Geocentric Universe?

[wussup]

Ok now i see, you deny everything we understand about the universe because it does not agree with the ancient scribblings of desert men.

Hey! Most of America where the Book of Mormon took place was lush and verdant!

 

[masterjedi747]

Now, certain Catholics have tried to argue that because the pope took the Copernican books off the Index of Forbidden Books that this means the Church “abrogated” her geocentric doctrine! … But by their reasoning, since the Church abrogated the whole Index, then there must not be any more heresies! This is the sort of logic they are reduced to. Why? Because they cannot produce any Magisterial decree abrogating the Church’s geocentric doctrine - so they quote Ludwig Ott and the Catholic Encyclopedia!

Glad to know that you completely ignored by earlier posts, which don’t at all reduce to the logic you describe.

How conveniently they forget the difference between Church doctrine and Church discipline - the former being immutable and binding on the whole Church; the latter being changeable at the discretion of the Church.

How conveniently you forget the difference between the *Sacred *Magisterium and the *Ordinary *Magisterium – the former issuing infallible Church teaching which is immutable and binding on the whole Church; the latter issuing fallible Church teaching which is capable of being found in error and consequently abandoned.

If the Catholic Church did not immutably declare Her geocentric doctrine, then why has She not changed it? If the Catholic Church’s geocentric doctrine is not infallible, then why can’t anybody prove that it’s wrong? Wake up! The Lord has done this and it is wonderful in our eyes! Or you can believe that these are simply more incredible coincidences.

If the Catholic Church did immutably declare Her geocentric doctrine, then why has She so completely abandoned it? If the Catholic Church’s geocentric doctrine is infallible, then why can’t anybody show that it meets the criteria for infallibility so clearly laid out by the Church? Wake up! Or you can persist in your belief that the Church is overflowing with heretics, and has been visibly abandoned by the Holy Spirit for nigh 350 years.

 

[Luke65]

How conveniently you forget the difference between the *Sacred *Magisterium and the *Ordinary *Magisterium – the former issuing infallible Church teaching which is immutable and binding on the whole Church; the latter issuing fallible Church teaching which is capable of being found in error and consequently abandoned.

By your own succinct definition, the Church’s decrees came from the Sacred Magisterium, since they were binding on the whole Church and have not been changed by the Magisterium.

If the Catholic Church did immutably declare Her geocentric doctrine, then why has She so completely abandoned it? If the Catholic Church’s geocentric doctrine is infallible, then why can’t anybody show that it meets the criteria for infallibility so clearly laid out by the Church? Wake up! Or you can persist in your belief that the Church is overflowing with heretics, and has been visibly abandoned by the Holy Spirit for nigh 350 years.

No, there were only a relatively few heretics - those who obstinately held to the Copernican theory that the sun is the immobile center of the universe. And, like Galileo, they would have been automatically excommunicated if they did not abjure, and they would have gone to Hell if they did not repent. And if you want to believe that the Catholic Church made that decree in error, that people might have gone to Hell for a lie, that’s your choice. But since the Church, under Her divinely ordained authority to bind and loose, doesn’t say that there’s a penalty for believing the Earth is motion, I don’t say it. But can you imagine what the world would like if mainstream science told the world that it looks like we’re at the center of the universe after all?

 

[grannymh]

Now, certain Catholics have tried to argue that because the pope took the Copernican books off the Index of Forbidden Books that this means the Church “abrogated” her geocentric doctrine! How conveniently they forget the difference between Church doctrine and Church discipline - the former being immutable and binding on the whole Church; the latter being changeable at the discretion of the Church. But by their reasoning, since the Church abrogated the whole Index, then there must not be any more heresies! )

I am old enough that my university studies involved books on the Index. And I assure you, you have no clue what the Index was.

Furthermore, Romans 1: 18-25 is about God not geocentricism. My Catholic bible includes the previous verses 16 & 17 under the heading “God’s Power for Salvation”.

 

[masterjedi747]

By your own succinct definition, the Church’s decrees came from the Sacred Magisterium…

The Congregation of the Index and the Inquisition (known today as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) are not organs of the Sacred Magisterium. They belong to the Ordinary Magisterium, and their decrees are considered neither infallible nor irreversible unless very explicitly elevated to be such by the Pope. Again, please refer back to my older posts for more detail.

…since they were binding on the whole Church and have not been changed by the Magisterium.

