Meet the new conspiracy
The phases of Venus as photographed in 2002 by Chris Proctor at the Torquay Boys’ Grammar School Observartory in Devon, England.
It was Galileo’s observations of Venus’s phases that most powerfully argued against the ancient geocentric system of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy. Galileo’s observations did not convince anyone of the truth of the Copernican system, however, because at the time there was a third popular system in the running — the Tychonic — which was also geocentric. I wonder which geocentric system (historically there have been many of them) is favored by the new Earth-does-not-move crowd.
To see how the planets would move if the Earth were motionless, look at this Flash animation. Play with it. It’s really cool. Notice the crazy paths the planets had to move along in these ancient systems; these paths are fully inconsistent with Newtonian gravity but would have to be accepted by anyone who insists on the motionlessness of the Earth.
Surprising but true: There is some daylight between Ken Ham, the head of the creationist organization Answers in Genesis (“Narrow-minded like Jesus“), and the wall on the right.
There must be, because there is a group of folks — mostly Catholics, apparently — who have squeezed their way into the gap. Like Ham, they profess to take the Bible literally. But they take things further than most creationists: They insist the Earth does not move. That is, they have embraced what is essentially an Aristotelian world system. For them the Earth sits motionless in the middle of everything. The planets — and stars and galaxies, one supposes — all move around us.
No less that the good gray Chicago Tribune reported last week on a Catholic splinter group in Chicagoland who believe the 400-year-old scientific claim that the Sun lies in the center of the Solar System to be a conspiracy. Robert Sungenis, the leader of the group, says that “the renewed interest in geocentrism is due, in part, to the efforts of Christians entering the scientific domain previously dominated by secularists. These Christian scientists, he said, showed modern science is without scientific foundation or even good evidence.” (What? Read that last sentence again slowly.)
Which Christian scientists are these, exactly? Don’t know. And which parts of modern science are we talking about here? You know, all those evidence-free bits, e.g., Newtonian gravity.
The mind boggles. But not really, because like AiG and “Intelligent Design” and all other creationist efforts, it’s not about science at all. The Tribune article makes this clear:
Indeed, those promoting geocentrism argue that heliocentrism, or the centuries-old consensus among scientists that the Earth revolves around the sun, is nothing more than a conspiracy theory to squelch the church’s influence.
“Heliocentrism becomes ‘dangerous’ if it is being propped up as the true system when, in fact, it is a false system,” said Robert Sungenis, leader of a budding movement to get scientists to reconsider. “False information leads to false ideas, and false ideas lead to illicit and immoral actions — thus the state of the world today. … Prior to Galileo, the church was in full command of the world; and governments and academia were subservient to her.”
Like so many other similar stories, it comes down to power. The church had it, lost it, and these folks want it back.
It becomes a question of how far back one wants to go. Ham et al. seem to want to go back to at least 1858, the year before Darwin published The Origin of Species. But these folks are turning the clock way back, all the way to the Middle Ages. They want the church of AD 1200, and they want the science of AD 1200 to prop it up.
This is such an extreme point of view. Robert Sungenis and his group would never have seen the light of day without the Internet. So why am I even writing about it?
Because this may not be just another story about insane Christians. IMO there is something small but notable here. And it comes at that point where the Tribune story mentions Ken Ham himself, who, based on a literal reading of the Bible, believes the world to be no more than about 6,000 years old.
That is, for Ham, not only is evolution a lie but all bits of science that point to an old Earth are lies. Which is a LOT of bits, friends. Way too many to just toss out while expecting the rest of the House of Science to remain in place.
Ham bases his beliefs on a close literal reading of the Bible. Yet, as the Tribune article points out, Ham “said the Bible is silent on geocentrism.”
“There’s a big difference between looking at the origin of the planets, the solar system and the universe and looking at presently how they move and how they are interrelated,” Ham said. “The Bible is neither geocentric or heliocentric. It does not give any specific information about the structure of the solar system.”
Now IMO this is simply disingenuous. I think the Bible says a lot, literally understood, about the stability of the Earth. And, as one Jimpithicus writes on his blog, “for Ken Ham to assert that the Bible is silent on geocentrism but speaks volumes on the age of the earth is absurd.” This is true. But this not the most interesting thing; I just don’t expect sense from such as Ham.
What’s interesting is this: All of this must make Ham at least a little nervous, because now we have a group who makes him and his posse look a little soft. Competing literalists! What fun! So we ask: Who are the true believers? The answer is, of course, neither of them. Because there are no true literalists. Such a creature is unimaginable.
