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Why the Universe Does Not Revolve Around the Earth Refuting Absolute Geocentrism by Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati

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Why the Universe Does Not Revolve Around the Earth Refuting Absolute Geocentrism by Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati Why the Universe does not revolve around the Earth Refuting absolute geocentrism by Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati Published: 12 February 2015 (GMT+10) Introduction Questions about how the universe works are not always easy to answer. For Table of contents many centuries most people (scientists and philosophers included) thought Introduction the earth was at its center and that the planets, moon, sun, and stars Phenomenological Language revolved around us. This is called “geocentrism” or the “geocentric view of Logic and Science the universe”. It took years of painstaking work, spread out over multiple The Greeks centuries, to show that this was false as an absolute claim. Today, we accept The Church Fathers a “geokinetic” (moving­earth) view based on the work of Newton and The Middle Ages Einstein. For the student of history and/or science, how we came to the Was heliocentrism the result of modern view is an amazing exploration of how things work and a testimony Hermetic paganism? to the amazing ability to reason that God uniquely put into people. Did the Church suppress geokinetic theory? We live in a created universe, meaning its existence did not come about A Timeline of Events (a fun romp through naturalistic processes alone. We also live in a well­ordered universe; through modern history) meaning it behaves according to a set of rules. This is consistent with it Copernicus being created by an ultimate Lawgiver, who is not fickle and acts in a What is Parallax? consistent manner, according to His very nature Galileo (c.f. 1 Corinthians 14:33, James 1:17) . Therefore, we can explore the way Brahe things work and expect rational results from our experiments. Kepler Newton However, it is far more difficult to take these experiments and use them to Einstein explain the origin of everything. When a person tries to predict backwards to Frames of Reference infinity, this type of science breaks down. Philosophically, there are Supporting Evidence (or, why the paradoxes waiting around every corner. For example, we are either in a earth cannot be at the absolute steady­state universe that defies the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, or we are center) in a universe that has a beginning but without a cause. Scientifically, we see The rate of acceleration of how appeals to big bang physics have lead to much speculation, including objects in the universe inflation theory, dark matter, dark energy, the fine tuning of numerous The speed of objects in the universe constants in order to get the models pointing in the right direction, etc. Aberration of starlight Therefore, even after we have learned all this about the mechanics of the The discovery of Neptune universe, once we begin trying to explain how it all began we get into the The Return of Halley’s Comet realm of faith. True, there are still puzzles to be explained in the “young­ Delicate orbital mechanics earth” position, but since evolutionists explain away their puzzles with ‘it’s The equatorial bulge science’s job to solve these puzzles’, the same allowances should be made The oddly wiggling universe for creationist scientists. Coriolis force Conclusions The question about whether or not earth is at the center is not as easy to answer as the We don’t feel like we are “flat earth” question. Not only are these two moving at all. Is it possible ideas not the same, but no significant evidence exists for flat earth beliefs among scientists to sort out fact from going back to the Greeks. Indeed, a Greek scientist named Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276– fiction in this subject? Actually, yes. The answer 194 BC) calculated the circumference of the earth (to an amazing degree of accuracy). is both elegant and Within the circles of Christian scholarship, no notable theologian seems to have believed in satisfying, but we must do a flat earth, not only because of it so obviously is not, but also because the Bible does not a little digging to answer the riddle. claim it is. Notable theologians throughout the Christian era believed the earth is spherical. Even in the midst of the falsely­named “Dark Ages”, the leading Anglo­Saxon scholar and monk ‘the Venerable’ Bede (AD 673–735), one of most widely­read scholars for the next 1000 years, wrote that the earth: … in its width it is like a circle, and not circular like a shield but rather like a ball, and it extends from its centre with perfect roundness on all sides.1 The relationship between the spherical earth and the universe, however, was a notorious nut