The 1633 decree was concerned with the person of Galileo, and never pretended to have any authority to bind the whole Church. Furthermore, every single decree against heliocentric teaching, issued from 1616 through 1664 – after, it should be noted, having largely gone without legal enforcement by Church authorities since almost the very beginning – was systematically reversed and/or formally abrogated from 1757 through 1835. Read up on the history of the decrees and see for yourself.

And if you want to believe that the Catholic Church made that decree in error, that people might have gone to Hell for a lie, that’s your choice.

…what are you talking about? I never said anything about anyone going to Hell.

But can you imagine what the world would like if mainstream science told the world that it looks like we’re at the center of the universe after all?

Whether the earth is at (or even perhaps very near) the center of the universe is a completely different question than arguing for the absolute immobility of the Earth. The first might be reasonably argued; the second cannot.

 

[tjm190]

Now, God could have at any time had His Church declare belief in a mobile Earth to be heresy, but the Holy Spirit never did that. Why? Well, obviously it was for the same reason that this same Holy Spirit chose not to declare the immobility of the Earth unambiguously in Scripture: because God, knowing the end from the beginning, did not want His people to all be heretics!

Since when has God not revealed things on the basis that people wouldn’t believe it?

 

[wussup]

Since when has God not revealed things on the basis that people wouldn’t believe it?

Kind of off topic, but the establishment of the more restrictive Levitical Priesthood was a direct response to the Israelites not believing in the Lord when they created the golden calf to worship whilst Moses was up on the mountain getting the word of God.

 

[wussup]

Since when has God not revealed things on the basis that people wouldn’t believe it?

Thinking a little more, there are lots of times the Lord has done this. The whole purpose of using allegory and parable is to let those with ears to hear hear. Paul taught to feed the converts and those investigating the church milk not meat less they choke on the word of God.

 

[Luke65]

The Congregation of the Index and the Inquisition (known today as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) are not organs of the Sacred Magisterium. They belong to the Ordinary Magisterium, and their decrees are considered neither infallible nor irreversible unless very explicitly elevated to be such by the Pope. Again, please refer back to my older posts for more detail.

The 1633 decree was concerned with the person of Galileo, and never pretended to have any authority to bind the whole Church. Furthermore, every single decree against heliocentric teaching, issued from 1616 through 1664 – after, it should be noted, having largely gone without legal enforcement by Church authorities since almost the very beginning – was systematically reversed and/or formally abrogated from 1757 through 1835. Read up on the history of the decrees and see for yourself.

…what are you talking about? I never said anything about anyone going to Hell.

Whether the earth is at (or even perhaps very near) the center of the universe is a completely different question than arguing for the absolute immobility of the Earth. The first might be reasonably argued; the second cannot.

You believe what you want to believe. But for anyone who sincerely seeks the truth, you can find the whole historical record in Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, Vol. II.

 

[cassini]

cassini and Luke65, you claim the virtue of humility in your position because you demonstrate childlike obedience to the Church/God, yet you still attempt to rationalize your belief with pseudo-science. Why are you presenting me these quotes that try to use their own form of science to disprove mine, if your position is truly the more humble one that can only be understood by divine revelation?

I can see that you are firmly entrenched in your geocentrism to the point that your faith in God and the Church hinges on it. If your faith depends on the whole universe orbiting around the earth every 24 hours, I guess I will not try any longer to destroy your worldview. Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the centuries have believed the Catholic faith and have been saved without knowing a thing about astronomy, so I’m sure that you can still become saints regardless of whether you accept basic math and physics.

I hope we can meet in heaven and behold the truth together someday. But let me tell you, we’re going to get there because of baptism, confession, and the Eucharist, not because the earth is at the center of the universe.

Luke K, geocentricism is only the subject matter as Cardinal Bellarmine pointed out, Our concern is with the credibility of the DIVINE GUIDANCE of the Church regarding the claim to be the only infallible interpreter of the Scriptures.

Since the 1960s, our knowledge of the limits of science has totally changed the paradign as to how we look at the so-called ‘proofs’ for heliocentricism that supposedly falsified the 1616 definition and declaration of a scriptural geocentricism. Of course we are obliged to examine all the ‘proofs’ to see if any do actually prove the decree was in error. This we have done and can rebut any claims of proof. Thus we come down to a choice: the possibility of a heliocentric world, or if we should believe the papal decree of 1616 by the Church really had that protection. Luke 65 and I, and other chose faith over scientific speculation. For that we are subjected to scorn and ridicule. Such a reaction strengthens my faith in the Church’s official definition.

 

[cassini]

Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the centuries have believed the Catholic faith and have been saved without knowing a thing about astronomy, so I’m sure that you can still become saints regardless of whether you accept basic math and physics.