I have come across people — some I have read (think Dawkins in The God Delusion), some I know personally, some who are online interlocutors — who have little sympathy with so-called moderate or liberal Christians. They accuse us of “picking and choosing” those pieces of the Bible we like and throwing out the rest. (BTW, some Christians also accuse their fellow believers of holding to this kind of cafeteria Christianity). These folks look at those of us who fully affirm LGBT folks, or those of us who have female pastors, or those of us who don’t observe the sabbath the way they think we should, and see nothing but waffling and accommodation. Fine. Whatever.
But they then point to those fine upstanding literalists as the real Christians, as the ones who really are consistent with scripture, as the only truly respectable representatives of the faith. Because they’re “consistent.” Because they “believe what the Bible says.” Because they “call it as they read it.”
For a very clear expression of this perspective from a professed atheist, check out this video.
It seems to me that the new Earth-stands-still conspiracy theorists challenge this idea that literalists alone do not “pick and choose,” that literalists are in lockstep, that there is true consistency to be found anywhere outside mathematics (when even there it’s not possible).
The truth is, in a very real sense Christians — all of us — “pick and choose,” although not in the cavalier manner usually associated with this phrase. And so does everyone else. It’s a fully normal thing to do; there is no objective explicit standard of belief and practice that we can all rally around and affirm equally and in good conscience. We Christians have our creeds, sure. But what two Christians interpret even the same creed in the same way?
Christians are exhorted to work out their faith in fear and trembling. And the majority of Christians do exactly this. Ken Ham and Robert Sungenis may do it in their own way, I don’t know. But picking and choosing is not unique to moderate Christians, or to Christians, or to religious people. We — just like everyone else — do the best we can, knowing our limits and, at least for Christians, trusting ultimately in the efficacy of God’s grace.
For more on these new geocentrists, see galileowaswrong.com. One click on this link lets us know that there’s yet still room for the flat-Earthers, also biblical literalists, between these folks and the wall on the right.
For information on the geocentrism conference entitled Galileo Was Wrong, held last year near (but not at) the University of Notre Dame, look here.
There are 10 Comments to "Meet the new conspiracy"
I just attended a history of astronomy workshop at Notre Dame and the subject of the recent geocentrism conference came up. Apparently the group wanted to hold their conference on the campus of Notre Dame, but the University declined to let them. Of course, the workshop participants mostly felt that the whole thing was silly, though also a little disturbing. But it was interesting to hear the perspective of people who are quite possibly the world’s greatest experts on geocentric systems, studied from a historical perspective (and here I’m thinking of people like Owen Gingerich, Liba Taub, etc), talk about these modern-day geocentrists.
Also, for another set of Ptolemaic system animations that you can download and play on your computer you can do to this page:
http://facultyweb.berry.edu/ttimberlake/copernican/simulations/classtested/index.html
and get the InferiorPtolemaic and SuperiorPtolemaic models (note: inferior and superior refer to the locations of the planets, not to the quality of the models!). If you are interested you might also want to check out CopernicanSystem and PtolemyCopernicusTycho from that same page.
You had heard that Ken Ham spoke at Woodstock First Baptist yesterday (July 10)? An old high school classmate of mine posted about it on Facebook yesterday and I am deeply torn about replying. On the one hand I despise what Ken Ham does, which is telling patent untruths about the world and the people who study it, and thus I want to challenge those untruths. On the other hand, I know the most likely outcome is that I would to some degree alienate my classmate.
Paul, this is a very interesting and challenging post. I read through the “Geocentrism” paper you linked. Quite a lot of verses to deal with! I would make a very few short points. First, we use “geocentric” terminology in casual conversation ourselves, such as “the sun rises in the east and sets in the west,” even though we know that is not “literally true.” Second, the earth IS “well established,” which can be stated in very poetic terminology, which the Bible clearly uses a lot. (One interesting verse cited in “Geocentrism” is Job 26:7, which says God “hangs the earth upon nothing.” There is another verse somewhere which refers to “the circle of the earth.”) Third, it may be possible that some authors of scripture did not really know whether the universe was geocentric or not–they weren’t addressing that subject, and talked about things as they “appear to be” (just like we generally do as well, first point). I’m not sure this exactly means they were speaking “in error” in what they were saying.
How does all this relate to Ham, evolution, and “literalism”? I can’t speak specifically as to Ham, but I know there are a number of other people who are scientists who nonetheless believe in “creationism” and hold “closely” to the Bible. When you say we can’t take the Bible “literally,” or that virtually nobody actually does so when it comes right down to it, I do think it is important to recognize (as you probably do) that the Bible intentionally uses figurative language very frequently, especially in apocalyptic literature (which, unfortunately, some “end times” authors apparently fail to recognize). So when scripture is intended to be taken figuratively, we “literalists” (if that is a correct term–and a lot of different people with a lot of different views get “lumped” into that category) don’t fail to take it “for what it’s worth”–we recognize that the symbolism is specifically how it is intended, and that IS “what it’s worth.”
