Using the Galileo Affair Against the Church

[trth_skr]

## So why is it so terrible to accept geocentricism, if it as as right as the other ? ##

What you are describing, is how observations of entities are organised into sets of data to which bounds can be set by using descriptive labels, ISTM.​

Much depends on how the data are organised.

The problem with affirming geocentricism, is that it is as bounded a set of data organised by observation as any other.

And the trouble with organising entities in sets so that we can conceive ideas about them at all, is that created reality is a plenum of entities. We notice patterns between entities, because they suit the conceptions we are seeking to entertain - that does not make other entities that don’t suit our making of sets, & arrangement of data with in them, any less real or any less significant.

So the geocentric model, is as much a model as the other - it is conceived upon philosophical assumptions about existence, potentiality, reality, gravity, mathematics, and so on, as truly as a theory which asserts that the moon is made of Gruyere cheese…

What you say is true about any given geocentric model (i.e., Ptolemaic, Tycho Brahe’s, modern geocentric, etc.) with all its details and specific descriptions, etc.

But the Church defined that the earth does not move and the sun does move [around the earth].

Mark Wyatt
www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com

 

[trth_skr]

Gottle of Geer:

…

You’ve made an argument for the validity of the geocentric model - you’ve not shown the invalidity of the heliocentric model. A model for a thing, is not the thing to which the model points. I remain a heliocentricist, because I have no talent for the sciences, but assent to the rightness of heeding those who do, and it seems they say otherwise than Catholic geocentricists: that is the very thing your post complains of.​

Sorry, Michael. Heliocentrism was really abandoned over 100 years ago. Today science pushes acentrism of the general relativistic type. And in this scheme, any reference frame is valid. I agree that many scientists hold to a pseudo-heliocentric type solar system, but I think your conception of heliocentrism is much different than that understoods by cosnmologists.
Gottle of Geer:
Not because one doesn’t care a button for 17th-century Popes, but because scientific endeavour is more richly endowed with means to investigate its proper objects than in the 17th century.

?
Gottle of Geer:
You quote Sir Fred Hoyle. Why is someone with faith in God’s Revelation in Christ bothering with the words of an unbeliever who was not even a Catholic ? Shouldn’t you stick to the sources of infallible revelation provided by Almighty God for His Church ? What does a scientist know ?

I am simply demonstrating that honest scientists, even atheists understand that both heliuocentrism and geoncentrism are equally valid ways of looknig at the universe.
Gottle of Geer:
The moment it becomes legitimate to heed any other source than those of the Magisterium, it becomes legitimate to heed scientists, who unlike Popes are professional men of science.

Don’t you mean priests of scientism?
Gottle of Geer:
And what they say, disagrees with the 17th-century Popes. IOW, to rely at all on Hoyle, means torpedoing the Magisterium’s authority to say the last word on science: if your assumptions about where competence to pronounce on astronomy is found, are valid. On those assumptions, one can have either Hoyle - or the 17th-century Popes; but not both. For they cancel each other out.

Nonsense. On the issue of the equal validity of helio and geocentrism as a theory, they agree.
Gottle of Geer:
Popes are not astrophysicists - they know, as Popes, no more about quarks, or galaxies than any of us might. The 17th century Popes probably knew far less than an intelligent 10-year old can now find out by reading or observation.

A 10 year old today can get a lot of information, but the interpretation is another story.
Gottle of Geer:
That does not injure their authority; because St. Peter taught, not to enlighten Christians about the Horsehead Nebula,

What Book / verse is that in?

Mark
www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com

 

[trth_skr]

Gottle of Geer:
but about the ways of the Lord Who created it. The Book of Job mentions Aldebaran, the Pleiades, the Great Bear, and Orion, not to give us a lecture upon their distance or magnitude, but to show forth the majesty of their Almighty Creator. The physics of star-formation are for those learned in the relevant sciences - not for the teachers of the flock of Christ in what pertains to our salvation.

No argument. The Popes only declared that the earth does not move and the sun moves [around the earth]. Nothing about composition of stars, etc.
Gottle of Geer:
Was 17th-century Catholicism at fault because it was not a mere copy of that of the fifth ? Surely not. Yet it was not identical with it, but had grown beyond it. So also Jesus, by becoming twelve years of age rather than staying eight days old, grew before God & men to be more than He had been. The Church has to grow in wisdom & understanding - but such growth is not infidelity to the past, nor is it the end of the Church’s growth. Canonising any one time in the past as a pattern for all time yet to come is what Protestants are blamed for doing, whether rightly or not.

Truth does not change.
Gottle of Geer:
When Popes are treated as oracles in matters which they are incompetent to pronounce on, they may be graciously and humbly ignored in favour of those who are competent to speak on such matters; because we are born, not to live in the 17th century, but to glorify Christ in our own. Just as our descendants will be born with (one may hope) more knowledge than we have, to please God in their day.
Who determines what the popes are competent in? Michael does?

I think not, sir.

Who determines who can ignore the popes? Michael does?

Again, I think not.

Science has yet to demonstrate that the earth moves. Until such time as it does, you have not proven the competence of modern scientific opinion over the Holy Spirit.

Mark Wyatt
www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com

 

[MaggieOH]

PhilVaz:

Gottle << Australianism is heretical because >>

Hee hee.

And geocentrists won’t like Google Earth, you can rotate the planet at will.

Phil P

I am Australian. It exists. If one is to take that line then how is it that no one fell off the end of the earth since the earth known by the early church fathers was flat?

 

[trth_skr]

MaggieOH:

I am Australian. It exists. If one is to take that line then how is it that no one fell off the end of the earth since the earth known by the early church fathers was flat?

Lactinius is the only Church Father who held flat earth. Hardly unanimous.

Mark Wyatt
www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com