I don't know if this is cute or sad: Geocentrism Conference

Started by DarklingAlice, September 12, 2010, 04:20:53 PM

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DarklingAlice

The First Annual Catholic Conference on Geocentrism? Really? I would be quite happy to hear this was a hoax. I know that people will believe many, many stupid things but you kind of always hold out hope that there is a line somewhere <_<

http://www.galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/

Also, why Galileo? Surely they would be better served attacking Aristarchus or Copernicus if they want to go after the instigators, or Hubble if they if they want to actually attack the modern science.
For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong.


Noelle


Oniya

It's registered through GoDaddy, as of 2006.  If it was a 'first annual conference', you'd think it would be newer.  Looks like a place to hawk someone's vanity-published PDF book.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Neroon

Let's lump them together with this lot.

Sungenis (the main speaker) is, from my research, a rather disreputable character who has come into conflict with the Catholic hierarchy for his anti-semitism.
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RubySlippers

Whats the problem maybe the entire universe does go around the Earth, how can we be so sure?

It could just appear the other way after all - an illusion.

Sho


RubySlippers

The position is not wholly based on science however its based on early Church teachings and the Bible, with the science meant to demonstrate that is the way it is.

I must point out literal reading of passages in the Bible would point to them being correct.


Jude

That's nice, but there's not a shred of actual evidence supporting the idea.  Belief in geocentrism is about as empirically sound as holocaust denial (probably less so).  If you want to profess that it's the truth because your bible says so, then that's one thing, but to pretend that the evidence backs it up is extremely dishonest (and that's exactly what the people who wrote that book are doing).

I respect their right to freedom of speech, but reading that was absolutely horrifying.

Hemingway

It's not just that there isn't any evidence to suggest the earth is the center of the universe. It's also all the evidence to suggest that it's not. Considering how it contradicts virtually everything we know about the universe, I don't think reason and logic are really a major part of it.

Oniya

Quote from: RubySlippers on September 12, 2010, 05:26:03 PM
Whats the problem maybe the entire universe does go around the Earth, how can we be so sure?

It could just appear the other way after all - an illusion.

Two words:  Retrograde motion.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Vekseid

The Earth's acceleration around the Sun is measurable. I did it for my previous job, for crying out loud - "What's this adjustment for? ... Holy crap we can detect that?!". Showing that Earth rotates is trivially easy. Showing that the Earth orbits the Sun via inertial measurement requires far more sensitive equipment - but it can and has been done. An argument that the Earth is closer to the barycenter of our star system than the Sun is is simply nonsense.

Revolverman

I would think since we left the earth, we could tell we were not the center of our solar system, let alone the damn universe.

Serephino

Oi.....  Is it just me, or does the intelligence of the general population seem to be declining?

dominomask

Quote from: Serephino on September 12, 2010, 10:18:21 PM
Oi.....  Is it just me, or does the intelligence of the general population seem to be declining?


Actually, what we measure as intelligence has been increasing ever since we began measuring it.  The relative score of a "100" on I.Q. tests has been moving upward steadily to keep it at the actual population mean.  A person that rates a "100" now would have been scored much higher back when the test was first devised. 

There will always be wackos, and the internet serves to make the educated public more aware of them, and gives them more of an ability to find each other and seem numerous, and there is a genuine need to respond in a rational and measured way when it seems like they are actually managing to subvert the truth, but don't mistake that for some kind of social doom.  If there's anything that encourages otherwise median-intelligent people to give up rational thought and embrace ridiculous crap, it's the perception (and despair) that the world is too complicated and dangerous and doomed, or that the people with the reality-based ideas are hostile egg-heads.  Crap-based thinking is appealing because it simplifies everything and gives creedence to emotional "reasoning". 

That doesn't mean that, in the long run, reality-based thinking isn't winning out...reactionary, panicky crap-based thinkers by and large are only addressing about 1% of the ever-improving scientific knowledge that permeates our modern awareness so thoroughly that we don't even realize it.  Generally, they attack very cutting-edge stuff that it's hard to demonstrate or explain simply because it's new, or absurd traditional conflicts that aren't convincing to anyone that wasn't already firmly in the wacko-camp.  They really can't fight the engineering, physics, chemistry, electronics, biology, or genetics that are just accepted as fact.  For example, I have a cousin who will talk himself blue about how creationism is "The Truth" and no one can make him think otherwise, but he still accepts as fact, completely unconsciously, that him and his wife both having blue eyes means that their children will never have brown eyes.  Only the real hard-core evolution deniers bother to create models that refute the basic, easily understood underpinnings of evolution (like division of life into kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genuses, and species) and their models are often more convoluted and harder to understand than the reality-based model.  Their camp will tout them because they agree with the conclusion, but ultimately they will fail to stick because 1. they will only ever need to get more complicated as more evidence to the contrary emerges, and 2. the people that find them convincing are there fundamentally to reject complicated systems.

This is probably way more than I should have word-hosed at you over what was largely rhetorical, but the only thing I really worry about in the argument between science and crap is people deciding there's no point in trying to make a difference.