QUOTE]

Luke K, I forgot to thank you for your sincere post. I would also like to answer the point I isolated above as it is part of the reason why I tell all who will listen that the Church of 1616 did not err when interpreting the Scriptures.

Certainly millions of Catholics found salvation without any awareness of cosmology. But the Copernican heresy was not intended by Satan to affect the individual by its subject matter but was intended to destroy Catholic faith like dry rot in a building, unnoticed by those praying in the church but by way of the church falling down around them.

The Devil, with his intelligence, and with the assistance of those like Francis Bacon and the Freemasons of the Royal Society of London, knew that the only way to undermine faith was by way of ‘SCIENCE’. SCIENCE lends itself to truth, true science that is, for true science is truth. But if Churchmen could be convinced by scientific CONVICTION to the extent that they would deny a decree of their predecessors, then the AUTONOMY OF FALSE-SCIENCE could be used again to wreck faith further.

Having rejected the Church of 1616, this gave precedent to the possibility that the Church was also wrong in other traditional interpretations of Scripture. This occurred when CHURCHMEN rejected direct creation some 6,000 years ago and a global flood that covered the earth under the dictates of conclusions based on data such as ‘long-ages’ (uniformitarianism) and evolutionism.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Catholic belief in many things was in CHAOS. So much so that Pope ST Pius X had to issue warnings to the flock that Modernism was rampant in the Church destroying the Catholic faith. The DRY-ROT had succeeded.
This in turn led to Vatican II, all evolutionists obsessed with CHANGE.

Today, 250 years after capitulating to the Copernican heresy, the Church’s reputation is in shreds, its influence on world affairs is almost zero, its teachings and doctrines perverted and ignored, its sainthood diminished, what is left of its priesthood and religious decimated and damaged by scandals, some of its sacraments devalued, its liturgy in chaos, many of its churches, denuded of the sacred are near empty, few seminaries and convents now exist because of the dearth of vocations, the Vatican has been turned into a circus, Eucharistic Congresses of old have been replaced by ecumenical get-togethers and World Youth Days of rock and roll prayer jamborees, and the Pope has acquired the status of a travelling pop-star.

So, LukeK, how many souls are/will be lost because of this loss of faith. Look up Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes # 36 and you will see the Church of 1616 being treated like idiots for believing in a literal interpretation of Scripture as the Fathers believed. When a Church council, albeit a pastoral one with ABSOLUTELY NO CLAIM NOW TO DIVINE GUIDANCE for God does not ridicule His own Church, one can see why it no longer has any real influence on earth and its teachings are dismissed or unknown by the poor sheep of today.

 

[pickguard1]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Darwin
It directly contradicts light speed. LOL can you imagine the speed that a galaxy like Andromeda must be traveling at. It’s 2 million light years away yet it can orbit the earth in a day, thats just over 12.5 million light years a day! In fact how can we even see it when it is moving approx 4562500000 times the speed of light!

This is the part that is the real kicker for me…if everything out there is traveling at speeds like this, we wouldn’t see p(name removed by moderator)oints of light - we would see a completely solid line that scribes the star’s orbit in the sky. Because from our vantage point, if they are orbiting once a day, they’re going many times faster than the speed of light - that is, they would be making it round the earth millions of times before their light ever reaches us! Thus, their light should appear to be coming from everywhere in their orbit at the same time!

But, sadly, it’s not.

This thread has made me at least reexamine my beliefs, and that is a good thing - to not just take one’s beliefs for granted without examination. But in the end, I think they’re still pretty much the same. Earth spinning once on its axis every 24 or so hours…

After thinking about this for a few days, I have to retract my post - my thinking was in error. If everything out there is traveling at speeds exceeding the speed of light, this doesn’t necessarily mean the light they emit has to also be traveling at speeds greater than light. As such, their speed is really irrelevant to what we see here on earth. The only thing it affects is how we would calculate where the object is in its orbit relative to where/when we see the light it emitted however long ago.

 

[PaulF2]

After thinking about this for a few days, I have to retract my post - my thinking was in error. If everything out there is traveling at speeds exceeding the speed of light, this doesn’t necessarily mean the light they emit has to also be traveling at speeds greater than light. As such, their speed is really irrelevant to what we see here on earth. The only thing it affects is how we would calculate where the object is in its orbit relative to where/when we see the light it emitted however long ago.

Maybe it’s just a bad idea to try to do physics authoritatively as a layman.

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.”

• St. Augustine of Hippo

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Maybe it’s just a bad idea to try to do physics authoritatively as a layman.

