By: DAVID RICE To: J.J. HITT Re: Geocentrism Contra Mundum No. 6 Winter 1993 What is Geoce

By: DAVID RICE
To: J.J. HITT
Re: Geocentrism

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Contra Mundum
No. 6 Winter 1993

What is Geocentricity?

by Gerardus D. Bouw

Copyright 1993 Gerardus D. Bouw

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To hear tell, geocentrism, the ancient doctrine that the
earth is fixed motionless at the center of the universe, died
over four centuries ago. At that time Nicolaus Copernicus, a
Polish canon who dabbled in astrology, claimed that the sun
and not the earth was at the center of the universe. His idea
is known as heliocentrism. It took a hundred years for
heliocentrism to become the dominant opinion; it did so with
a complete lack of evidence in its favor.

Yet the victory of heliocentrism has been less than total.
Over the years geocentrism has had its spokesmen. Among
scientists who adhered to the centrality of the earth were
three generations of Cassinis: a family of astronomers who
dominated French astronomy from the late seventeenth to the
early nineteenth centuries. Astronomers, pastors, and
educators in the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church
maintained the geocentric truths well into the twentieth
century. They, with the reformers such as Luther, saw that
the embracing of heliocentrism would weaken not only science,
but also the authority of the Bible.

The second of these two concerns: how the Bible's authority
is weakened by heliocentrism; stems from the firm manner in
which the Bible teaches geocentricity. Geocentric verses
range from those with only positional import, such as
references to 'up' and 'down'; through the question of just
what the earth was 'orbiting' the first three days while it
awaited the creation of the sun; to overt references such as
Ecclesiastes 1, verse 5:

     The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his
     place where he arose.

Perhaps the strongest geocentric verse in the Bible is Joshua
10:13:

     And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people
     had avenged themselves upon their enemies. It not this written in
     the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of
     heaven, and hastened not to go down about a whole day.

Here the Editor of scripture, the Holy Ghost Himself,
endorses the daily movement of the sun and moon. After all,
God could just as well have written: "And the earth stopped
turning, so that the sun seemed to stand still, and the moon
seemed to stay." That wording would be not more "confusing"
to the reader than anything in Job chapters 38 through 41. [1]

About the immobility of the earth the Bible seems clear
enough. The nineteenth-century mathematician Augustus de
Morgan put it quite succinctly when he wrote that those who
try to get around the Bible's wording:

     make strange reasons. They undertake a priori, to settle Divine
     intentions. The Holy Spirit did not mean to teach natural
     philosophy: this they know beforehand; or else they infer it from
     finding that the earth does move, and the Bible says it does not.
     Of course, ignorance apart, every word is truth, or the writer
     did not mean truth. But his puts the whole book on its trial: for
     we never can find out what the writer meant, unless we otherwise
     find out what is true. Those who like may, of course, declare for
     an inspiration over which they are to be viceroys; but common
     sense will either accept the verbal meaning or deny verbal
     inspiration. [2} [Emphasis added.]

In other words, either God writes what he means and means
what he writes, or else he passes off mere appearances as
truths and ends up the liar. The ultimate issue is one of
final authority: is the final say God's or man's? This is
brought home again and again by humanists, such as the
twentieth-century philosopher Bertrand Russell and astronomer
Ivan King, who point to the church's abandonment of
geocentricity as having "freed" man from the ancient
God-centered outlook on life to the modern man-centered
outlook. [3]

The Copernican Revolution, as this change of view is called,
was not just a revolution in astronomy, but it also spread
into politics and theology. In particular, it set the stage
for the development of Bible criticism. After all, if God
cannot be taken literally when He writes of the "rising of
the sun", then how can He be taken literally in writing of
the "rising of the Son?"

The other of the two concerns over heliocentrism, as
expressed by the reformers, is that the earth-centered view
is better science than is heliocentrism. Although hints of
that have sporadically surfaced in physics over the last 150
years, only in the last decade has this claim become
substantial through a new discipline called geocentricity.
Whereas geocentrism was a concept which divided the universe
into independent parts, geocentricity is an integrative
approach, starting from the very smallest parts and
integrating them into a unified view of the universe. For
being only eleven years old, geocentricity has been
surprisingly successful.

