Mick Jagger gathers no Mosque: Evolution and Geocentrism.

Recanting Galileo

https://originsofman.angelfire.com/pdf/recantin.pdf

The Scientific Illusion

Solange Strong Hertz

A wealth of scientific arguments have been marshaled by creationists against evolution and other myths fabricated by modem science. Although science, a discipline based on natural reason, can be manipulated to propagate error, it’s good to be reassured that it lends itself even more easily to the support of the truth. Our Catholic faith tells us that because the truth is one, true science and true religion can never contradict each other, but where is real science today?

At no time in human history has error been allowed to spread so freely, and why not? It incurs neither censure nor punishment for leading minds astray, for two simple reasons: one, that scientific research no longer acknowledges any authority beyond itself and two, it admits no evidence that isn’t provided by its own senses. Only data gleaned here and now from the material universe which can be seen, heard, touched and measured is admissible. The vast body of eternal, invisible premises which underlie and pervade the whole of created reality is therefore excluded on principle and not allowed to contribute any relevant information, to the great detriment of science itself. For instance, how can biology hope to ascertain the extent of the role played by the invisible soul in the growth and vital processes of living organisms if the soul is postulated a priori as non-existent?

Whoever dares to refute false scientific dogmas is therefore reduced to fighting on purely material grounds, and sad to say, this foreshortened terrain is where nearly all the fighting is being done. For the last 300 years creationists have been content to defend the truth by skirmishing according to the arbitrary rules of warfare laid down by science on its own authority without ever questioning them, let alone directly addressing what lies at the core of the disagreement. Inasmuch as both sides have pretty much tacitly agreed to ignore the mass of unseen evidence which actually forms the most important part of human knowledge and limit themselves to sense data in their debates, is it any wonder that a whole new artificial reality existing only in man’s mind is being mistaken for the world God actually created?

Science declared its independence of the Church long before the state did so. Indeed the political separation of Church and state we have today could never have been engineered unless the way had been prepared for it by a previous separation of science from theology. It was science, and not the state, which first repudiated the Church as Teacher of all nations and divinely appointed custodian of the truth in this world, who alone possesses the moral authority to keep both science and state in their proper places. The rift broke out into the open when Galileo Galilei first publicly proposed that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than the other way round.

Until then the whole world, both Christian and pagan, believed that our earth was the center of the universe and that the entire cosmos revolved around it, because geocentricity is a truth of the natural order revealed by God from Adamic times. Inasmuch as it’s impossible to see what’s actually going on in outer space without standing outside the universe, this truth is a proper object of revelation. God had to reveal that He had set His earth at the center of the universe because, although, like Aristotle, we might be led to deduce this from simple observation, we could never be certain of it for lack of conclusive empirical proof, given the fact that we have no stable point of reference outside ourselves by which to judge relative motion between us and other heavenly bodies.

In its elucidation of the Creed in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church teaches officially, “The earth also God commanded to stand in the midst of the world, rooted in its own foundation.” Although geocentrism can’t be proved experimentally, it :can be proved theologically, for the earth was not created primarily to be man’s home, but to provide the ground for the Incarnation, the central event of history whereby God would become man and reign as Christ the King at the very center of His Creation. First revealed to Adam and then transmitted to his descendants as part of primordial tradition, the centrality of the earth is clear from the account of Creation in the book of Genesis and affirmed or implied in thousands of passages throughout the Bible, which always refers to the sun, and never to the earth, as in motion.

For instance, the Psalmist speaks of the sun “as a bridegroom coming out of his bride- chamber,” who “hath rejoiced as a giant to run the way: His going out is from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the end thereof’ (Ps. 18:6-7). The Preacher says, “The sun riseth and goeth down, and returneth to his place: and there rising again, maketh his round by the south and turneth again to the north” (Eccles. 1:5-6). And of course there is the famous story about how Joshua on one occasion was divinely empowered to make both the sun and the moon stand still in order to prolong the day of battle “till the people revenged themselves of their enemies” (Josh. 10: 12-13). Scripture also tells us how the prophet Isaias made the sun go backwards “ten lines by the degrees” on the sundial of Achaz “by which it was gone down” (Is. 38:8). In the New Testament our Lord himself says His heavenly Father “makes his sun to rise on the good and the evil” (Matt. 5:45). No passage can be found anywhere in Scripture which depicts the sun at rest.

