Featured Heliocentricity: What's It Good For?

The Bible needs no support, #1, but the earth does rotate and revolve around the sun. That actually makes the miracle of the sun and moon standing still a bigger deal. The sun stood still and whatever intervention that was needed to hold the oceans in place was done.

 

Your editors think no such thing, but they still report on sunrise and sunset. That's my point.

 

The sun isn't stationary even in a heliocentric model. The sun is revolving around the center of the galaxy. It also rotates on an axis.

When the Scriptures say the sun stood still, it is saying the sun stood still in the sky. So whatever had to happen to make that happen happened. Like Balaam's ass talking, even if a donkey had the intelligence necessary for speech, it's physiology makes speech impossible, yet Balaam's ass spoke.

 

Well, it turns out several were suitable for meat, and that helps.

JK

But there's more to being a good wife than a silent tongue.

JK JK JK!

Those who have studied it, and those who have had to work with those with speech defects.

An arbitrary assumption. We're not told. You simply imagine the account to have transpired a certain way, and you're assuming Eve responded to an exceptional event in the manner a fallen, corrupt, sinful and fearful individual would respond.

This is a leap.

This is a true statement.

 

Stop trying to be clever. You're not good at it.

 

I'm not disputing that. I was making a joke for Heaven's sake. You wrote helpmeat instead of helpmeet.

And it turned out, that some animals were good for meat, and . . . oh, forget it.[/quote]

Yes, they could, and I would encourage you to look into the claims of heliocentrics and how they arrived at their conclusions. Paleontology and astronomy are completely different sciences, and one needs to understand the philosophies that are at work in each and what guides their interpretations of the evidence.

 

Heliocentricity is good for understanding our place in the universe. That is all. The stars were meant to be read, and they're meant to be read from the surface of the earth. That's why they are there. Astrology as we know it is a corruption of the science.

Even unbelieving astronomers assign meaning to their observations. All of the push to see further and further into the heavens is about finding meaning. It isn't about finding ways to ease suffering, or to enable one to be more efficient in his work. Nothing we have that does so depends upon a heliocentric view of the solar system. But as the astronomers' observations stack up, they are constantly bombarded with phenomena that cannot be so easily explained, and that actually works to undo their Naturalistic frame of mind. (See the Robert Jastrow quotes below.)

There is a lesson for the believer and unbeliever alike. Don't read into things. When God says the sun rises and sets, it does so. As far as man in his place relates to the sun, and as the sun governs his day, the sun is doing the moving.

The sun, moon and stars were created. They were created for us. And they were created to be seen from the platform which God prepared for us.

Robert Jastrow quotes:

"Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the Biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and Biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy."

"There is a strange ring of feeling and emotion in these reactions [of scientists to evidence that the universe had a sudden beginning]. They come from the heart whereas you would expect the judgments to come from the brain. Why? I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause, there is no First Cause. … This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized."

"Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proved that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks: What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter or energy into the universe? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination. The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion."

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

 

The observations of astronomers, believing and unbelieving alike, puts the sun in the center of the solar system.

So?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2010/09/14/geocentrism_seriously.html

"However, like young-Earth creationism, the problem here is in that "literal" part*. If you take the Bible to be true word for word, then you have to deny a vast amount of reality, and almost everything we've learned about the Universe since the Bible was written."

This is the fallacious conclusion of Naturalistic Heliocentrists. AND, the majority of the time that heliocentrism is discussed, it is discussed in this manner, because the issue (today) isn't really understanding the physics of the solar system. The issue is your metaphysical conclusions.

Yet, the author contradicts himself just a few paragraphs later.

I have two things to say that might surprise you: first, geocentrism is a valid frame of reference, and second, heliocentrism is not any more or less correct.

...

To us, sitting here on the surface of a planet, geocentrism is a perfectly valid frame of reference. Heck, astronomers use it all the time to point our telescopes. We map the sky using a projected latitude and longitude, and we talk about things rising and setting. That's not only natural, but a very easy way to do those sorts of things. In that case, thinking geocentrically makes sense.

However, as soon as you want to send a space probe to another planet . . .
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Ay, therein lies the rub.

What good is sending a space probe to another planet? The ten-year-old in the Hello Kitty stocking hat and gloves ringing a Salvation Army bell does more good for her fellow man, than Pheonix or MOM has ever done.

What is the first thing we want to know about Mars? We want to know if it could have supported life. Why? We want a validation of Naturalism, Darwinism and the Cosmological Principal. Why? Because we want the Bible to be wrong.

Nationalism gave birth to the space race, but Naturalism is keeping the sickly child breathing, but just barely.

