Since it is My Birthday, I Take Today's Article on CMI as a Birthday Present

1)Creation vs. Evolution : Since it is My Birthday, I Take Today's Article on CMI as a Birthday Present · 2)New blog on the kid : I Also Find the Flat Earth Refuted

Here is the link:

CMI : Refuting absolute geocentrism
Refutation of our detractors
by Robert Carter Published: 6 September 2016 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/refuting-geocentrism-response

Previewed on: http://creation.mobi/refuting-geocentrism-response

Which was preserved on: http://www.webcitation.org/6kDlL9bAB

And here is my answer (I had a preview), though I would rather consider myself a critical supporter than a detractor (of course, they could consider me a detractor as to this respect):

I Stone on String, Don Petit and Newton's First Law

"It was claimed that geokinetic theory cannot explain why the planets don’t fly off into space, since “gravity only acts at the speed of light” (some geocentrist models require gravity to propagate at infinite velocity). Actually, since the sun’s gravitational field permeates the solar system, this is no problem at all. Jupiter, for example, experiences the sun’s gravitational attraction at all points and at all times in its orbit and it is exactly the correct gravitational attraction to keep it in orbit at that distance. Even if gravity waves arriving at Jupiter are delayed by a couple of minutes as they propagate outward from the sun, there is never a time when gravity is not there. In any case, under General Relativity, gravity curves space, and that curvature is always there. Also, the recent measurement of two black holes colliding is evidence that gravity propagates as a wave and at the speed of light (We already know that many of them reject this experimental evidence. Update: there has been a second detection. Also, Hartnett has defended the data interpretation.)."

The formulation of objection was lending itself to a strawman of the argument at its best. See following.

Before going on, ether and friction: I think friction is due to atomic matter and that ether is the ultimate subatomic matter, capable of defining place of particles (and therefore of taking them with it) but not of exercising friction, as if it were atomic matter.

"Another area of criticism dealt with questions about where the planets get their continual force to move forward. “Why don’t the planets spiral into the sun?” The answer is simple: Newton’s First Law, of course! Once the planet is set in motion, it will continue in motion until acted on by an outside force. Since there is no appreciable drag acting on the planets, they continue to orbit. Another part of their model requires ‘ether’ and they believe this ether would cause drag on objects moving through space. Yet, there is essentially no friction in space, and we have measured it by sending multiple space probes through the essentially frictionless void of space without ever having to take any ether-caused drag into account."

Look at this:

"Since there is no appreciable drag acting on the planets, they continue to orbit."

Er, no.

In Newtonian explanation, they continue to orbit rather than spin off at tangents, precisely because Sun is making a very significant drag, known as gravitation.

Newton's first law speaks - and possibly very incorrectly, at least it has never been proven - of a non-accelerating motion just going on and on - straight forward. An orbit at least changes direction, and Keplerian ones change speed too, and are therefore accelerating (including decelerating, which is called negative acceleration). This means that Newton's First Law, even if it were on other grounds proven to be true in its application to uniform movement, will not cover orbital movement, since it is not uniform.

Rather, the orbital movement is supposed to be a continually renewed resultant movement of two continually present vectors: inertia from previous movement and gravitation from Sun.

There is a very legitimate question on why the newer and newer resultants keep coming in the same orbit rather than spiralling in or out.

One is in the habit in school rooms of showing an experiment of "stone on string".

However, in the case of a stone on a string, the inertial force is not kept in check by simply a dynamic force. It is kept in check by a fairly static solid. Let's check out the difference.

When in Don Petit's experiment the inertia onward of water droplets is kept in check, it is so by the electromagnetic force of charged knitting needles.

This force, like gravity, has its strength weaken when distance is increased and grow stronger when coming closer, since both operate by a law of inverse proportionality to square of distance (the two forces differ in what they are positively directly poroportional to).

A string, on the other hand, has some elasticity. This means it is wound, and that a pull outward partly unwinds it, and so its fibres "try to" rewind and exert a greater inward force.