At the same time, Scripture categorically affirms the immovable position of the earth at the center of whatever solar, lunar, ‘astral or other peregrinations may be taking place around it. Psalm 92 states flatly that God “hath established the world which shall not be moved,” and Psalm 95 tells us He has “corrected the world, which shall not be moved.” Psalm 103 says God has “founded the earth upon its own bases; it shall not be moved forever and ever.” In 1 Paralipomenon can be read the dictum, “He hath founded the earth immovable” (16:30), and the book of Job says that God by His power “stretched out the north over the empty space and hangeth the earth upon nothing” (26:7).

Such quotations could be multiplied at length. We must note in passing, however, that Scripture does not bind us to any particular system describing the paths taken by the stars and planets as they move through space around the earth. We are free to espouse the Aristotelian, the Ptolemaic, the Tychonian, or any other arrangements or modifications of the many geocentric hypotheses which have been devised over the centuries. It doesn’t matter whether they are concentrically or eccentrically organized, moving elliptically or according to epicycles, provided they seem to explain the observable movements and the earth remains at their center.

Inasmuch as in Galileo’s day the natural sciences were still considered part of philosophy, the handmaid of theology, it’s not surprising that the first opponents of heliocentricity were polemicists who based their argumentation entirely on Scripture. Like all the Fathers of the Church, orthodox theologians believed that the Bible was inerrant in its every detail, and that where it described the workings of material creation it was in fact teaching real science, and not indulging in mere poetic metaphor or symbolism. Cardinal St. Robert Bellarmine’s rigorous defense of the divine revelation of the earth’s position was therefore only to be expected from a saint who would become a canonized Doctor of the Church.

In a memorable letter dated April 12, 1615 which in his capacity as Master of Controversies, he wrote to the friar Paolo Foscarini, a Carmelite provincial who supported Galileo, St. Robert said,

To say that, assuming the earth moves and the sun stands still, all the appearances are saved better than with eccentrics and epicycles, is to speak well: there is no danger in this, and it is sufficient for mathematicians. But to want to affirm that the sun really is fixed in the center of the heavens and only revolves around itself (i.e., turns on its axis) without traveling from east to west, and that the earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves with great speed around the sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also by injuring holy faith and rendering the Holy Scriptures false.

He goes on to remind Fr. Foscarini that the Council of Trent

...prohibited expounding the Scriptures contrary to the common agreement of the holy Fathers. And if Your Reverence would read not only the Fathers but also the commentaries of modem writers on Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Joshua, you would find that all agree in explaining literally that the sun is in the heavens and moves swiftly around the earth, and that the earth is far from the heavens and stands immobile in the center of the universe. Now consider whether in all prudence the Church could encourage giving to Scripture a sense contrary to the holy Fathers and All the Latin and Greek commentaries. Nor may it be answered that this is not a matter of faith, for if it is not a matter of faith from the point of view of the subject matter, it is on the part of the ones who have spoken.’ It would be just as heretical to deny that Abraham had two sons and Jacob twelve, as it would be to deny the virgin birth of Christ. For both are declared by the Holy Ghost through the mouths of the prophets and apostles.

St. Robert winds up his letter by allowing that

...if there were a true demonstration that the sun was in the center of the universe and the earth in the third sphere, and that the sun did not travel around the earth but the earth circled the sun, then it would be necessary to proceed with great caution in explaining the passages of Scripture which seemed contrary, and we would rather have to say that we did not understand them than to say that something was false which had been demonstrated. But I do not believe that there is any such demonstration; none has been shown to me.

And it’s sober fact that in this year 2003 A.D., the world is still waiting for this conclusive demonstration on the part of human science.

In itself Galileo’s theory was far from new. The Greeks had toyed with it centuries before, and Copernicus and Kepler had formulated it as a mathematical theory which had become familiar to most of the educated minds of their day, but until Galileo came along, no one dared seriously pretend that it reflected reality. At most it could be said to describe the universe as it might appear to an observer standing on the sun, who was making calculations from there. As Cardinal Bellarmine made clear in his letter, heliocentrism had always been permitted as a method of making astronomical calculations. Galileo would therefore have incurred no censure had he continued to teach heliocentrism merely as a mathematical model by which the course of the planets can easily be described and eclipses predicted. When he began maintaining that it actually conveyed reality, however, he impugned the veracity of Scripture, and that’s what got him into trouble with the Magisterium.