to crack, with many famous scientists weighing in on the difficulty. The main problem is that we are here on earth and, to us, it appears that everything revolves around our planet. We don’t feel like we are sailing through the heavens. We don’t feel like we are moving at all. Is it possible to sort out fact from fiction in this subject? Actually, yes. The answer is both elegant and satisfying, but we must do a little digging to answer the riddle. Biblical phenomenological language Well­meaning Christian geocentrists basically say, “The Bible says the sun rises and sets and that the earth doesn’t move; that settles it.” However, does the Bible really say that absolute geocentrism is true? The use of language complicates this subject. Even today, in both writing and in common speech, people often use “phenomenological language”. Indeed, it would be almost impossible to have many conversations if we did not talk about things like “sunrise” (go ahead, try to describe a sunrise or sunset without sounding like you are stationary and the sun is moving, and compare with our attempt istock photo below). Thus, even when consulting biblical passages, we must be wary of the use of language. This was recognized in the Middle Ages by scientist­clergy such as the priest Jean Buridan (c. 1300–c. 1360), the bishop Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382),2,3 and Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa (1401–1464).4 If you think these men are perhaps insignificant, Buridan’s formulation anticipated the principle of describing motion with respect to reference frames, which paved the way for Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. His idea of impetus anticipated Galileo’s concept of inertia and Newton’s First Law of Motion.5 Historian of science, James Hannam, comments: Like many medieval Christians, Buridan expected God to have arranged things in an elegant way, always allowing that he could do as he pleased. However, although there was also a presumption towards elegance, you still had to check the empirical facts to see if God really operated this way.6 Living almost exactly 100 years after Buridan, Nicolas Cusa wrote eloquently on the subject: It has already become evident to us that the earth is indeed moved, even though we do not perceive this to be the case. For we apprehend motion only through a certain comparison with something fixed. For example, if someone did not know that a body of water was flowing and did not see the shore while he was on a ship in the middle of the water, how would he recognize that the ship was being moved? And because of the fact that it would always seem to each person (whether he were on the earth, the sun, or another star) that he was at the “immovable” center, so to speak, and that all other things were moved: assuredly, it would always be the case that if he were on the sun, he would fix a set of poles in relation to himself; if on the earth, another set; on the moon, another; on Mars, another; and so on. Hence, the world­machine will have its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, so to speak; for God, who is everywhere and nowhere, is its circumference and center.7 It is clear here that he believed the earth moved through space, and he clearly understood the principle of frames of reference (discussed in more detail below). Buridan and Cusa predate the Copernican Revolution, meaning later scientists did not come up with their ideas on their own.8 Centuries of scholarship had been working in this direction. When we consider the biblical ‘proof texts’, most are taken out of context by those few people who want to argue for absolute geocentrism (the view that the earth is fixed and We use similar phrases does not rotate while everything in the universe rotates about us once every day). This every day with no taking out of context is done both by biblioskeptics and, unfortunately, modern geocentrists intention of misleading who take their views as gospel. anyone into thinking we are geocentrists. There are multiple verses that have a generic reference to “sunrise”, including Genesis 19:23, Exodus 22:3, Judges 5:31, Judges 9:33, Job 9:7, Psalm 104:22, Ecclesiastes 1:5, Nahum 3:17, Matthew 5:45, Mark 16:2, and James 1:11. There are also a number of verses that use “sunrise” in relation to the direction “east”, which makes perfect sense, including Numbers 2:3, Numbers 3:38, Numbers 34:15, Joshua 1:15, Joshua 12:1, Joshua 13:5, Joshua 19:12, and Joshua 19:13. Indeed, the normal Greek word for ‘east’, ἀνατολή (anatolē, e.g. Matthew 2:1), has the primary meaning of ‘rising’, usually of the sun. In other places, “sunrise” is used in a prophetic or poetic sense, including Luke 1:78 (also anatolē), which comes in the middle of the prophesy of Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, and is comparing Christ to the sunrise “that shall visit us from on high”.
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