Though I dont fully understand how geocentrism is explained I believe it will become a more popular and accepted theory as time goes on. In the case of Robert Sungenis many consider him a fruit cake on these grounds, but I disagree. It would be amazing if this “theory” took off and became widely accepted.
JMJ + OBT
Unless Sungenis’ recently published book treating the subject contains substantially new and different arguments, the basic premise of Sungenis’ brand of geocentrism is:
(1) to show that the Theory of General Relativity admits the mathematical possibility of a global (in terms of the universe considered as a whole) coordinate system with a stationary, non-rotating Planet Earth at its “center;”
(2) argue that such a coordinate system is preferred based on an interpretation of relevant passages of Sacred Scripture which was favored by many Early Church Fathers and, as Sungenis argues, has been backed by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church on a number of occasions;
(3) also provide evidence which he presents as favorable to a geocentric model of the universe independent of whether General Relativity and its derivatives, like the Standard Model of Physical Cosmology, are really true – i.e. space and time really do bend and twist in response to mass/matter; the universe really is an expanding 4-dimensional hypersurface with a space-time singularity in its finite real-time past – or GR gives way to another theory which makes equivalent mathematical predictions for stuff like perihelion precession but involves a different underlying “metaphysics.”
That’s it in a nutshell, though readers of the book should correct me if I’m mistaken, because I would like to know if I’m misjudging Sungenis’ arguments.
But there are some serious issues which Sungenis or those who take up his ideas will eventually have to deal with. First of all, there is an alternative (well actually there are various versions of it) to “Big Bang” Cosmology which is slowly gaining in popularity among professional scientists (see
Cosmology Statement: An Open Letter to the Scientific Community). It’s called
Plasma Cosmology (for starters, also see
PlasmaCosmology.net,
The Big Bang Never Happend site and the essay
Two World Systems Revisited, the
Thunderbolts Picture of the Day Archive, Dr. Anthony Peratt’s
The Plasma Universe site), and it basically does away with the need for dark matter, black holes, neutron stars and a host of other surreal entities in the Standard Model. It’s not that the astrophysical data which was previously used to support the Standard Model is invalidated or overlooked, it’s just interpreted differently in the PC models; for one, the principle that “redshift==distance,” which is an anchor in the Standard Model, is replaced with the notion that redshift is an indicator of something else, probably the age of the redshifted matter.
The point of mentioning PC is that, from my prior reading of Sungenis, most of the data which he thinks supports the geocentric model independent of the validity of GR, such as the well-known
Fingers of God, can be interpreted according to consistent, non-geocentric principles which, frankly, make a lot of sense. (I mean they make a lot of sense in comparison to the mental gymnastics that are oftern required in the Standard Model; most of the scientists helping to develop PC would probably scratch their heads if you brought up Sungenis’ geocentrism.)
Additionally, much to the surprise of many seasoned physicists, there is a growing school of theorists and mathemeticians that has demonstrated that physical systems can be described with mathematical theories which make empirical predictions equivalent to the Theory of General Relativity while maintaining a purely Euclidean space-time backdrop (i.e. space and time don’t bend, twist, etc., at all). For more information see:
Euclidean Relativity Yahoo discussion group,
euclideanrelativity.com. The idea hasn’t caught on like wildfire, yet, but as problems continue to mount for the Standard Model and as alternatives like Plasma Cosmology begin to look more attractive, eventually it will be REALLY compelling to invoke the principle of Occam’s Razor and embrace a mathemetical theory which can account for empirical data without requiring one to believe that space and time actually twist, bend, collapse, etc.
The fallout for Sungenis geocentric model would be that his arguments which fall into category (1), in which he (for the sake of argument) takes for granted that GR is a true description of the universe, are substantially weakened when, per Euclidean Relativity, the universe is in no way understood as a curved hypersurface but rather a geometrically euclidean expanse. It might be possible to write down the equations in ER such that the Earth is still rectilinearly stationary and non-rotating, but the principle of symmetry would suggest that this is possiblity is a mathematical artifact and runs contrary to the edicts of the principle of symmetry; and it may not be possible to do so in ER after all, I’m not sure.
So now elements (1) and (3) in Sungenis’ arguments (my labels of course, not his) begin to look very shaky. There is still (2), but alone I don’t think those arguments are difficult to meet, especially when over the centuries Catholic theologians like St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 371) have pointed out in various ways that:
The sacred writers, or to speak more accurately the Holy Spirit, Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things - that is the essential nature of the things of the universe - things in no way profitable to salvation. [De Gen. ad litt. 2, 9, 20; PL 34, col. 270 s.; CSEL 28 (Sectio III, pars. 2), p. 46]
Another way to think about it is to see that a statement like “the sun rises in the east and sets in the west” can be perfectly true and yet at the same time not convey the modern scientific understanding that it is the rotation of the Earth which causes the Sun to appear to rise and set from the perspective of an observer on the surface of the planet.
By the way, let me say that I am a fan of Bob Sungenis’
“Not By …” books and his shorter book,
How Can I Get to Heaven.
Also let me say, if you’ve made it this far into my post, that if my arguments seem to come from the fringe, then I’m at least in no worse shape than Sungenis in that respect in terms of this particular subject.
In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
IC XC NIKA