As he explained in a letter to his friend Don Castelli, he was persuaded that Scripture used imagery adapted to the weak intelligence of the vulgar which was never meant to be taken literally by the educated. In 1614 he published a letter he had written to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, wherein he argued that the Bible only intended to convey those supernatural truths necessary for salvation and had no interest in natural phenomena. As the saying goes, the Bible doesn’t tell us how the heavens go, but only how to go there. Because according to him scientific certainty was attainable by the natural sciences on their own without the help of revelation, he believed the obvious sense of Scripture must give way before scientific evidence, to the contrary. In other words, he maintained that because the Bible’s competence extended only to spiritual matters, it could, and in fact does contain many errors in the natural order and was not to be trusted in the scientific world of hard facts.

When Galileo began expounding these views not only in the learned Latin of the universities, but in the vernacular before the general public, the ecclesiastical authorities were moved to act. In 1616, the Congregation of the Index under Cardinal Bellarmine, acting in the name of the reigning Pontiff Paul V, formally condemned two propositions. Without actually naming Galileo as their promoter, the Congregation pinpointed as errors:

1. The sun is the center of the world and completely immovable by local motion.

2. The earth is not the center of the world, not immovable, but moves according to the whole of itself and also with a diurnal motion.

The second proposition regarding motion on the part of the earth was judged to be merely “erroneous in the faith,” but the first one, regarding the centrality of the sun, was unanimously declared “formally heretical” and “philosophically foolish and absurd... inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the teaching of many texts of Holy Scripture, both according to their literal meaning and according to the common explanation and interpretation of the Holy Fathers and learned theologians.” The words “formally heretical” would mean that such a proposition is not merely erroneous, but directly contrary to a doctrine of the faith.

Continuing nonetheless to teach his error in the face of this solemn denunciation, during the pontificate of Urban VIII in 1633 Galileo was tried in person before the Inquisition and convicted – not of faulty science – but of heresy. He was silenced and sentenced to house arrest. “All books which affirm the motion of the earth” were put on the Index, and in 1664, a generation after Galileo’s death, Pope Alexander VII issued the bull Speculatores Domus Israel which he affixed to a new Index condemning all books in any way teaching heliocentrism, commanding and enjoining by his Apostolic Authority “all persons everywhere to yield to this Index a constant and complete obedience.”

The importance of this document cannot be minimized, for it included and reaffirmed not only the previous condemnations, but “all the relevant decrees up to the present time, that have been issued since the Index of our predecessor Clement.” The creationist scholar Paula Haigh rightly concludes from this that “The evidence for papal infallibility in the Galileo case rests, then, upon the Bull of Alexander VII in 1664.” She discerns a twofold basis for its authority: “l) The decrees of the Index and the Inquisition which were based on the truth of the Church’s tradition, especially as in this case it rested upon the unanimity of the Fathers and the constant position of the Church; and 2) the infallibility of the Pope speaking in his own official capacity as Head of the Church and therefore ex cathedra, even though not defining any new dogma but simply affirming tradition.”

Miss Haigh goes on to say, “The modern theologians have never addressed the problem posed by this Bull of Alexander VII. If they had, they would need to admit its direct papal authority and search for some subsequent document by a subsequent pope that formally and specifically abrogated, i.e., nullified the 1664 Bull. But no such document has ever been found or produced. The case seems to me to be exactly parallel with that of the Bull Quo Primum by Pope St. Pius V by which he established the Mass of the Roman Rite in perpetuity.”1

In an effort to marshal arguments against the doctrine of papal infallibility, which was being hotly debated and about to be defined at the First Vatican Council in 1870, an English Catholic priest by the name of Fr. William Roberts compiled a work entitled The Pontifical Decrees against the Earth’s Movement. Fr. Roberts, who mistakenly believed that heliocentrism had been proved, made a painstaking study of the old decrees against heliocentrism, bringing them forward to prove his contention that popes in the past had in fact fallen into error when speaking ex cathedra, and that papal infallibility was therefore nothing more than a pious belief on the part of Catholics. He offered documentary proof that heliocentrism had been irreformably condemned ex cathedra as contrary to faith – as continued to be held without question throughout the Catholic world for a long time thereafter. If his proofs are correct, it follows that heliocentrism remains proscribed today and may not be knowingly and willfully entertained or promoted by any Catholic without endangering his salvation.