Get this: solids exert greater or equal inward force as distance grows slightly while forces are instead weakened when distance grows slightly. Solids do not expert more force, perhaps rather none at all, if distance to centre decreases, whereas forces are strengthened if distance to whatever is "pulling" is diminished. So, solids and forces work, not just in different, but even opposed ways.

This means that the dancing water droplets of Don Petit around a charged knitting needle are a far better model for the PROPOSED mechanism behind the solar system than ever the stone on string experiment was.

In which case will orbitation cease fastest? Well, stone on string experiment, orbitation will continue as long as there is sufficient centrifugal force (unless string breaks). Or as long as it is renewed by moving the hand. And in Don Petit's case ... one could predict orbitations would cease immediately, as inertia and "gravitation mimicking" electromagnetism would not balance sufficiently to make even one orbit, but one would be wrong. On the video I saw, the mean period before droplets spiral totally onto knitting needle is fifteen orbits. Not 50. Not 15 000. Just 15.

Here is the video:

[ISS] Don Petit, Science Off The Sphere - Water Droplets Orbiting Charged Knitting Needle
SpaceVids.tv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyRv8bNDvq4

So, to highlight another sentence:

"Jupiter, for example, experiences the sun’s gravitational attraction at all points and at all times in its orbit ..."

Probably granted.

"... and it is exactly the correct gravitational attraction to keep it in orbit at that distance."

Well, no. Not granted. This is confusing inverse square law attractions with solids limiting outward movements.

"They criticized us, saying that the heliocentric system is easily knocked out of whack. No, the earth and other planets are large and massive objects and the dynamic forces keep them in nice, tight orbits. Is this sustainable for thousands of years? Yes. Millions? Quite likely. Billions? Maybe not. But so what? It only has to be stable from the beginning until today."

What we need to live is a system that functions from the beginning to Doomsday. The question of whether heliocentrism as per Newton WOULD function nicely or not does not depend on the fact that the real system (however it be esplained) is functioning. However, if it is to be a candidate for being identic to the real system, that does depend on whether the Newtonian explanation would really work.

Stone on string experiment is irrelevant, Don Petit's experiment suggests it would not.

II Redshift revisited

"We also saw several examples of people rejecting redshift/blueshift for calculating local motion, but nobody explained why, when we measure the absorption lines of hydrogen here on earth, those same apparent absorption lines seen in interstellar objects are shifted one way or the other?"

Your own site has an admission that circular motion around a centre can cause red shift and Doopler effect to happen when observing light source or sound source from centre.

In other words, red shift is useful for calculating movement around Earth each day, not for calculating movement outwards. For blue shift, I pass, for the moment.

III Parallax and Consistency of Universe revisited

"Clearly, the stars are not “fixed” in relation to one another. What then holds them in their respective places are they whirl about the earth at incredible speeds? Why do neighboring stars orbit at the same rate as distant galaxies when there is a multi-billion-fold difference in their respective distances?"

If the phenomenon usually referred to as annual stellar parallax is NOT of parallactic nature, is NOT the inverse apparent motion of - as per heliocentric theory - our "real motion", then parallax as such does not give us any information as to the distances to any stars. In other words, all stars could be as close as one light day.

"Another common aspect of their model is the belief that all the stars orbit at the same distance from earth. But most of them firmly defend parallax measurements. Yet, the fact that some stars have a detectable annual parallax wobble and other do not shows that stars are at different distances from earth!"

If the mathematics of "common" and "most of them" is correct, a sufficient margin of illogical Geocentrics exist to make two mutually exclusive positions both majoritarian among Geocentrics. Big deal?

I am not Neo-Tychonian, and I do NOT believe stars orbit Sun, I believe that like Sun they have a daily orbit around Earth, some minutes (of the clock!) faster than that of Sun.

IV Absence of Angelic Movers from Answer.

Riccioli as well as St Thomas Aquinas did not believe gravity or inertia or things like that were behind the daily, yearly and other periodic, circular or spirographical motions of Heavenly bodies.

They believed, when God had "appointed" orbits and such, He actually did APPOINT them TO the obedience of someone, namely angels.

