CMI vs Geocentrism, Again

CMI vs Geocentrism, Again · Spirograph Patterns · Sungenis Also Answered CMI's Video

Geocentrism
22nd of July 2021 | Creation Ministries International
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow_JMm0YJKc

I

1:01 I do not know Buridan in detail, but Nicolas Oresme and Nicolas of Cusa were not dissenters.

Oresme considered the Heliocentric version in and of itself possible, all objections could be answered, but pointless, since nothing evidenced it.

Cusanus did say the earth moved some, but in the sense that only God, the uncreated, could be perfectly immobile.

So, neither of them was a Heliocentric. Cusanus didn't speak on the topic at all, Oresme treated it like we would treat the idea that the universe shrank to half its size every 24 hours in every dimension, and that constants adjusted accordingly : cannot be directly refuted as contrary to evidence, but is a pointless quirk without any evidence.

8:15 The exact mobility you attribute to the Sun, as Heliocentrics, is fairly similar, if not in causation, at least in concept of effect, to the mobility Cusanus was talking about.

II

1:49 The observation facilities were certainly the background for better astronomic observations.

It is quite another question whether that is "leading to rejection of Geocentrism" or whether something else is.

Case in point : Copernicus and Tycho agreed that Geocentrism implies spirograph patterns in lots of planets, all except Sun and Moon (planet, old sense = celestial body roving around the zodiac).

Tycho accepted, that's how God created the universe we are in, on relevant levels between fix stars and moon, Copernicus having never actually seen a spirograph pattern and finding them difficult to describe mathematically, considered they must be ugly things that God could never expose celestial creations to.

III

5:18 Didn't know Copernicus was encouraged by a protégé of the heresiarch (next to Luther) of Lutheranism, Melanchthon ...

"The Wittenberg Interpretation refers to the work of astronomers and mathematicians at the University of Wittenberg in response to the heliocentric model of the solar system proposed by Nicholas Copernicus, in his 1543 book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. The Wittenberg Interpretation fostered an acceptance of the heliocentric model and had a part in beginning the Scientific Revolution."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenberg_interpretation_of_Copernicus

Thanks for noting. I did know the Galileo - Milton connexion, and of recently, the Masonic connexion to Newtonianism, but not yet this one, thank you.

IV

6:37 This is a very bad parody of the Galileo case.

First, there were two processes, one against a prior book.

Second, the pope may or may not have felt slighted by portrayal as Simplicio, but he was not one of the judges in the process against Galileo in person. He kind of made sure the process could be equitable by stepping out of the direct process of judging.

Third, even from the first process, the magisterium had an understanding that Heliocentrism went against the traditional exegesis (which is not an eisegesis, but a prima facie exegesis, btw) of Joshua 10:12-13.

Fourth, you have not grasped (or shown yourself to have grasped) that the first process got started by a Dominican (from the same convent where the very famous portrait of St. Dominic of Guzmán is) who took fire against Heliocentrism upon reading what Galileo and Father Foscarini had to say about Joshua 10.

Simplicio doesn't mean "fool", but it does mean "simple" with connotations varying between honest and naive.

V

8:34 First an appeal to Newton who wasn't on the scene yet, then "if there were aliens" ... yeah, that one has been for fairly long a propaganda piece for Heliocentrism, but it is fairly rich coming from colleagues of Gary Bates, and his view that aliens are an endtimes deception.

VI

9:00 I first notice, you show three Bible quotes that do not include Joshua 10.

Or the passage in Habacuc that refers back to it.

I then notice Robert Carter asks if the Bible doesn't trump all these measurements ... but so far no attempt has been made to state any measurement actually argues Heliocentrism conclusively.

Sure, orbits are simpler geometrical shapes with geocentrism, but atmospheric C14 is also simpler, around 100 pmC over known time, in Deep Time as per C14.

VII

9:29 The modern situation, in which heliocentrics use geocentric language for convenience, is perhaps not germane to a balanced view of what Scripture means.

10:03 According to Geocentrism, the language of fix points is not phenomenological.

According to first audience of book of Joshua, as well as witnesses to the miracle, Sun standing still would arguably not have been just phenomenological.

B U T in Joshua 10:12 we have not a description of what happened, which in principle could be phenomenological, we have the words of a miracle maker, and it would be the only time in all the Bible (or the rest of Church history) in which a miracle worker gave the miracle working order to something else than the thing meant to change behaviour.

Plus, the idea this is ok has prompted liberals (including in Swedish state Church, of which I am an ex) to pretend Christ could have actually cured mental conditions without any spiritual cause while purporting to adress demons.

11:13 ὑπενόουν οἱ ναῦται προσάγειν τινὰ αὐτοῖς χώραν.

My rusty Greek confirms this.

The sailors were made aware of some shore moving forth to them.