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.”

• St. Augustine of Hippo

Brilliant quote!

 

[pickguard1]

Brilliant quote!

I second that - I will refrain from interjecting any attempts at intelligent scientific analysis in this thread, since I obviously don’t really have any to interject!

 

[Charles_Darwin]

But the Copernican heresy was not intended** by Satan** to affect the individual by its subject matter but was intended to destroy Catholic faith like dry rot in a building, unnoticed by those praying in the church but by way of the church falling down around them.

**The Devil, **with his intelligence, and with the assistance of those like Francis Bacon and the Freemasons of the Royal Society of London, knew that the only way to undermine faith was by way of ‘SCIENCE’. SCIENCE lends itself to truth, true science that is, for true science is truth. But if Churchmen could be convinced by scientific CONVICTION to the extent that they would deny a decree of their predecessors, then the AUTONOMY OF FALSE-SCIENCE could be used again to wreck faith further.

Having rejected the Church of 1616, this gave precedent to the possibility that the Church was also wrong in other traditional interpretations of Scripture. This occurred when CHURCHMEN rejected direct creation some 6,000 years ago and a global flood that covered the earth under the dictates of conclusions based on data such as ‘long-ages’ (uniformitarianism) and evolutionism.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Catholic belief in many things was in CHAOS. So much so that Pope ST Pius X had to issue warnings to the flock that Modernism was rampant in the Church destroying the Catholic faith. The DRY-ROT had succeeded.
This in turn led to Vatican II, all evolutionists obsessed with CHANGE.

Today, 250 years after capitulating to the Copernican heresy, the Church’s reputation is in shreds, its influence on world affairs is almost zero, its teachings and doctrines perverted and ignored, its sainthood diminished, what is left of its priesthood and religious decimated and damaged by scandals, some of its sacraments devalued, its liturgy in chaos, many of its churches, denuded of the sacred are near empty, few seminaries and convents now exist because of the dearth of vocations, the Vatican has been turned into a circus, Eucharistic Congresses of old have been replaced by ecumenical get-togethers and World Youth Days of rock and roll prayer jamborees, and the Pope has acquired the status of a travelling pop-star.

So, LukeK, how many souls are/will be lost because of this loss of faith. Look up Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes # 36 and you will see the Church of 1616 being treated like idiots for believing in a literal interpretation of Scripture as the Fathers believed. When a Church council, albeit a pastoral one with ABSOLUTELY NO CLAIM NOW TO DIVINE GUIDANCE for God does not ridicule His own Church, one can see why it no longer has any real influence on earth and its teachings are dismissed or unknown by the poor sheep of today.

You inadvertently highlight the problem.

The reason that people are “treated like idiots for believing in a literal interpretation of Scripture as the Fathers believed.” is because people (like yourself) reject empirical evidence, and claim that modern science which had given us almost everything we use in our daily life’s, is not actually true but is the result of the devil. The only reason being it does not agree with your ancient book of myths. No wonder these people are treated like idiots.

The most ironic thing is that the exact same method that gives us evolution etc, gives you your PC, TV, Phones etc etc. Do you think that are all the work of the devil too?

You remind me of… youtube.com/watch?v=glQ8YZidhv8

 

[Ella]

You inadvertently highlight the problem.

The reason that people are “treated like idiots for believing in a literal interpretation of Scripture as the Fathers believed.” is because people (like yourself) reject empirical evidence, and claim that modern science which had given us almost everything we use in our daily life’s, is not actually true but is the result of the devil. The only reason being it does not agree with your ancient book of myths. No wonder these people are treated like idiots.

The most ironic thing is that the exact same method that gives us evolution etc, gives you your PC, TV, Phones etc etc. Do you think that are all the work of the devil too?

You remind me of… youtube.com/watch?v=glQ8YZidhv8

Not just PC,TV, Phones - but our whole system of medicine.

 

[grannymh]

You inadvertently highlight the problem.

The reason that people are “treated like idiots for believing in a literal interpretation of Scripture as the Fathers believed.” is because people (like yourself) reject empirical evidence, and claim that modern science which had given us almost everything we use in our daily life’s, is not actually true but is the result of the devil. The only reason being it does not agree with your ancient book of myths. No wonder these people are treated like idiots.

The most ironic thing is that the exact same method that gives us evolution etc, gives you your PC, TV, Phones etc etc. Do you think that are all the work of the devil too?

