent, then perhaps Geocentrism may yet be an unwitting ally of science. If Geocentrism has as much biblical validity as Creationism, then the very weight of its own absurdity will drag BOTH of them down. If Creationists insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible, then they must defend Geocentrism too. I can't wait for Kentucky to open a Geocentrist museum!

The 16th century arguments for Geocentrism bear a striking resemblance to the 21st century arguments for Creationism. Both have veiled origins in scripture, and both make strong appeals to common sense and to what is "obviously" true.

I'm paraphrasing here, but the arguments for Geocentrism went something like this: "If the Earth was rotating while orbiting the sun, we would feel acceleration and deceleration from night to day. Gravity would decrease when both centrifugal forces aligned. Objects thrown straight up would land to the west. Flying birds would drift and have increasing difficulty keeping up with the ground. We would see significant parallax motion of the stars between Spring and Fall, unless the stars were trillions of miles away, but that's just crazy!"

(Alpha Centauri is in fact over 25 trillion miles away.)

But these arguments for Geocentrism are utterly convincing if your knowledge of the Universe is limited to what was commonly known in the 16th century. In fact, 16th century Geocentrism was even more convincing than 21st century Intelligent Design! Geocentrism appeals directly to what you can see with your own two eyes and feel with your own two feet!

The overthrowing of Geocentrism in favor of Heliocentrism was the first major scientific insight into the nature of our Universe where science revealed a reality that was fundamentally at odds with the way our brains perceive the world.




On the scale of the very large, or the very small, or the very old, or the very fast, or the very dense, the Universe does not behave in ways our brains are designed to accept.

The story of Heliocentrism is the story of the birth of modern science and mankind's ability to understand that which is beyond our ability to see. It is proof positive that science can yield spectacular insights that mankind would *never* have achieved otherwise with only the use of "common sense".

Equally important is to understand that science does not achieve these things quickly or gracefully. Science often progresses in gradual steps toward the final truth as wrong ideas are replaced with "less wrong" ideas. Always there are far more failures than successes, but always there is progress forward.

In "De Revolutionibus", Copernicus makes a detailed inventory of all the stars in the Heavens. He gives the locations and magnitudes of every star in the entire Universe. According him that's 346 stars in the Northern Hemisphere and 316 in the southern Hemisphere, making a grand total of 662 stars in the Universe. (ha!)

Copernicus was correct that the Earth orbited the Sun. But he got most other things wrong; humorously wrong. Even some of his mathematical proofs for Heliocentrism were wrong.

Tycho Brahe borrowed parts Copernicus's theory for his "World System" which stipulated that the Sun orbited the Earth, but all the other planets orbited the Sun. This is a reasonable observation relative to the Earth, but still wrong.

Johannes Kepler came to accept Copernicus's theory completely, but then spent years trying to prove that all of the orbits of the planets represented geometric solids, which is very wrong.

Galileo Galilei enthusiastically defended Heliocentrism, and was brought before the Inquisition for his troubles. Galileo understood Heliocentrism, but he didn't understand gravity, and much of what he said about the shapes of orbits was wrong.

Isaac Newton formulated the theory of gravity which finally explained everything. But Newton was wrong about many other things...and so on and so on.

All of these great scientists devoted their life's work to advancing our knowledge in only small "less wrong" steps.

This method of learning is very difficult for most people to accept and appreciate. Science is often ridiculed and mocked because the short-term mistakes from year to year are far more visible and memorable to people than the long-term progress science makes over decades and centuries.

There is a common belief among Christians that if any one sentence of the Bible is wrong, then the whole book is wrong. This black-and-white approach to truth is at the very heart of Creationism and Geocentrism. It is no wonder that people who prefer that type of thinking would be unwilling to grasp the error-prone nature of scientific truth.

The moral authority of scripture is a powerful tool, no doubt. I am probably a rare Atheist in my opinion that religion had a useful purpose in the past, and that purpose is still needed today by many disadvantaged people who need heart and will to survive more than they need intellectual enlightenment.

But the future progress of mankind, by almost any definition of the word "progress", is clearly in the hands of science now, not religion. Religion cannot make progress because religion is hopelessly tied to ancient texts that can never change or grow. That may be fine for a moral framework* but it will not solve many of the problems we face today.

I am disappointed that Geocentrism is still being posited as fact, but at the same time I welcome people to learn more about Geocentrism and its history...especially the history! They would learn how science made mistakes and yet pressed closer to the truth until it defeated the combined forces of religion and "common sense".

My hope is that through a greater understanding of the history of Geocentrism, people will integrate an appreciation of science and an understanding of the limits of common sense into their views on Intelligent Design, and they will see how it is the same brand of non-science as Geocentrism.


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*Even as a moral framework, the Bible has begun to show it's age because it does not clearly and directly address many modern moral problems...and the problems it does address are difficult to understand because they are framed in the lives of primitive farmers and fishermen.

The Bible has 413 references to sheep, 373 references to Ox or Oxen, and 148 references to slaves and servants. I've actually seen sheep in person, but I don't think I've seen an Ox, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen a slave. The efficacy of Biblical parables diminishes as our lives become increasingly removed from the lives of those primitive superstitious people to whom we can no longer relate.

The Bible has little or no reference to modern moral issues such as racism, sexism, protecting the environment, the death penalty, species extinction, human rights, torturing prisoners of war, health care, or the use of fossil fuels. Oh, it does have 281 references to oil, but that are all references to lamp oil or those spiced body oils they dripped on their bodies before showers were common.

The Bible doesn't even give clear and specific guidance about abortion, and yet this is the single biggest hot-button moral issue we face today!!


**The Earth is zipping along at about 67,000 mph relative to the sun and the sun is moving at 486,000 mph relative to the center of the galaxy, and our galaxy is moving at about 1,300,000 mph relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background.