CMI Promoting Heliocentrism Again

Quotes not specifically attributed before or after text to other source , but numbered, are from:

Our Amazing Created Solar System
[composite work under ed.] Russell Grigg
https://austore.creation.com/our-amazing-created-solar-system

But first I will quote another paper by CMI:

The distant starlight problem often raised against young-age creation cosmology is as follows: “If Creation occurred only a few thousand years ago, how can we see light from stars that are billions of light years away?” Over the past decades several solutions have been proposed including light created already in transit (Morris 1976), a variable speed of light (Setterfield 1989), gravitational time dilation (Humphreys 1994), supernatural time dilation (Hartnett 2003), and the anisotropic synchrony convention (ASC) model (Newton 2001; Lisle 2010). Faulkner (2013) provides a brief overview and criticism of the above solutions and offers his own, which involves the miraculous “shooting” forth (Hebrew: dasha) of light from distant stellar objects on Creation Day Four. However, Hartnett (2014) has pointed out that Faulkner’s scenario would have left behind several types of tell-tale physical evidence, none of which has been observed.

From : A SOLUTION FOR THE DISTANT STARLIGHT PROBLEM USING CREATION TIME COORDINATES
Tichomir Tenev et al. on International Conference on Creationism, 2018
http://creationicc.org/2018_papers/11%20Tenev%20starlight%20final.pdf

From their list of papers:
http://creationicc.org/papers.php?yr=2018

Why I am mentioning this? Because, of all the solutions given for Distant Starlight Paradox, one is lacking : a universe which is smaller, because even "close" stellar distances like alpha Centauri are using wrong method in accepting parallax based on Heliocentrism.

In other words, the Geocentric and "small universe" solution is lacking. Obviously, stars at 1 light day distance, while clearly smaller than billions of light years of distance, is still not small, similarily as creation in 5199 or 5500 BC (or some would go for 4004) is called "recent creation" even is 6 or 7 millennia is not really recent.

Their own solution here presented looks quite a bit like "yeah, starlight travelled for 100 000 years, but was still not emitted longer than 6000 years ago, because contemporary depends on when light arrives". Sure, that is as much Young Earth Creationism as the Djinn asking Bill Nye what he wanted and Bill Nye saying "I want to be a scientist". "Poof" "Nothing changed?" "Yes, I just changed the definition of scientist" ... and these guys just changed the definition of Young Earth Creationist ... unless they appeal to "Young Earth but Old Universe".

Why on their view stars "were" created on day four needs to be seen in their own words. Here is one formulation:

We also compared our solution to other current ones and noted a strong convergence of thought among creationist researchers pertaining to the arrangement of the stellar creation events in spacetime. That arrangement is the one in which the creation events of all the stars and galaxies, including the stars within our own galaxy, lay very close to Earth’s Day Four light cone when they were created by God. Simply from those initial conditions, first light from all these objects arrived on Earth during Creation Day Four, and the light that has arrived ever since carries the subsequent histories of these objects synchronized in time as measured by clocks on Earth.

So, on my view, suppose you have two points A and B at two light minutes distance. At 18:00 on Earth, a beam goes from A to B and from B to A. At 18:02 on Earth, they arrive. The emission of light beam A to B and the reception of light beam on A from B are not contemporary, therefore the light beams will seem consecutive. On point B they will seem consecutive in the reverse order. Between these points, a point C is exactly one light minute from each, and at 18:01 a light beam was sent in both directions, but other colour. Since on A, BA and CA arrive at same time, they will seem contemporary, but they will really be consecutive in the emission. On B, AB and CB seem contemporary, but will be consecutive in the emission. And this way, the they give solution really does say Universe is older than Creation week.

Enter Einstein. He will claim AB and CB are contemporary on B, BA and CA contemporary on A, AB and BA and CA and CB all four contemporary on C, bc this is what can be verified at each point. Therefore CA and CB will nowhere be last, even if they were so in emission. Hey presto, problem solved - except solution is unappealing. Counterintuitive. Conflating "verifiable" with true. While verifiable things are generally true, lots of true things are not verifiable, at least to some. A problem is not solved bc a "problematic" key term is redefined. Problametic here as showing where the problem is. It is actually the redefined terms which are problematic in the usual sense - like calling logarithms "numbers" when they aren't.