Now the conclusion:

So geocentrism is valid, but so is every other frame. This is the very basis of relativity! One of the guiding principles used by Einstein in formulating it is that there is no One True Frame.
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Is this true? Naturalism: Yes. There is no purpose or meaning, so any vantage point is valid.

Christianity: No: Purpose and meaning define validity.

Were the heavens created? Yes. With purpose and meaning? That depends upon what we know of God. I can hold a page of printed text to the light and look at it from the back. Is that a valid frame of reference? If my purpose is other than simply knowing what the author was communicating, yes. What good is it? There can be a lot of good from it, but the most important good is validating the vantage point from the other side.

So, it isn't that the Bible isn't literal when describing the movement of heavenly bodies. It is literal, and it's relative. And using our imaginations and probes to move to different vantage points is useful, if only to validate the message being read from the other side.

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I agree there is a more lucid way to express what I am trying to express. Were I a professional writer, who spent all his time formulating sentences, it might be easier, but as a factory worker who spends his time and energy troubleshooting circuits and turning bolts, and who has little time to read and write, I find it more challenging.

The sun, moon and stars were created. They were created for us, and they were created to be observed and read from the surface of our habitation. Looking closer at them and from other vantage points, real or imagined, is helpful. One doesn't simply look at a Da Vinci to validate its authenticity. One looks at the pigments, brush strokes, the medium, etc. They hold it to the light. Look at it under different spectra, examine the edges of the canvas or vellum. But the Da Vinci was created to be viewed holistically with the naked eye.

One teaching about a Da Vinci work might use the word "depth." But does the realization that 2D portraits have no clinical depth invalidate the teacher? Not at all. Does the teacher know that the 2D portrait has no "real" depth? Absolutely. Was the teacher speaking the truth? Yes.

So when Christ said, our Father "maketh His sun to rise," was it because He was ignorant of heliocentricity?

Some of you will say yes.

But the answer is no. Was He speaking figuratively? No. Was he speaking literally? Yes. His speech was relative.

 

Here's another geocentric model by which the positions of planets can be accurately predicted with simple math.



The earth is in the center, and the sun circles the earth and the other planets circle the sun.

 

It seems that Einstein and Hawking disagree with you about whether or not anyone can "see" the earth in orbit around the sun.

I have come to believe that the motion of the Earth cannot be detected by any optical experiment. Einstein. How I Created the Theory of Relativity

Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true….one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest. Hawking. The Grand Design​

In fact the history of cosmology is: Geocentricity, Heliocentricity, and Relativity. Relativity says that all motion is relative, and therefore, geocentricity and heliocentricity are equally valid models, and can be validated by both Newtonian physics and Relativity.

Which model is chosen is a matter of preference:

Before Copernicus, people thought that the Earth stood still and that the heavens revolved about it once a day. Copernicus taught that ‘really’ the Earth revolves once a day, and the daily rotation of sun and stars is only ‘apparent.’ Galileo and Newton endorsed this view, and many things were thought to prove it – for example, the flattening of the Earth at the poles, and the fact that bodies are heavier there than at the equator. But in the modern theory the question between Copernicus and his predecessors is merely one of convenience; all motion is relative, and there is no difference between the two statements: ‘the earth rotates once a day’ and ‘the heavens revolve about the Earth once a day.’ The two mean exactly the same thing, just as it means the same thing if I say that a certain length is six feet or two yards. Astronomy is easier if we take the sun as fixed than if we take the Earth, just as accounts are easier in decimal coinage. But to say more for Copernicus is to assume absolute motion, which is a fiction. All motion is relative, and it is a mere convention to take one body as at rest. All such conventions are equally legitimate, though not all are equally convenient. Bertrand Russell, The ABC of Relativity​

So, when you said, "Heliocentricity is not a "view", it is a fact . . . ", and I responded with, "Well, unless you've made the observations yourself, you don't know it as a fact, you merely accept it as a fact," my answer was more in line with the consensus of modern physicists who say you cannot know it as a fact.

 

Hans Reichenbach would say there is no truth to either model:

…it is very important to acknowledge that the Copernican theory offers a very exact calculation of the apparent movements of the planets…even though it must be conceded that, from the modern standpoint practically identical results could be obtained by means of a somewhat revised Ptolemaic system….It makes no sense, accordingly, to speak of a difference in truth between Copernicus and Ptolemy: both conceptions are equally permissible descriptions. What has been considered as the greatest discovery of occidental wisdom, as opposed to that of antiquity, is questioned as to its truth value. From Copernicus to Einstein.​

 

Was Christ being truthful when He said our Father in heaven maketh His sun to rise?