Phenomenological language, but in the phenomenological context of "ὑπενόουν" - were made aware of, it's active and I haven't looked it up.

Does mean phenomenological language is a possibility per se in the Bible, but does not mean that anything can be written off as phenomenological just when it suits.

VIII

12:46 Psalm 103 (the one you number as 104) actually places "the earth shall not be moved" in a fairly physical context.

a) it's after a word of earth being founded
b) it's about creation as such.

Psalm 120 has "may he not suffer thy foot to be moved" in a series of wellwishes.

A "moved" foot could be understood in terms of a judoka falling here. I think the grammar for "may he not suffer you to move your own foot" would have been different.

IX

13:04 Do you also consider someone working a miracle would be flexible about how to describe what he wants to happen, like describing it in inaccurate terms?

Plus, you haven't adressed Habacuc 3:11. "Stood still in their courses" is fairly different from "stood still from our point of view".

X

16:14 Epicycles may be geometrically ad hoc, but the actual explanation, to Ptolemy, St. Thomas, Cusanus as well, whom you cited, is angels move celestial objects.

So, the overall explanation is not ad hoc.

leaving out

the rest for now. And getting back next day.

XI

16:13 "None of those things are predicted from the basic idea."

If the basic idea is, willing and witting agents produce the movements, they can be observed, predicted by extrapolation, but not predicted as to what has not yet been observed.

However, there is one difficulty with epicycles I had not thought of, all the time I've been geocentric, and the difficulty is this: to Ptolemy or St. Thomas or Copernicus probably too, space or the heavens are divided by solid spheres of crystal.

When Providentissimus Deus (a document not short of Chicago declaration as to Biblical inerrancy) in §18 gives a hint about phenomenological language, the footnote is to Summa Theologiae, I, Q 70, A1, ad 3, which in turn cites Ptolemy and Chrysostom:

Reply to Objection 3. According to Ptolemy the heavenly luminaries are not fixed in the spheres, but have their own movement distinct from the movement of the spheres. Wherefore Chrysostom says (Hom. vi in Gen.) that He is said to have set them in the firmament, not because He fixed them there immovably, but because He bade them to be there, even as He placed man in Paradise, to be there. In the opinion of Aristotle, however, the stars are fixed in their orbits, and in reality have no other movement but that of the spheres; and yet our senses perceive the movement of the luminaries and not that of the spheres (De Coel. ii, text. 43). But Moses describes what is obvious to sense, out of condescension to popular ignorance, as we have already said (I:67:4; I:68:3). The objection, however, falls to the ground if we regard the firmament made on the second day as having a natural distinction from that in which the stars are placed, even though the distinction is not apparent to the senses, the testimony of which Moses follows, as stated above (De Coel. ii, text. 43). For although to the senses there appears but one firmament; if we admit a higher and a lower firmament, the lower will be that which was made on the second day, and on the fourth the stars were fixed in the higher firmament.

Summa Theologiae, Part I
Question 70. The work of adornment, as regards the fourth day : Article 1. Whether the lights ought to have been produced on the fourth day?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1070.htm#article1

So, the point is, while crystalline spheres do not fetter the heavenly bodies totally, they might put some constraints on how much epicycles there could be.

Now, Tycho observed a comet going through several "crystalline spheres" if there had been any.

This means that this difficulty simply isn't one.

When it comes to inventing new and new concepts to account for more and more observations, not predicted by the basic idea, could Newton predict the exact orbit of Mercury (as explained by Einstein) or the Chandler wobble? Did you not have an article about how Pluto was discovered, meaning the Newtonian interpretation of the observations was fallacious?

XII

16:49 Very bad summary:

• Church Fathers supported heliocentrism; the meridian line example.
• Christians supported Copernicus.
• Galileo helped but wasn't always tactful.

Reply point by point:

• They didn't. Exactly one Church father is on record as saying about a list of Pagan philosophers that so and so discovered Earth turns around the Sun - he could have said that to make fun of Pagan philosophers. Using the term "discovered" with some tongue in cheek. St. Paschasius was dug up by David Palm who is on a kind of crusade against Robert Sungenis. The meridian line example isn't one. Buridan, Oresme and Cusanus aren't canonised Church Fathers and Buridan was not even a clergyman.
• Even Melanchthon, precisely as Luther, discarded Copernicus. And this was before Joshua 10 came into the scope of the debate.
• Galileo was tactless enough to touch on exegesis, including of Joshua 10. That was the only lack of tact on his part that had any actual bearing on either of the two trials, it launched the first one, against his book, The Assayer, I think, or Sidereus Nuntius, which St. Robert Bellarmine condemned.

XIII

17:13 Kepler's ellipses were accepted by Riccioli, who otherwise accepted Tychonian Geocentrism.