As we know, Galileo abjured in order to avoid excommunication, and to this day the Church has not lifted its condemnation of his heretical theory, which remains as unproven as ever. As a matter of fact, attempts to prove it, like the well known Michelson-Morley experiments mounted back in 1887, have a way of backfiring and sometimes actually lending support to a static earth. Strangely enough, however, probably because Galileo allowed people to believe that he had actually observed heliocentrism through his newly invented telescope and he had supposedly “proved” it mathematically, his heresy soon raged out of control despite all the Church’s condemnations. After some initial indignation at the novel theory, the Protestant denominations, ever eager to prove Rome wrong, were the first to give way to the rising tide of scientism, with Calvinists in the lead and Lutherans bringing up the rear.

Spreading like wildfire through the universities of Europe, heliocentrism gradually gained acceptance among the teaching organs of the Church. Rome stood firm for a long time, but eventually two weak Popes gave way under the mounting pressure from the liberated academia. In 1757 Benedict XIV opened the floodgates by permitting the false theory to be taught as theory in schools, and in 1822 Pius VII, bowing to “the general opinion of modem astronomers,” began gradually removing books on heliocentrism from the Index. When Gregory XVI finally removed them all in 1835, the sequel was not hard to predict. Galileo’s views on biblical exegesis became the norm, and the Bible no longer figured as a scientific authority. The Holy Ghost had to make way for the dictatorial new scholarship.

Incredible as it may seem, like Fr. Roberts and the general public, highly educated dignitaries in the Catholic hierarchy ended up believing, on pure hearsay and without a shred of proof, that heliocentrism had actually been proved. Cardinal Manning, one of the famous converts from Anglicanism brought into the Church by the Oxford movement, is a fairly representative case. In his popular book The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost, written in the 1870’s, he writes in perfect good faith,

From the moment that the motion of the earth was established as a scientific truth, the Church has accepted it. And why? Because the Church has no revelation of physical science. No revelation whatever is made of astronomy. The Book of Joshua uses the language of sense and not the language of science in saying that the sun stood still. Therefore faith and theology are in no way implicated and in no way in conflict.2

Doesn’t this sound familiar? The good Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster didn’t hesitate to throw the entire weight of his office behind heliocentrism, despite a total absence of documented proof that the Magisterium of the Church has ever accepted heliocentrism, let alone that heliocentrism has been proven scientifically. Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus,promulgated in 1893, staunchly defended the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, but did nothing to remedy the situation because it allowed considerable leeway to accommodated meanings and interpretations. With science permitted to go its own way unchecked and to wield so unprecedented an influence over the minds of Christians, it’s no wonder that less than a half century later G. K. Chesterton would see no reason why a Catholic could not accept the equally unproven theory of theistic evolution, now openly preached by the new conciliar religion.

St. Pius X had tried to stem the tide in 1907 by issuing the decree Lamentabili sane and the encyclical Pascendi against the rising tide of Modernist errors. He allowed scientism no quarter, categorically condemning the notions that “the interpretation of the sacred books ... is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes,” and that “Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Scripture, so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from error.” He also condemned the growing opinion that, “Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences,” although the truth of the matter is that Scripture in fact contains many truths which can be known by reason alone or even by simple observation, and it is inerrant in all.

On May 13, 1917, feastday of St. Robert Bellarmine, even as the First World War was raging, our Lady began a series of apparitions at Fatima, Portugal which culminated in a stupendous solar prodigy surpassing the ones performed in ancient times by Joshua for the Israelites and the prophet Isaias for King Ezechias. It was witnessed by over 70,000 people, before whose very eyes she demonstrated the sun’s subservient position to the earth by sending it zigzagging through the heavens to earth and back again in a riot of color like an incandescent yo-yo on a string, causing total panic among the viewers. But not even a miracle of this magnitude could shake what was by then an entrenched belief that the sun was the stable center of the universe. The time had come, predicted by St. Paul to St. Timothy, when men “will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires... will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will turn away indeed their hearing from the truth... to fables” ( 2 Tim. 4:4 ).

