alanorei #fundie

alanorei #fundie frankchalk.blogspot.com

As a King James Bible believer, I have no problem with geocentricity.

...

In essence, it appears that satellites and related calculations aren't in themselves sufficient to distinguish between either geocentricity or heliocentricity. Either approach, for example, can be used to justify the 'slingshot effect' - though it is interesting that spacecraft orbits for other planets are calculated using the Earth, not the sun, as the centre of the coordinates. The implication is that the Earth is the centre of the planetary system.

71 comments

old comment by Doubting Thomas

Well, if God were going to design the earth specifically so man could live on it, why wouldn't he put it at the center of the universe? But seeing as how there's no evidence for either God or geocentrism, and plenty of evidence to the contrary, they're both ridiculous ideas.

I don't know why they stop at geocentrism, though, instead of going for the entire biblical view of the world. That is, a flat earth surrounded by water, with a domed sky with a "firmament" above it with floodgates which open and let the waters above fall to the ground as rain, and with the sun, moon, and stars hanging in the sky between the ground and the firmament. If you're really going to use the bible as a science book, this is what you'd believe.

old comment by Anon

>>John_in_Oz

Amusingly, his first proposition negates his second one.
Certainly we can assume that the earth is stationary and the rest of the universe is moving, the same way we can assume a wave-tossed boat is stable and the rest of reality is moving... but tht'd not only defy the first law of thermodynamics, and require several on-going miracles, but also it'd prove God's a total dick and a deceiver. Do you Fundies really want to worship a great deceiver? <<

No - thermodynamics is still correct in a geocentric reference frame, as it is in any reference frame - relativity is wonderful. Geocentric merely makes computing anything beyond Earth orbit way more difficult than solar-system-barycenter, or Mars-centric, or wherever.

I'm not qualified to say if that means that God is a dick.

old comment by Anon-e-moose

"As a King James Bible believer, I have no problem with geocentricity."

Nor does the Roman Catholic Church (they even had to acknowledge - eventually - that Galileo was right all along). They certainly don't have a problem with the Big Bang, and even Evolution.

The Church of England certainly don't have a problem with the geocentric model. Nor the Big Bang. Or even Evolution.

And the CofE - even it's head, Queen Elizabeth II - are King James Bible believers.

So why do you fundies get your collective knickers in a knot over the notion that your beloved KJV might not be as factually correct as you Bible literalists think it is?

Oh yes, that's right. Because then, like a house of cards, your whole fragile 'beliefs' and 'faith' would collapse. But then, that's what progress has been doing: gradually chipping away at the foundations of your 'beliefs', as - each time a gap is filled - scientific fact more and more dominates human thinking, thus making your 'God' less & less relevant in people's lives.

The war is already won. Communications satellites, which make up part of the carrier network that is the internet today - which has changed the world forever, and what you're using, alanorei - was conceived (as far back as 1945) by Arthur C. Clarke. An Atheist.

So how's that job of yours, alanorei? As opposed to, say, the one you're not working on, at NASA/JPL.

old comment by Professor M

Sure, you could set up a coordinate system that had the earth as the fixed center of everything -- this could even be quite convenient for describing things on or quite near this planet. (Beyond that, it would just make the math horrid.) This, though, is actually completely incompatible with any claim of geocentrism -- because one could just as easily choose any body or location (or string of locations, in either inertial or non-inertial frames of reference...) as the "center of the universe". The math involved in describing the location and motion of everything from the perspective of someone on this planet actually implies that there's really nothing special about this spacetime location in the grand scheme of things.

old comment by JohnTheAtheist

Another poster earlier got it right. From an astronomoers point of view, heliocentrism and geocentrism aren't really terms that apply. That is how misguided alanorei is.

Technically speaking one body doesn't really orbit another body. Two bodies are said to be in orbit around each other. That is a minor technical difference when talking about two bodies as disparate in mass as the earth and sun because the focal point of the orbit is deep within the core of the sun. But the sun is in orbit with the earth, the earth causes a "wobble" in the sun and it is that wobble that is allowing us to discover planets around other stars.

The fact of the matter is that two equally massive objects that are in orbit around each other would both appear to orbit a point equidistant between the two bodies.

old comment by Tempus

Either approach, for example, can be used to justify the 'slingshot effect' - though it is interesting that spacecraft orbits for other planets are calculated using the Earth, not the sun, as the centre of the coordinates. The implication is that the Earth is the centre of the planetary system.

It's called the Hill Sphere.

From Wikipedia:

An astronomical body's Hill sphere is the region in which it dominates the attraction of satellites. For a planet to retain a moon, the moon must have an orbit that lies within the Hill sphere of the planet. That moon would, in turn, have a Hill sphere of its own. Any object within that distance would tend to become a satellite of the moon, rather than of the planet itself.

Link

alanorei #fundie frankchalk.blogspot.com

71 comments

Confused?