The Slippery Slope of Heliocentrism
A reader sent a link to just the kind of story that’s good for a few laughs.
[Robert] Sungenis is a geocentrist. He contends the sun orbits the Earth instead of vice versa. He says physics and the Bible show that the vastness of space revolves around us; that we’re at the center of everything, on a planet that does not rotate.
He has just completed a 1,000-page tome, “Galileo Was Wrong,” which he hopes will persuade readers to “give Scripture its due place, and show that science is not all it’s cracked up to be.”
1,000 pages? I don’t know if any astronomers will be rushing to read the book and refute it.
I think the story is noteworthy for its parallels to the antievolution movement of creationists (including intelligent design creationists).
1) In his mind, his theory cannot be “disproved”. He offered a $1,000 dollar prize for anyone that proves the earth is not at the center of the universe. Because our understanding of the earth’s position is based on theories which best explain the known data, he simply refuses to accept the most logical conclusions on the earth’s position. The same is true of evolution and a vast array of other scientific theories. They explain the data better than anything else, and they’ve been put to the test many times.
2) Scientists completely rejected Mr. Sungenis’s conclusions. In fact, those mean spirited arrogant scientists don’t even want to talk about it!
“What works? Science works. Geocentrism doesn’t. End of story,” [physicist Lawrence] Krauss said. “I’ve learned over time that it’s hard to convince people who believe otherwise, independent of evidence.”
Like the antievolution movement, all it would take is a large group of angry Christians who insist that heliocentrism just can’t be true. The physicist above then becomes arrogant for his refusal to discuss the evidence. Christians could call it heliocentric dogma and sneer their lip when they say the phrase.
3) Like the antievolution movement, he comes up with good analogies that substitute for science. Here’s my favorite.
You want to travel from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. If the Earth is turning, why not just hover in a helicopter? Wait a few hours above the East Coast and eventually the West Coast will be underneath you.
The article quotes a scientist who mentions why this analogy is completely wrong, but for a person that wants geocentrism to be true, I’m sure analogies like these are all that’s needed.
4) Most tellingly of all is the revelation of what motivates Robert Sungenis to make his claims about the earth against the prevailing scientific view.
If you see the Earth as just a humdrum planet among stars circling in a vast universe, then we’re not significant, we’re just part of a crowd,” Sungenis said. “But if you believe everything revolves around Earth, it gives another picture — of purpose, a meaning of life.
His words could just have easily come from the antievolution movement. They’re virtually identical. An assertion that a scientific theory strips humans of dignity and meaning. Three hundred years ago, the church put to rest its objections to heliocentricism. I wonder if it will take us another 150 years to stop fighting evolution. Perhaps some never will.
At the end of the day though, despite all the protests to the contrary, objections to either of these theories (heliocentricism and evolution) do not come from looking at the evidence and seeking a better way to explain what we see. They come from those on the fringe of science who believe that a theory must be discarded because it does not fit with their religious understandings of the world.