Another tidbit from that paper:

A side effect of our solution is the asymmetric relationship between the Earth and stars. While light from distant stars emitted on Day Four also reaches Earth on Day Four, the reverse is not true. In fact, due to the special initial conditions, a star located a billion light years away from Earth will not receive light, or any other signal from Earth, until its CTC clock strikes two billion years. This asymmetry is consistent with Scripture, according to which God appointed the stars “to give light upon the Earth” (Genesis 1:15) but did not grant man dominion over the stars like He did over other parts of Creation (Genesis 1:28). In other words, Scripture indicates that while stars are causally to affect Earth, the reverse is not true.

Well, for that to be true, it suffices that man will never reach the stars or his reaching them will be futile, and be resumed as "I came, I saw, I didn't much do anything". Which is, if Voyager one or two ever reach sphere of fix stars, is what I suppose will be the issue.

Now for the quotes from first mentioned paper, starting with I:

I) Galileo supported the theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) that the earth and other planets move around the sun. Anti-Christian propagandists make much of the conflict between Galileo and the Church, or ‘science vs religion’. But Galileo thought that the much simpler mathematics of the Copernican system compared to the unwieldy Ptolemaic system would best reflect God’s mathematical simplicity (i.e. God is not composed of parts but is Triune). The Encyclopædia Britannica identifies Galileo’s main opponents as the scientific establishment:

Why would movements of stars and planets need simplicity? I mean, what is the theological ratio?

We already have space reflecting the Holy Trinity by being one space with three dimensions.

That God is not composed of parts, does not mean He cannot mentally comprehend parts.

And making stellar movements on one level less perfect and more complex is a way of answering astrolatry. If God chose ellipses in order to avoid Platonic worship of stars moving in perfect circles, He can have put them in epicycles as well, for same reason.

Quote II purports to be from Encyclopedia Britannica, and I could not check the footnote to see from which edition, so, while I won't accuse them of fabricating a quote, I suspect it is an earlier and more biassed EB:

II) “The Aristotelian professors, seeing their vested interests threatened, united against him. They strove to cast suspicion on him in the eyes of the ecclesiastical authorities because of [alleged] contradictions between the Copernican theory and Scriptures.”

It would seem one of these "Aristotelian professors" was not a secular scientist at all, but a Dominican priest, and he reacted when he heard of or read Galileo's view of Joshua 10.

Here is another Britannica article, holding a different view from quote on who complained:

Galileo’s increasingly overt Copernicanism began to cause trouble for him. In 1613 he wrote a letter to his student Benedetto Castelli (1577–1644) in Pisa about the problem of squaring the Copernican theory with certain biblical passages. Inaccurate copies of this letter were sent by Galileo’s enemies to the Inquisition in Rome, and he had to retrieve the letter and send an accurate copy. Several Dominican fathers in Florence lodged complaints against Galileo in Rome, and Galileo went to Rome to defend the Copernican cause and his good name. Before leaving, he finished an expanded version of the letter to Castelli, now addressed to the grand duke’s mother and good friend of Galileo, the dowager Christina. In his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo discussed the problem of interpreting biblical passages with regard to scientific discoveries but, except for one example, did not actually interpret the Bible. That task had been reserved for approved theologians in the wake of the Council of Trent (1545–63) and the beginning of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. But the tide in Rome was turning against the Copernican theory, and in 1615, when the cleric Paolo Antonio Foscarini (c. 1565–1616) published a book arguing that the Copernican theory did not conflict with scripture, Inquisition consultants examined the question and pronounced the Copernican theory heretical. Foscarini’s book was banned, as were some more technical and nontheological works, such as Johannes Kepler’s Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. Copernicus’s own 1543 book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”), was suspended until corrected. Galileo was not mentioned directly in the decree, but he was admonished by Robert Cardinal Bellarmine (1542–1621) not to “hold or defend” the Copernican theory. An improperly prepared document placed in the Inquisition files at this time states that Galileo was admonished “not to hold, teach, or defend” the Copernican theory “in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.”