In 1943 Pius XII’s encyclical on Scripture Divino afflante Spiritu, said to have been written by the modernist Jesuit Cardinal Bea, would characterize “the Holy Fathers, the Doctors of the Church and the renowned interpreters of past ages” as “sometimes less instructed in profane learning and in the knowledge of languages than the Scripture scholars of our time.” This provided an authoritative preface to the dictum which would issue a generation later from the Second Vatican Council’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modem World,” deploring “certain habits of mind, sometimes found too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science. The arguments and controversies which they spark lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed.” Now, no Catholic will maintain that there is any opposition between faith and true science, but faith exposes false science immediately on contact, being absolutely incompatible with error of any kind, and where that is the case, science should submit to correction.

In 1979 John Paul II requested the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in conjunction with the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Believers, to re-examine Galileo’s case and “in frank recognition of wrongs wherever they originate, to dispel the mistrust that this affair still arouses in many minds, preventing fruitful concord between science and faith, between the Church and the world.” The groundwork had been laid by a liberal French Dominican, Fr. Dominic Dubarle, an atomic scientist and Pugwash conferee, who fast broached the idea to Pope John XXIII when the latter was papal Nuncio in Paris. Paul VI steadfastly refused the overture, but John Paul II proved more receptive. A Commission for this heady work was duly named, chaired by Archbishop Paul Poupard of the Secretariat.

Among its members figured the American Fr. William Wallace, a former electrical engineer, physicist and Commander in the U.S. Navy, who had become a professor of history and philosophy at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Lecturing in March 1982 at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, he informed his listeners,

The total content of revelation was not available for authoritative definition with the death of the last Apostle. Only through slow and painstaking scientific investigation were the literary genres of the Bible uncovered and the rules for its interpretation ascertained. The example is simple, but it illustrates well the true complementarity of science and religion, of reason and belief. Were such rules known to Rome in 1615 and 1633, Galileo would have been spared the indignity to which he was finally subjected. But had he not suffered that indignity, had he not been motivated by that passionate desire for truth that brought it about, Scriptural studies would never have achieved the status they enjoy today.

Indeed not! In the light of the surprising news that the total content of revelation was not available for authoritative definition until now, the outcome of Galileo’s re-trial was easily predictable, as foreseen by Walter van der Kamp, Protestant editor of the geocentrist Bulletin of the Tychonian Society. In the December 1981 issue he wrote,

Straws in the wind and the Vatican’s tactical retreats from 1822 onwards presage a conciliatory course and a compromise whereby the give is on Rome’s side and the take on the side of Scientism. For unless the Catholic Church surrenders the claim, hushed up but never yet openly and completely abandoned, that the Earth according to Holy Writ is the unmoved center of the observable Universe, and hence IS that center – is there anyone who thinks that secular science will sign a peace treaty? ...In about a hundred years the Roman Church has reached the position that it took the large mainline Protestant denominations 300 years to reach... Galileo will be canonized, and St. Robert Bellarmine quietly sacked.

When John Paul II did in fact rehabilitate Galileo in the course of his address before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Halloween 1992, the American media were unanimous in handing down their own infallible judgments. While on the west coast the Los Angeles Times headlined, “Earth Moves for Vatican in Galileo Case – Vatican Admits Error in 17th Century Case,” on the east coast the same article by William Montalbano was carried by the Washington Post under the caption “Vatican Says Galileo Right after All – 3 Centuries Later, Pope Admits Error.”

The journalist declared triumphantly, “The Roman Catholic Church has admitted to erring these past 359 years in formally condemning Galileo Galilei for entertaining scientific truths it long denounced as against-the-Scriptures heresy.” He informed the public that the Papal Commission had finally concluded

...that Galileo’s clerical judges acted in good faith but rejected his theories because they were `incapable of dissociating faith from an age-old cosmology - the biblical vision of the earth as the center of the universe... Unable to comprehend a non-literal reading of Scripture, according to the commission, the judges feared that if Galileo’s ideas were taught, they would undermine Catholic tradition at a time when it was under attack by Protestant reformers...