What we have now, as Geocentrics, is, Ptolemy's epicycles improved by Tycho to having Sun in epicentre, improved by Riccioli to having Sun in one of the elliptic foci as epi-not-quite-centre.

Note that ellipses with Sun as epi-not-quite-centre are quite possible for angels to arrange.

Riccioli, by the way also lists a number of authorities in favour of angelic movers. His problem is, why do celestial objects move, and he lists four possible solutions:

• God Himself moves each "star"
• an inherent cause, but a mechanistic one, Kepler had suggested magnetism
• an inherent cause, namely "stars" being alive
• angels move one for each celestial object

The first is rejected as not how St. Thomas views the general providence : God moves things by secondary causes, usually not Himself immediately.

He rejects purely mechanistic causes as not being how noble as God would move objects this far up.

He rejects celestial objects being alive in themselves.

He accepts "the fourth position and the most common one" as having none of these defaults. He also lists a lot of authorities for this position, including St. Thomas Aquinas and Cusanus, but also including the Coimbra Jesuits.

XIV

19:06 God moving the aether around Earth at an angular speed of 360° every 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds, angels moving objects within that, it is also a formula that explains, if not predicts, everything.

It does not exclude gravity, so the fly-by's are real.

And claiming every inch of trajectories was predicted in advance, rather than where they arrive at, is overdoing the case.

We do not have optical proof the trajectories seen from us would be making an apparent zig zag, reflecting our moving out of and back into the launching point of trajectories. I asked that specific question, it was my one remaining doubt about Heliocentrism could be true, here is the correspondence:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Asking an Erudite for Optical Proof
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2014/09/asking-erudite-for-optical-proof.html

XV

20:00 Neptune was a bona fide discovery, by Newtonian physics, but Pluto, previously pretended to be same thing ...

A lesson from Pluto
by Tas Walker | This article is from
Creation 31(2):54–55, March 2009
https://creation.com/a-lesson-from-pluto

[tried to add, above disappeared, following]

It can be added, that Tychonian analysis of where the orbits are would not detract from the Neptune discovery.

XV

20:45 sth, Jonathan Sarfati spoke about importance of prediction.

You know, the oracle of Delphi was also good at getting predictions fulfilled. Perseus did kill Akrisios, Oedipus did kill Laios and marry Iocaste, Croesus, marching across a river did finish a big empire (his own Lydian one) ... St. Luke mentions in chapter 16 of Acts that St. Paul was not quite impressed with the benignity of the prediction formula.

On I, let's quote the timeline given by CMI as to Buridan, Oresme, Cusanus:

~1350

Jean Buridan discovered the law of inertia centuries before Galileo, and proposed a geokinetic idea as a mathematically elegant hypothesis.

~1380

Nicole Oresme invented graphs of motion centuries before Galileo, and addressed most scientific and theological objections to geokineticism.

~1450

Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa proposed that the earth would be moving relative to reference frames of heavenly bodies.

Why the Universe does not revolve around the Earth / Refuting absolute geocentrism
a linea : Timeline of events—a fun romp through history
by Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati Published 12 February 2015; last update 26 December 2019
https://creation.com/refuting-absolute-geocentrism#Timeline-of-events

Calling geokinetism a mathematically elegant hypothesis, as Buridan did, is not calling it physical fact.

Nicolaus Oresme did adress "most scientific and theological objections to geokinetism" but concluded it was nevertheless unsupported by good reasons.

And Nicolaus Cusanus was speaking of reference frames of heavenly bodies in the context they cite, while the most absolute reference frame would be that of God's heaven above these, which standing still observes an earth standing still. I have not read Cusanus, but I suppose that is what he would have answered and would have called this cherrypicking on the part of CMI./HGL

On XIII, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati had claimed, ellipses were accepted, "not because of any conspiracy ..."

Q feedback

... On the other side, you refute this opinion [of theistic evolution], claim that evolution is not true and that there is a conspiracy done by mainstream media and education to promote evolution …

Shaun Doyle's reply

No. We say that it’s a worldview dispute. We say that evolution is the logical consequence of the naturalistic worldview that is assumed throughout so much of the West today. ...

How can we tell who is right in the origins debate?
Feedback archive → Feedback 2021 → Published: 24 July 2021 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/who-is-right-in-the-origins-debate

While there actually is a worldview dispute, there also is a conspiracy in mainstream education and media ... of the gatekeeping type. Making sure the other view is inadequately heard. However, this gatekeeping depends in high degree on painting the other view as overall conspiracy theorising, like claiming those holding it hold that an evolutionist scientist is dishonest when he claims to believe evolution.

In fact, that kind of gatekeeping is precisely what Jonathan Sarfati did there. Very slightly, he didn't delve into it, but he suggested it./HGL

PS, Carter repeated it just at the end of the video, calling geocentrism and flat earth, taken as a unity "conspiracy theory"./HGL