This dispenses of quite a lot of arguments, like this one:

"But Tycho Brahe’s system is absolutely a kinematic model (it only describes motion, not the reason for the motion). It is a mathematical system that attempted to explain the then-available data, but did so without physics. It is simply not true to assert otherwise."

True. The main contenders about "reason for the motion" were back then:

• God moves each Heavenly body by direct act of Divine Will;
• God appointed lifeless Heavenly bodies to lifeless forces (gravitation was not yet in play, magnetism was, as per Kepler having this idea for his Heliocentric model);
• God created the stars and planets as living creatures;
• God appointed it for angels to move the celestial bodies.

Obviously, the last one is not operational science. But equally obviuously, we have not needed operational science about the universe beyond, unlike things on Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars and Planets are not ours to tinker with.

I will come back to "operational science" at the end.

"The sun is much more massive than the earth. Thus, the sun should not orbit the earth."

Granted, if gravitation were only mechanics available. Look at socker balls lying on a socker field. As long as only Earth and socker ball have their physical properties involved, there will not be much play going on. When players DO get into the field, sometimes two heavy players will "orbit" a very tiny ball. And certainly the ball will move due to voluntary movements, not due to mainly only gravitation and inertia of the two bodies Earth and ball.

V Moon Landings and Geosynchronic Satellites etc.

"But think about this: a geostationary orbit can only be achieved above the earth’s equator, and the equator is tilted in respect to the rotation of the universe. If it is the universe that is “pulling upward on the geosynchronous satellite”, keeping it from falling back to earth, it cannot do so evenly throughout the year and thus the satellite could not sit still in reference to earth."

My model is rather based on the ether rotating around Earth to the speed of the stars.

Note that St Augustine as well as Riccioli with understandable prudence avoided to decide whether (Hebrew model) angels move stars through absolutely empty space WESTWARD only at different speeds or (Greek model) Heavens are as a solid (if ether, then only quasi-solid) moving Westward each day, angels (gods to Pagans) are causing the (usually) opposed, slower Eastward motions (like angel of Sun causing axactly just only the annual motion, and getting daily motion for free as God turns the Universe around us each day). For my answer on geosynchronic satellites to work, ether needs to function as a quasi-solid.

"Notice that Mercury does not have an equatorial bulge. Earth does, as does Jupiter. They believe, and adamantly defend, that the bulge on Jupiter is due to rotation, and the lack of a bulge on Mercury is due to a lack of rotation (Mercury rotates slowly, once every 59 earth days). But they then go on to say that the bulge on Earth is due to the universe rotating around the earth. Likewise, the Coriolis force on Jupiter is due to its rotation, but they believe the Coriolis force on Earth is due to the universe is rotating around the Earth. Thus, they require multiple explanations of the same phenomena. In geokinetics, there is one explanation: both rotate."

As Sungenis and DeLano would say, a bulge is equally possible through universe rotating around a body fast enough (available for Earth, but not for Jupiter, if Geostasis is correct) and if body is rotating fast enough (available for Jupiter possibly, but not for Earth). To cite their famous application of Mach "the physics is exactly the same". So, no, they are NOT providing two very similar phenomena with two widely diverging explanations, only with two applications of a basically same one.

"There are other things that affect the length of a day. The moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular, and the geometry of the earth is not perfectly round. This affects the length of a day. The earth is also not uniform on the inside. Changes in the magnetic field have been linked to changes in the length of a day. This means that things are wobbling around deep inside the earth. In the geocentric universe, these wobblings affect the rate of rotation of the entire universe? Remember, our clocks are accurate enough to measure these changes, and Newtonian mechanics gives us a valid reason for them."

With angels dancing these wobbles, no problem.

"It pains us to note that many of them do not believe in the moon landings. If one has to reject so much operational science in order to explain the universe, science cannot then be used to explain the universe. So why bother to try to build a ‘scientific’ model at all? This is their greatest Achilles’ heel."