To illustrate the difference in approach between
geocentricity and heliocentrism, consider the derivation of
the equations which technicians use to orbit space ships. Now
some will insist that since satellites are sent up using
heliocentrically-derived equations, that the space program is
proof of heliocentrism. This erroneously assumes that the
geocentrically-derived equations would be different from the
heliocentric ones. That such is not the case has repeatedly
been shown in scientific papers since the turn of the
century. [4] These papers show that the geocentric model is
entirely compatible with phenomena such as the stationary
satellite, the Foucault pendulum, the equatorial bulge, and
how the distant stars can be 'moving' faster than the speed
of light; [5] in short, they answer every argument based on
the Coriolis and centrifugal effects. The main difference is
that geocentric models must always take the existence of the
universe into account whereas heliocentric models always
ignore it. Other than that, the differences between
heliocentrism and geocentricity are philosophical and
theological. [6]

To further illustrate the difference the geocentric theory
can make in viewing the universe, consider the two rivals'
views on what space looks like on very, very small scales. At
a scale much smaller than nuclear particles, modern science
describes space as "foamy". The size of these foamy bubbles
or "grains" of space is very small, amounting to only about
0.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,002 centimeter
(written as 2x10-33 cm). Each grain has a mass of about
0.00002 gram. According to the heliocentrically-based view,
the grains spontaneously appear out of nothing, exist for a
brief instant (5x10-44 second), and then vanishes into the
nothingness from which they came. Strictly speaking, this
violates the first law of thermodynamics which claims that
energy can neither be created or destroyed by any natural
process.

The geocentric theory explains the grains of space without
violating any of the laws of thermodynamics. It takes the
grains at face value, presuming them to be real. The medium
of the grains is tremendously dense (4x1993 gm/cm3): so dense
that one would have to pack 1039 universes into a cube one
centimeter on a side in order to match their density.
Geocentric theory has identified the grains as making up the
firmament of Genesis chapter 1. [7]

It has been shown that because of the presence of nuclear
matter - the materials which makes up our every-day world -
the firmament must rotate once every 24 hours. [8] In other
words, the model of the firmament mathematically mandates the
Biblical, geocentric 24-hour period. The material objects of
the universe are not at all aware of this rotation. Thus
arguments about stars moving faster than the speed of light
are based on incomplete knowledge. And dense though it is, we
effortlessly move thorough the firmament. That, too, follows
from the equations.

The firmament goes a long way towards explaining some of the
mysteries of modern science. It readily explains why more
massive nuclear particles are smaller than less massive ones.
In the every-day realm it explains why, in general, mass
depends on volume. It explains why very large objects, such
as galaxies and clusters of galaxies seem to be as much as
500 times more massive than is indicated by the amount of
light they generate. [9] In addition, the firmamental model
readily accounts for such experimental results as the Sagnac
effect, the Faraday disk-generator paradox, earth's
night-time electric field, and ball lightning. All of these
point to geocentricity as serious science.

Despite the testimony of all the equations, and despite the
published testimonies of top scientists to the viability of
geocentricity as a model of the universe, and despite the
inability of experiments to establish its truth or falsity;
some will still scoff at geocentricity. How can one ever
determine which is the truth? Only by going outside the
universe and taking a look around can one ascertain the truth
of the matter. Without that ability to 'look around outside',
physics cannot resolve the debate. However, since God does
know what is beyond the universe, should His word not be
taken as the final authority? It is the testimony of God as
found in the Bible which constitutes the foundation of modern
geocentricity. May it ever be so. CM

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For more information about geocentricity and the Bible and
astronomy, the interested reader can write to:

                     Association for Biblical Astronomy

                             4527 Wetzel Avenue

                             Cleveland OH 44109
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... "HolySmoke is more popular than Jesus." -- J.J. Hitt to Steve Wallis
* Shy.David@EdenBBS.com