Will

This isn't a discussion on evolution.  Topic inflation is almost guaranteed to turn this into a general science v. religion thread. >.>

I don't even know what to say about the OP.  And the "Flat Earth Society" that Neroon linked was even more stupefying, if that's possible.
If you can heal the symptoms, but not affect the cause
It's like trying to heal a gunshot wound with gauze

One day, I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
- Jack Kerouac

Oniya

I've always wondered where the Flat Earthers consider the center of the world to be - and how they rationalize airplane flights that start out somewhere west of that point, travel westward and end up somewhere east.  (Like centering it at the Greenwich meridian and the equator, and then flying from California to Japan.)
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Jude

Quote from: Oniya on September 13, 2010, 02:39:38 PM
I've always wondered where the Flat Earthers consider the center of the world to be - and how they rationalize airplane flights that start out somewhere west of that point, travel westward and end up somewhere east.  (Like centering it at the Greenwich meridian and the equator, and then flying from California to Japan.)
Well, that's not quite so insane.  Not only is the earth flat, the entire universe is.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true&print=true

(note, the previous post was not to be taken too seriously)

RubySlippers

Did anyone look at the vidence in the books the authors being considered wrote? I thought the whole point of SCIENCE is to place the evidence out there and debate it maybe they have sound theories behind this perspective.


Will

Quote from: RubySlippers on September 13, 2010, 05:48:10 PM
Did anyone look at the vidence in the books the authors being considered wrote? I thought the whole point of SCIENCE is to place the evidence out there and debate it maybe they have sound theories behind this perspective.

...Really?

I did read most of the page that was linked.  Obviously I haven't read the book, because I'm not paying for what amounts to a conspiracy theory.

Seriously, this is not a scientific theory; it's a conspiracy theory.  They're saying that all the people in the know, know, and they're hiding it from the rest of us.  If you treat this idea seriously, then you have to do the same for the "lizard conspiracy," or the civilization that lives in the center of the earth.  This is easily proven wrong, without a doubt, in any number of ways.
If you can heal the symptoms, but not affect the cause
It's like trying to heal a gunshot wound with gauze

One day, I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
- Jack Kerouac

Vekseid

Quote from: RubySlippers on September 13, 2010, 05:48:10 PM
Did anyone look at the vidence in the books the authors being considered wrote? I thought the whole point of SCIENCE is to place the evidence out there and debate it maybe they have sound theories behind this perspective.

No, the purpose of science is to find closer and closer approximations of the truth. It is not meant to promote delusions or frauds such as these, it is meant to quash them out and remove them from contention as possibilities. Science never says yes, but it does say 'no', and anyone promoting geocentrism is either seriously misguided, or a fraud. The only purpose of considering it is as a mental exercise - why do we know the Earth is rotating?

That would be a useful Elliquiy U exercise for some people, maybe, but as far as politics and religion is concerned it's a closed issue.


Noelle

Quote from: RubySlippers on September 13, 2010, 05:48:10 PM
Did anyone look at the vidence in the books the authors being considered wrote? I thought the whole point of SCIENCE is to place the evidence out there and debate it maybe they have sound theories behind this perspective.

I'm curious, how much do you understand about the heliocentric model and how and why it came to replace the geocentric model centuries ago? I don't mean it offensively, if there's something you don't know much about, I'm sure any number of people here would be happy to elaborate and explain it to you...but this isn't a topic anywhere near as controversial as something like evolution or the big bang. Even the Church accepted the heliocentric model something like 300 years ago or so.

Besides, the existence of an alternative theory doesn't mean that the theory is automatically as valid as the one already accepted -- the geocentric model is outdated and scientifically unsound and has been for a very long time -- again, if you don't understand why, it can be explained to you. But proposing the same idea with slightly different wording doesn't mean the old, glaring flaws magically go away. These people essentially just sound like they're skewing science to fit their religious ideas and take us a giant step back.

Serephino

The reason this isn't be taken seriously is because there is tons of evidence to the contrary.  Scientists have been studying space since the 50's?  Astrologists have been doing it a lot longer than that.  Astronauts have gone into space.  Geocentrism was the old belief that was proven wrong a long time ago.   

Vekseid

Astrology is in no sense science, and it makes no study of the physical arrangement of the planets outside an Earth-centric viewpoint anyway.

Astronomy as a science is several thousand years old, as used to predict eclipses. After Copernicus (16th century) you have a fairly modern picture of the solar system which Kepler and Galileo (17th century) did a great deal to refine. Newton gave further explanatory power for the reasons behind the models, and Einstein made some final explanations - after that, our ability to determine the future position of the planets is mostly limited by our observational abilities and computing power.

Jude

Vekseid is right, in fact (and this may have been what he was saying) Astrology is actually based on geocentric ideas:  it has not changed in any way shape or form to reflect our expanded understanding of the universe.

The whole idea that there are different celestial bodies and each projects energy which influences the traits of individuals is key to astrology and completely nonsensical.  The sun is the only body in our solar system that gives off any substantial amount of energy, so even if energy of celestial bodies did have an effect in coloring our personalities (which is silly in and of itself for so many reasons) we would all be dominated by characteristics inherited from the sun, and thus of relatively uniformity (which clearly isn't true).