• Your pain is at best irrelevant, at worst a case of "emotional extorsion" or threat of involving psychiatry, neither of which is an argumentum ad rem;
• The moon landings are not operational science, but a claim about past events. There were - at least as the story goes - eleven of them in a past which has not been repeated since back when I was a child;
• As such, credibility of the historical event is to be judged by credibility of testimony (you might be "pained" to note I allow not too much of that to one Calvinist who, if correct, was admitting to committing a sacrilege by risk of spilling what according to what his liturgy was mimicking in real Holy Masses would potentially have been the Precious Blood);
• And apart from credibility of testimony, there is in fact operational science involved in assessing probability of the claims actually occurring non-miraculously:
  
  
  • Would flag have waved as if in wind, if on athmosphere-less Moon?
  • If moving pictures closely resembling Moon Landing, but which feature reflections of pyramids in face shield and therefore not taken on Moon, exist, can pictures of Moon landing have been taken by trick photography?
  • If a feather and a hammer were both dropped on Earth, which has an athmosphere, hammer drops first. Unless feather is loaded. Moving picture of event - the extant one - is not so clear in details that one can exclude this.
  • Is van Allen's Belt
    
    
    • Fictional? That would be throwing out SOME operational science.
    • Real, but astronauts avoided cancer by never going there?
    • Real, but astronauts had good protection, though its exact need was not foreseen?
    • Real, and astronauts were exposed enough to get cancer, but their bad health was hushed up?
  
  
• There is also the question of what each side would risk if being correct and speaking up. We are far from the guarantee of martyred witnesses. On the contrary, astronauts agreeing with the story have been treated as veteran heroes the rest of their lives and the ones that were killed in failed takeoff before the first landing can have been killed to make sure no one dared to speak up.

This said, Moon Landings not being the likeliest story I know of, as history goes, as a Geocentric I have no need to deny it. If they went there, they were moving faster than down here, but not faster than they would be moving here if Heliocentrism were true, and the gravitation (supposing as not quite unlikely this is a universal force) of Moon is much less than that of Earth, therefore speeds would affect them less.

VI Papacy (non-such of Bergoglio and in general)

"We are not trying to be gadflies, but we do wonder if their views on evolution and the age of the earth match those of the most recent papal pronouncements?"

One solution is saying these pronouncements are not Papal since these men were not Popes.

I agree with Lita on the title heading Peter vs his ‘successor’ : Bergoglio is no successor of St Peter.

Somewhat inappropriately, since simony is a personal, not a doctrinal failing, one Walther von der Vogelweide was saying to then (real) Popes:

Wilstu haben Petri Êren
Haltich dann zu Petri Lêren.

Referring to how St Peter treated a proposal by Simon Magus. Well, same words are very much more appropriate when one man wants to be honoured as successor of Peter and really not have the doctrines of St Peter (those aptly cited).

Lita's reasoning about papacy in general is less candid.

• While "petros" is indeed "pebble" it is also the masculine counterpart to feminine "petra" - which means rock. Feminine nouns are not usually given for men to use as given names. + It seems that Aramaic has same word for both (kifa = rock, Peter).
• The next verse is, as usual among anti-papists, omitted from reasoning (Matth 16:19 et dabo TIBI claves regni caelorum)
• When a Pope accepts to be tried, he cannot act in same case as judge - unless he were to break off the trial. Peter didn't. (A modern non-Pope Montini was given an accusation act and could have accepted to be tried by a delegated jury, rather than send Father Georges de Nantes away).
• Lita is assuming St Peter was defending himself in a trial. It could also be the case he was facing the kind of accusation Montini and Bergoglio have been facing and explaining why he was innocent in front of what amountged to ecclesiastic rioters.
• Making a row about a real Pope, when he is not acting the role, as Walther von der Vogelweide knew, is not inacceptable for Catholics. Which was what St Paul was doing.

If Bergoglio is doing a very un-necessary compromise by denying Biblical Creation, or Joshua X:12, 13, so is Lita by denying Papacy.

VII Back to Natural Law and Operational Science:

If a person rejects a purely naturalistic origin of the universe, they still have to decide on how much science to accept. For us (strangely in common with leading evolutionists Ernst Mayr and E.O. Wilson), we draw the line between operational science (how things work) and historical science (what happened in the past).

