could a geocentrist even screw in a lightbulb?

There's here, they're loud, and they somehow missed the last 600 years of science...

ancient universe

Illustration by Michael Paukner

You would think that after seeing all the creationists who can't even pick valid lines of argument, politicians who think that our planet is just 6,000 years old based on arbitrary numerology, modern day adherents of a discarded, half-century old theory about the origins of petroleum, and various New Age cranks who spew random nonsense about physics and pretend to be experts in the field,

I would just shrug at the idea of an honest to goodness convention of geocentrists taking place half a millennia after their ideas were shown to be out of date and replaced with the kind of knowledge that lets us travel to other worlds and see impressive demonstrations of exactly how other planets orbit their stars.

In fact, denying that planets travel around stars due to simple laws of gravity is one of the alarmingly few remaining things you can do to earn near universal rebuke as an ignoramus. Even little kids know how the layout of a solar system. But that's not going to let our collection of throwbacks to the 16th century spend a minute considering their glaring mistakes. Oh no…

Not only will you see from Volume I how modern science has documented for us in bold fashion that the Earth is motionless in space and occupies the center of the universe (yet have done an equally remarkable job in keeping these important facts out of our educational system), you will now see in Volume II how deeply the popes of the 17th century were involved in condemning heliocentrism, guiding the process step-by-step and finally castigating it as "formally heretical." You will also see how effusive is the data in Scripture that teaches a geocentric universe in the most detailed exegesis of Holy Writ ever presented to the public on this topic.

Ok gentlemen, just because Ken Ham calls this kind of weapons grade inanity science, doesn't mean you'd be wise to follow suit. Modern science has demonstrated anything but our planet's motionlessness. Were the Earth in the center of the solar system, it would violate the very basics of gravity. Our sun is a lot bigger and a lot heavier than the Earth, or any other planet for that matter. Therefore, all lighter objects are drawn into orbits around it, trapped in its gravitational well.

If this weren't the case, the space travel we do today would be totally impossible because we couldn't tell where the planet and the spacecraft would intersect, something we have to measure with the kind of extreme precision that would be unattainable in geocentric models. And how does a geocentrist explain why other planets orbit around their stars, having been caught doing so by telescopes in our, and in alien solar systems?

Just about every possible scenario in defense of geocentrism requires that we throw out virtually every extremely well studied and understood concept in basic physics because there's a group of self-indulgent ignoramuses who desperately try to appeal to their audience's vanity by claiming that it's only intuitive that we're a mollycoddled creation of a deity who thinks we're so precious and special that we need to be placed in the very center of the universe. In the words of my generation: humility fail.

By the way, note how the hotel in which they're hosting this conference of witlessness is advertised as being near Notre Dame. You know, kind of like the guy wearing a sandwich board and screaming about the end of days does it in front of the CNN building, rather than in the studio and on the air?

This isn't even grasping at a vague straw while trying to establish respectability. This is a cry for psychiatric help. Using their logic, the time yours truly dipped his hands in the same river where Jesus was rumored to have been baptized should have given me divine powers. Unfortunately for them, neither I, nor the countless millions of people who visited the same stretch of the Middle East and did the exact same thing, developed any supernatural abilities.

Likewise, just because you hold an event of abject imbecility near a college campus, the academic reputation of those doing research at the nearby institution won't rub off on you. It will only make the overwhelming majority of the world point, laugh, and ask if you were awake during kindergarten science classes. And yes, that includes the very church they claim to defend against the evils of modern day astronomy and cosmology.

  archived from wowt
              
# space // astronomy / cranks / geocentrism / religion


  show comments
latest reads

the long shot scheme to rattle the world's biggest social platform

Knives are out for Meta in court, with politicians and lawyers eager to send a message. But how likely is it to work? And is it even a good idea?
the long shot scheme to rattle the world's biggest social platform

the forward centaur's guide to complex problems

Tech critics have a lot to say about how the generative bubble will burst. They're far more mum on what to do while we wait to see if it does.
the forward centaur's guide to complex problems

the me generations: rise of the digital boomers

What happens when a generation grows up being served exclusively by recommendation algorithms by Big Tech.
the me generations: rise of the digital boomers

how american hustle culture is killing literacy

We're worried about a post-literacy world because we're living in a post-boredom one.
how american hustle culture is killing literacy

how to endanger the future of space flight for status and profit

CEOs and space faring powers are treating low Earth orbit as their personal playgrounds, much to the horror of space agencies.
how to endanger the future of space flight for status and profit

why your boss is obsessed with a.i. past the point of sanity

Not only is the C-suite not immune to AI psychosis, they seem to be primed to suffer the worst of it as their employees duck and cover.
why your boss is obsessed with a.i. past the point of sanity