So, what the matter probably comes down to as relates to a “literalist’s” view of creationism versus evolution is: (a) how did the author of Genesis himself look upon the creation account he was recounting (figurative verses “literal description”); and (b) to the extent he was trying to be “literal,” was he “right or wrong”? Certainly there is a “poetic flow” to Genesis 1, which could give some weight to a “figurative” interpretation (and probably does to a limited extent). However, there are other later passages of scripture which, at least on their face, take some chunks of the creation and “Adam and Eve” accounts fairly “literally.” So, I am not going to take any “easy out.” Which moves to, was the author in error?
Obviously I can’t go into any huge discussion–tried that before anyway. But there are just a few things to note. First, as to “light” and “day and night” before the sun, moon, and stars. God himself is sometimes referred to as “light” or the source of light. See especially Revelation 22:5. Clearly in a temporal sense, if God can create anything, then it is no more difficult for him to create a stream of photons than stars to “emit” them. Doesn’t “Big Bang” say the same? “Light” before the stars? And given the fact that the earth does turn on its axis and that we describe a “day” as being “one complete turn,” I don’t see any difficulty with the “first day” account, even fairly literally. And is it really problematic for the earth to start “moving in orbit” on the day the sun was created for it to orbit around? (We just shot the last space shuttle “into orbit.”) So I am not sure there is anything “literally problematic” about taking Genesis 1 as a poetic description of “actual events.” Instead, the real issue is whether the “scientific data” can only be read “one way,” and that this “scientific data” is all “anti-creation.” Can’t go there, except to say that “uniformitarianism” somewhat presupposes that the nature of God is such that he either cannot or does not “intervene” in natural events, and that one’s view of God therefore has a significant impact on one’s view of “history,” including natural history.
Paul,
This is just a seed of a thought that deserves elaboration by someone smarter than me, but how much of this silly Creationist stuff is really just disillusionment with the modern world? These people are expressing it in absurdly anti-scientific terms, but what’s really bothering them is that Walt Disney’s “Carousel of Progress” lied to us. We never got our rocket packs. We’re never going to travel in space. And, let’s face it, the world isn’t really a better place because of the Enlightenment.
Not that either science or reason are to blame, but you know what I mean… There was an implicit promise made: Now that we’ve set ourselves free from the shackles of religion and superstition, we’ll be just fine. Even as a kid (at Midvale) in the ’70s, we were basically optimistic about the future. It didn’t pay off. It hasn’t, and won’t.
So these guys are suspicious, and they’re blaming science.
Something like that?
blw
You know Brent, that’s a new idea to me. Not the idea of disappointment of course but of anger and bitterness about the promise of the Enlightenment not working out.
How do you see that anger — which I can’t help but believe exists in some way, somewhere — connecting with creationists?
Paul,
Do you actually expect me to substantiate my opinions in some way? Geez! ;-) I was just throwing it against the wall to see if it sticks.
If religious people believe that the Enlightenment project was a failure (as I do) and have become disenchanted with it, maybe a small minority of them will take it out on science. If we didn’t achieve “better living through science,” as we were promised, maybe modern science is wrong. And they call into question all these foundational, well-established things.
Sorry for just restating what I said before. Really, it’s for someone else to think through. I just like to spout off my opinions. I’m waiting for a talk-radio gig. :-)
blw
I get what you’re saying. I think that, in many ways, life is much better because of science. I suspect you agree.
The mistake comes when people expect too much of science. It can help us build better can openers and grow taller basketball players and it can give us the time and leisure and resources for me to make this comment on my blog via my phone, but it can’t save us.
Some people think science can save us. It’s naive, but there it is. I’m thinking it’s this you’re talking about.
That’s right. It’s scientism they’re reacting against. Scientism makes a rival claim for their faith, and it scares them. They think science is a rival to God. And this is a premise that many atheists and religious people widely share. If all you knew about the meaning of science was the smart-sounding guy with English accent on TV telling you how naive you are to believe in God, it’s easy to see that you would feel threatened.
Not that this relates to my original point about disappointment, but I do think it’s true.
Reading about Geocentrism gave me a huge sad sinking feeling in my gut. The same one I got when I heard about the Taliban blowing up the ancient Buddha statues. How can anyone be so zealous in their faith that they destroy and try delude others? Ugh and ugly.
I guess I am better for hearing about such bad science and bad religion, but for now I’m just depressed.
Maybe a day at the beach will help.