For me, not all of what is "how things work" is operational science. Non-necessary aspects of the past (unlike 2+2=4 from Day 1 or before) is in a sense "how things work" - namely how they worke-D in that past. So, if past events are even so not operational science, perhaps they should ask if "how things work" is the best complete definition of it. I would say "how things work before our very eyes at close enough range to verify it with certainty".

So, two more things are NOT operational science, to me, though both can be termed "how things work".

The hidden (electrons have never been actually sighted : the wave width of light is too large to be disturbed by an electron, and electronic microscopy can as little show electrons as optic microscopy can show photons, also the soul, except in so far as it can be ascertained by introspection, also hidden plots others but not oneself is in the confidence of).

The distant. In fact, stars are too distant to be seen from more than one side. We cannot take a stroll of 8 light years and verify that half of the stroll, we approach alpha Centauri, mid stroll we have to avoid getting grilled by it and second half of stroll we can see alpha Centauri receding (with our Sun on the other side). Unlike how microscopy allows studying a bacterium from all sides.

Since the universe was created by God at a specific time in the recent past, it would be folly to take present processes and extrapolate them back to infinity. This is essentially what the evolutionist does. When they do so, however, they run into innumerable problems (we documented many of them in our powerful book and documentary Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels). Simply put, the universe resists such explanations because it was created.

Fully agreed. Lamech the Cainite having certainly two different parents and probably four different grandparents would have been stupid if he had projected that principle back to Adam and Eve. Sure, in their generation, Lamech would have had a corresponding exponent of two as different ancestor positions, but they would be coinciding in only two different persons.

On the other hand, once that universe was set up by God, everything should work according to a set of laws, for the Universal Lawgiver would have created the universe commensurate with His divine attributes. His unchanging nature means we have a universe that can be understood through unchanging scientific law (and of course the occasional miracle, an addition to natural law).

Everything works according to the real laws of the Universe. Including miracles, since when God set up the laws in the six days, He also decided on what miracles would be possible to Himself and what He would totally ban.

However, things working according to the laws of the Universe do not mean they work "because of" the laws of the Universe, they work because of some cause.

Not all of these causes - for instance God's own and the angels' capability of moving things - can be classified as what is now called "scientific law". The exceptions are not just miracles. They are also every voluntary move you or I make, since these involve spirit directing matter, at some point very certainly without matter moving due to a previous effective cause that is physical, but moving as it does only through the effective cause of human will. If you write an A and a B, lots of physical laws will be working in how you draw and how the colour or shape is attached to the medium (paper, sand etc). But no physical law at all will be explaining why you draw an A in the word "Autumn" or a B in the phrase "Break of the Day". Only a linguistic law, of English rather than physics, will be explaining that.

The exceptions are also Creation - since this is previous to both ordinary and miraculous. But a Geocentric would add the daily movement of the Heavens around Earth as yet another exception. And it seems that so was St Paul doing:

Romans 1 : [20] For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.

Day and night (as the Psalmist notes) are very clear expressions of God's attributes, if analysed Geocentrically.

Colossians 2:[8] Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ:

Up to very recently, the word "philosophy" means among other things also science. And the Democritan and Epicurean philosophy was famous for explaining EVERYTHING according to a scientific theory which was based on "elements" - i e atoms, quanta - of this world. Since he was not Tychonian (which is certain), and had not analysed the difficulties of a perpetuum mobile (as far as I know, at least), he tried to give a purely naturalistic explanation of Geocentric astronomy. Sun moves faster and is higher than Moon, because it has less density. Stars are even faster than Sun and are even higher up than the Sun, because they have even less density than that. All things move out of accident, like the whirls of a whirlpool. Well, Robert Carter will agree with me that such a purely naturalistic approach to Geocentric astronomy is no longer possible. Therefore, accepting Geocentrism - that is what we actually observe! - leads to some kind of proof of God (Prima Via in Summa Theological I, Q2, A3, or the argument which Josephus attributes to Abraham).

Another thing which Democritus tried to explain with reference to the "elements of the world" was of course the mind and life. That too fails.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Saint Petronius of Verona, Bishop
6.IX.2016