You remind me of… youtube.com/watch?v=glQ8YZidhv8

May I suggest that people read the rebuttals to posts by Cassini and others who in some instances misrepresent the workings of the visible Church. Then one will be able to understand why some of the above statements are off base. First, not everything the Fathers’ believed is part of the Catholic Faith. Modernism is not the same as science. There is no one ancient book of myths. By the beginning of the 20th Century, Catholic belief was not in chaos because it was the same belief as taught by Jesus Christ and maintained through the ages as the Catholic Deposit of Faith. For verification, check footnotes in

Believing in geocentrism or evolutionary theory or a PC, TV, ATM, L, etc., does not change the basic life questions today’s humans face. These are: Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is our origin? What is our end?

 

[Alethios]

If the Sun mass is such that we can observe it actually bending light, how come it orbits the much less massive Earth?

Many theories explain the bending of light by mass, including very simple and trivial concepts as Newton’s photon model and atmospheric refraction.
Aether flow rings account for motion independent of mass - unlike Newton’s gravity… The core of tornados and hurricanes has the lowest pressure and no mass.

In Kepler’s time, only 6 planets were thought to exist. In 1690 John Herschel discovered Uranus during a sky survey. Newtonian orbital mechanics were used to calculate the position of Uranus. Yet it did not quite move as predicted. Postulating another planet was “perturbing” the orbit of Uranus, Urbain Adams and Joseph le Verrier used Newtonian formulas to calculate the position of another possible planet using an approximate mass. He Johann Galle pointed his telescope there and found the planet. Pluto was discovered in the same way. If geocentricism is true, how was this possible?

Who said GC doesn’t employ the inverse square law? Just another strawman counter argument?
GC predicts the same motion as Newton’s pulling gravity, since GC uses a LaSage inverse square law - a radial pushing aether.
Le Sage referred to the mechanical substrate for gravity as “ultramundane corpuscles,” from his belief that God launched the corpuscles into motion at the beginning of creation from reaches outside the known universe, and thus they were “ultramundane”.
This source is supported by Scripture.
James Evans adds:
Le Sage deduces the inverse-square law: a small spherical region of space, traversed by a current of ultramundane corpuscles traveling in all directions. The number of corpuscles that cross a unit of area on the surface of this small sphere will be spread out over a correspondingly larger area on the surface of a larger surrounding sphere, in such a fashion that the number crossing through a unit area will fall off as the inverse square of the distance. In Le Sage’s system, apparently solid objects must be made mostly of empty space. In his Mechanical Physics, Le Sage speculated that the atoms of ordinary matter are like ‘cages,’ that is, they take up lots of space, but are mostly empty. In this way, ordinary objects block only a tiny fraction of the ultramundane corpuscles that are incident upon them.
Van Flandern develops the details and answers objections at:

metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/possiblenewpropertiesofgravity.asp section on particle gravity

AMDG

 

[cassini]

You inadvertently highlight the problem.

The reason that people are “treated like idiots for believing in a literal interpretation of Scripture as the Fathers believed.” is because people (like yourself) reject empirical evidence, and claim that modern science which had given us almost everything we use in our daily life’s, is not actually true but is the result of the devil. The only reason being it does not agree with your ancient book of myths. No wonder these people are treated like idiots.

The most ironic thing is that the exact same method that gives us evolution etc, gives you your PC, TV, Phones etc etc. Do you think that are all the work of the devil too?

You remind me of… youtube.com/watch?v=glQ8YZidhv8

Charles, I do not reject empirical evidence, if I did I would be an idiot. What I do not do is go beyond the limit of empirical science in preference to the definition of the Church I believe in as protected in truth by Christ.

Science has established that all the planets do orbit the sun. this has been known since Tycho de Brahe in the 16 th century. But empirical science cannot determine if the earth is a planet orbiting the sun or if the sun orbits the earth. Yours is just an OPINION based on evidence that all planets orbit the sun. But OPINIONS, no matter how REASONABLE do not constitute empirical evidence. Certainly there have been attempts to use MODERN TECHNOLOGY to try to determine such PROOF as in the Airy experiment and the M&M experiment in 1887 trying to ‘prove’ the earth moves through space. These EMPIRICAL ATTEMPTS failed to show any movement, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND AS YOU WOULD HAVE US THINK. Now you can speculate as much as you like as to WHY these empirical experiments did not show an orbiting earth but that is all they are - ad hoc non-provable theories. Even the dogs in the street are aware of the limits of relativity.

Alas Charles, I fear you are so full of intellectual pride you are blind to the limits of science and prefer your intellectual dictates as superior to the interpretation of the Fathers (considered infallible) and the judgement of the Church.