Love for Life

Science and Church

A classic example of the limits of science, and an example of a conflict between the Church and science is the idea of geocentrism.

The Church has taught that the earth does not move, and the sun and stars move around it. The ancient Greeks proposed a heliocentric theory, which the early Church Fathers contested based on Scriptural interpretation.

Centuries later, Corpenicus proposed a heliocentric theory, which he felt would simplify the cosmology of Ptolemy. He sold it to a Pope as a more efficient way to describe the motions of planets as part of a program to improve the calendar. In fact, Corpenicus' heliocentric model required 48 epicycles (including "epicyclets") to Ptolemies 40 to gain the same accuracy! [Kepler's elliptical orbits simplified things, but still was not more accurate than Ptolemy's model until modern times when Fourier Transforms (a fancy form of many, many, epicycles, effectively) were applied to curve fit observed deviations of planetary motion from the ideal Keplerian motion.)]

Galileo picked up Corpenicus' model and proclaimed basically that Scripture was wrong, the earth orbited the sun, and the sun was the center of the universe. Three Popes ended up condeming the writings of Corpenicus and Galileo. If the Corpenicus' writings and Galileo treated their theories as a theory, and not as proven reality, the Church would have stayed out of it. Finally, after the editors of Corpenicus' works removed the few sentences that proclaimed heliocentrism to be more than a theory from his works (as demanded in the inquisition), the works were removed from the index. The proclamations were never rescinded.

Today, heliocentrism is rejected, as is geocentrism, all in favor of acentrism. No one knows if there is a center to the universe, scientifically. Equally factual, No one has proven to date that the earth rotates or translates! I.e., geocentrism has by no means been disproven. Acentrism is more philosophical than scientific. The theory of General Relativity operates under the assertion that one can pick any center to describe the universe. A postulate of the theory is that there are no preferred reference frames (i.e., any center will do). This is how General Relativity is formulated.

All observation we make in the universe is of relative motion. We see the sun and stars rotating around us, but mathematically, equally probable is that the earth turns (the current OPINION). Foucalt's pendulum, Sagnac effect, light gyroscopes, etc. can detect rotation, but cannot distinguish between rotation of the earth and rotation of the universe.
The interesting predicament is that though science strongly disagrees with geocentrism, it has not been able to disprove it.

Some interesting quotes:

Cosmologist George Ellis in Scientific American:

"People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations," Ellis argues. "For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations." Ellis has published a paper on this. "You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."

As stated by Max Born in his famous book,"Einstein's Theory of Relativity",Dover Publications,1962, pgs 344 & 345:

:"...Thus we may return to Ptolemy's point of view of a 'motionless earth'...One has to show that the transformed metric can be regarded as produced according to Einstein's field equations, by distant rotating masses. This has been done by Thirring. He calculated a field due to a rotating, hollow, thick-walled sphere and proved that inside the cavity it behaved as though there were centrifugal and other inertial forces usually attributed to absolute space.

Thus from Einstein's point of view, Ptolemy and Corpenicus are equally right."
posted by Mark Wyatt at Thursday, July 14, 2005

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4 Comments:

Charlie said...
If you are ever interested in doing apologetic work or evangelism, do the Church a favor and leave Geocentrism out of it.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Patrick Shea said...
Hey Mark, I do believe Catholic Online is a phony site run by protestants. Isn't it obvious? Seriously, you're an engineer, figure it out.

Friday, October 07, 2005
Patrick Shea said...
Hey Demetrios, if you want to do yourself and the church a favor, open your eyes and mind.

Saturday, October 08, 2005
Patrick Shea said...
Mark, I've tried posting "Science and Church" topics on a lot of *Catholic Web Forums* and keep getting booted off. Seriously, there are either a lot of ignorant, controlling priests running the forums or they are truly not "Catholic Forums". I can only conclude they are run by protestant pigs that allow only ignorant Catholics to post their nonsense and censor out the facts of the Catholic Church.

Link to this article: http://veritas-catholic.blogspot.com/2005/07/science-and-church.html

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Wednesday, November 09, 2005
The Theory of Specific Absolutivity
As I explained in Part II of Geocentrism 101, Einstein's Theory of General Relativity (GR) shows geocentrism to be a possible universe, and in fact makes it impossible to reject geocentrism as impossible. I said:

If it turned out that there actually were a center to the universe, then it is still possible that the GR solution to this center's perspective is valid. All other solutions (i.e., for other centers) would be considered hypothetical ones considering the other centers as candidate centers.

If in fact it turned out that earth was the center of the universe, it is still possible the the General Relativity solution could be correct for this one case (and possibly approximately correct for many others); though it certainly would not be guaranteed. What such a finding would require is a new theory, with an absolute reference frame, specifically the reference frame would be the earth. Interestingly enough, a rational name for this new theory would be Specific Absolutivity. Where Einstein's theory is general, i.e., applicable to any reference frame, geocentric theory is specific, i.e., earth is the center. Where in Einstein's theory any motion can only be considered relative, in geocentric theory all motion is compared to the position of the earth (ultimately)- the absolute reference. Einstein substituted the velocity of light as the absolute reference, allowing the universe to become relative in a mathematical hypothesis.

Einstein went one step beyond Copernicus. Copernicus substituted the sun for the earth. Einstein substituted the velocity of light for the earth. What is coming next?
posted by Mark Wyatt at Wednesday, November 09, 2005

1 Comments:
Brother Roy said...
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Link to this article: http://veritas-catholic.blogspot.com/2005/11/theory-of-specific-absoluti...