Mikey Clarke Thinks YEC is American Protestants Only, Austin Middleton That Heliocentrism was Proven by Parallax (or he thought so, at least)

Mike Hartigan took me for a Protestant · I don't take Francis Marsden for a Catholic · Mutually Small Respect with Susan Kelly · Mikey Clarke Thinks YEC is American Protestants Only, Austin Middleton That Heliocentrism was Proven by Parallax (or he thought so, at least) · Own Answer, Same Question

Mikey Clarke

April 20

Lived in New Zealand

The pope now accepts evolution. What consequences will follow? I see the universe and us created in 6 days will now come under question and the consequences from this acceptance being the collapse of faith?

The Pope accepts evolution?

I’m no expert on this stuff, but I’m fairly sure the notion that Christians should oppose evolution is almost exclusively an American Protestant thing. That’s where the young-Earth creationists hang out, isn’t it? Nothing to do with Catholicism.

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sun

“That’s where the young-Earth creationists hang out, isn’t it?”

Check Robert Sungenis with DeLano, check Tom Zimmer, a pauper pilgrim I met in Rome, check Kolbe Center for Creation Studies, check alternative popes like Pope Michael (the one I accept), or the Palmarian line (which I for a while accepted first claimant of).

And check 19th C. Roman Catholic actual writers.

Or while Hilaire Belloc may not have taken a stand, check his comment in Return to the Baltic that the Ice Age ended very closely before the beginning of the Christian era, since he didn’t trust science to know it exactly and he did trust mankind to invent ships as soon as a habitat like Denmark is available.

II

Michael James Gentry

April 21

So called "Intelligent Design". Evolution with The guiding hand. It took the Church centuries to apologize for Galileo, showing again that there is always a caveat to the acceptance of science.

Austin Middleton

Thu

Galileo was (eventually demonstrated to be) correct, but his work did not support the conclusions he made, specifically regarding parallax; his lenses weren’t strong enough to take the measurements needed, but that didn’t stop him from making evience-based claims without the evidence. The Church was right — and scientifically rigorous — to condemn his work for being substandard and overreaching.

Above was

answered twice, a and b.

a

Michael James Gentry

Thu

Galileo was charged with heresy by "qualifiers" of the Inquisition and church officials, not with promoting unsupported science.

b

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sun

“Galileo was (eventually demonstrated to be) correct,”

When, how, by whom?

Austin Middleton

Sun

You mean, when was it proved the earth revolved around the sun?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

22h ago

Yes, exactly.

Some anti-Church would have it Copernicus or Galileo proved it.

You obviously disagree, and so do I.

So, on your view, when was it proven that the earth revolved yearly around the sun and daily around itself? And how and by whom?

Austin Middleton

21h ago

My understanding of astronomy is incomplete and is not my expertise. However, I believe the complaint about Galileo’s evidence was the interstellar parallax, which would exist if the earth orbited the sun, could not be demonstrated with Galileo’s instruments. FW Bessel was able to offer evidence of a parallax shift of 61 Cygni in 1838.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

21h ago

Ah, but the parallax Galileo and Bellarmine were talking about would have been fairly equal across the sphere of the fix stars - Pisces being sp much larger in September as Virgo in Mars.

Both took non-planet and non-comet and non-moon celestial bodies to be one sphere above all of the “solar system objects”.

Now, as the Bessel phenomenon did not show that, does it really prove Heliocentrism? Or, to put it in another way, is it really incompatible with Geocentrism?

Austin Middleton

16h ago

Let me check my astrophysics degree…

… nope, I don’t have an astrophysics degree.

I don’t know if you’re a geocentric apologist or what, but my knowledge of astronomy is limited, and am not interested in an inquisition (ha) on its rigor.

If you’d like to make statements about Galileo or Bessel and the parallax that the Church was unconvinced by, please do, but continued questions won’t get much from me: I am outside of my field.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Ah, yes, I will.

Galileo and Bellarmine were discussing the parallax of (the sphere of) fix stars. Bellarmine : “we don’t see it”, Galileo : “that’s because they are too far off”.

Bessel could look further, and didn’t find any parallax of the sphere of fix stars. Either he found parallax of some especially close stars (not sure if he found more than 61 Cygni, but off the hand I think so) or he found a proper movement that is not parallactic.

Like Bradley either found a larger shift (against which “parallax” is measured) that was due to different aberration of star light, or he found a proper movement not due to it.

With stars moved by angelic movers, such proper movements are perfectly plausible.

Therefore neither proved heliocentrism.

No pope was convinced of heliocentrism according to a direct statement of as high dignity as an encyclical before Vatican II, at which point at least the ensuing “popes” (of which the last three were heliocentrics) are disputed.

Pope Leo XIII adressed the subject in an oblique and ambiguous way in Providentissimus Deus, Pope Benedict XV used a subsidiary clause of agnosticism on the matter in a short one dedicated to Dante, In praeclara summorum.

Pius VII took Settele off the index, but did not oblige Anfossi to renounce Geocentrism. Gregory XVI took even Galileo off the index, but did equally not oblige geocentrics to become heliocentrics.

As far as I know, neither of these even said directly in so many words that heliocentrism may licitly be believed.