From : Galileo, Italian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician
Written By: Albert Van Helden
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Galileo-Galilei#accordion-article-history

No mention of Aristotelian professors uniting against him before ecclesiastical authorities. Even less of them seeing their vested interests threatened. Perhaps Russell Grigg et al. were using an older edition with much more anti-Catholic and anti-Scholastic bias?

Here in quote III, someone is supposed to prove Heliocentrism was well supported among actual clergy:

III) Giorgio de Santillana (1902–1974), Professor of the History of Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed out that contrary to myth:

“It has been known for a long time that a major part of the church’s intellectuals were on the side of Galileo, while the clearest opposition to him came from secular ideas.”

Both sides should have realized that all movement must be described in relation to something else—a reference frame—andfrom a descriptive point of view,all reference frames are equally valid.

Who is this Giorgio de Santillana?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_de_Santillana

Giorgio Diaz de Santillana (30 May 1902 – 1974) was an Italian-American philosopher and historian of science, and Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Historians of science are often bad, and if at scientific institutes, my confidence is even weaker.

In 1969, he published a book entitled: Hamlet's Mill, An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time with Dr. Hertha von Dechend. This book focused upon the understanding of the connection between the mythological stories of Pharaonic Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Christianity, etc. and the ancient observations pertaining to the stars, planets and, most notably, the 26,000 year precession of the equinoxes. He died at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1974.

Not the kind of thing CMI would normally recommend, more like the kind of thing Gary Bates would consider UFOlogic and potentially demonic, but when it comes to judges of Galileo, CMI can by now be suspected of hatchet jobs. Perhaps especially Russell Grigg, who seems one of the more orrery about Catholicism.

However, the quote might conceivably be from Giorgio's contribution to another composite work, the volume The Mentor Philosophers: where he wrote the volume The Age of Adventure which treats of "Nicholas of Cusa, Da Vinci, Thomas More, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Erasmus, Martin Luther, Albrecht Dürer, Copernicus, Montaigne, Kepler, Jakob Böhme, Galileo, Richard Hakluyt, Giordano Bruno."

I am not sure he was very familiar with Coimbra Jesuits. I somehow don't think he gave Riccioli's Novum Organum a very deep consideration. The list even omits Kepler's mentor Tycho Brahe.

Whom Bellarmine cited in the debates with Galileo in the first process, when the accused was not Galileo, but one of his books. Bellarmine was not Aristotelic or Ptolemaic, and the sun spots and the stars in the Milky Way and the Moons of Jupiter were all discussed and none of them were condemned. When Galileo mentioned how planets orbitting sun would simplify observations, Bellarmine specifically mentioned the solution of Tycho Brahe, and Galileo specifically rejected it.

Also, looking further on Giorgio Diaz de Santillana:

Son of the Tunisian-Italian jurist David Santillana, expert of Islamic Law, Giorgio was born and mostly educated in Rome, Santillana moved to the United States in 1936 and became a naturalized US citizen in 1945.

One aspect of Islamic law would by then in many places, and probably already in Tunisia too, have considered it vital to defend religion and clergy from any criticism which could come from the "falsafa", meaning, if Giorgio thought it impossible or even socially too irksome to defend Geocentrism, and if he transferred the idea to Catholicism, which even many Muslims would extend it to, he would try to pretend Catholicism had never been in conflict with this "proven truth" he took Heliocentrism for.

If you want one good historian of science, it is Duhem. He's the guy who dug up Nicolas Oresme, noted he had refuted all commonsense objections to Heliocentrism, except one, namely, without proof it is uneconomic. I haven't read him himself, I have only read people depending on him. Look up how he looked at Galileo case.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Edward of England*
13.X.2018

* Also, 101 years since last apparition at Fatima.