With the hindsight we now enjoy, we can see that this is exactly what happened, for with the Galileo affair, the Great Apostasy prophesied in Scripture began in earnest, and by now it’s in full swing.

A Reuters account quoted John Paul II as admitting, “The geocentric representation of the world was commonly admitted in the culture of the time as fully agreeing with the teaching of the Bible, of which certain expressions, taken literally, seemed to affirm geocentrism.” Confirming the common verdict on the diocesan level, the Arlington Catholic Herald read,

Pope John Paul II formally acknowledged that the church erred when it condemned 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei for maintaining that the earth revolved around the sun... The Pope noted that Galileo rejected the Church’s suggestion that he present the Copernican system as a hypothesis, instead of demonstrated truth. No one at that time had laid out `irrefutable proof’ of the Copernican model, the pontiff said.

Alas, the article neglects to mention that this irrefutable proof has yet to be supplied by anyone, and that even atheist scientists are beginning to abandon heliocentrism, along with Newtonian physics and other unproven fairy tales for grownups which ushered in the universal decline of the Faith.

As we know, with very few exceptions, Galileo’s false theory is universally accepted today as true and proven, and even the Pope refers to the one unique body which stands at the core of God’s creation as “planet earth.” The story in Joshua is relegated to pedagogical fiction, and where once the errors of science were corrected by the light of Scripture, the alleged errors of Scripture are now corrected by the latest findings of science. In other words, as final arbiter of what is true or false in the natural order – the only order which exists for scientists – science has replaced divine revelation as the ultimate source of truth.

Because God created the material universe as an immense parable fraught with supernatural meaning, there exists, whether we like it or not, an intimate relation between faith and science. As the Psalmist sang, “The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands” (18:1). Not only do the heavens relay to us by their immensity, beauty and order the perfections and power of their Creator, but apparently the history of the world can be read there in the signs of the Zodiac marking the path traveled by the sun in the course of the year. The original significance of these twelve signs, or constellations, each with three subsidiary ones, is now being rediscovered by Christian scholars as it was first known to Adam and the ancients, before the interpretation of the Zodiac had been perverted by satanically inspired astrologers.

Put in proper order, beginning not with Aries as now deployed, but with Virgo, the sign under which our Lady was born, and ending with Leo rather than with Pisces, the Zodiac foretold in the stars the story of the Incarnation, the Redemption and the world to come long before the Bible was written. Virgo is of course the Blessed Virgin, and Leo is Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, universal Lord of Creation. (This, incidentally, provides the answer to the mystery of the Sphinx which, having the head of a woman and the body and tail of a lion is simply a compendium in stone of the ancient Zodiac.) Capricorn, the sign under which our Lord and Savior was born, is quite properly the Goat, a sacrificial animal offered for the remission of sins under the old law. Its back legs, however, terminate in the tail of a fish, signifying that its death produces life. In the accurate chronological order Capricorn is the fifth of the twelve signs, occurring appropriately at the beginning of the age of the Son in world history.

God explicitly refers to the Zodiac when He asks Job out of the whirlwind, “Have you fitted a curb to the Pleiades, or loosened the bonds of Orion? Can you bring forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or guide the Bear with its train?” (Job 38:31-32) The Creator allowed Adam to name the animals, but the naming of the stars He reserved to himself as He set them in their appointed places. The Psalmist speaks of God as the one “Who telleth the number of the stars and calleth them by name” (Ps. 146:4), and the prophet Isaias says, “Lift up your eyes on high and see who bath created these things: who bringeth out their host by number and calleth them all by their names” (40:26). The story which the Zodiac unfolds in the course of the year lies in the meanings of these names given by God to each of the stars in its forty- eight constellations when He set them in order in the beginning, making of them, as the Psalmist says, “faithful witnesses in heaven” (Ps. 88:38) of His plan for the world. Many of these original names have been deduced from their common forms found in ancient languages.

This is a big subject, lying far beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that when the Psalmist said that “the heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands,” he can be taken literally. “Day to day uttereth speech, and night to night showeth knowledge. There are no speeches nor languages where their voices are not heard. Their sound bath gone forth into all the earth: and their words unto the ends :of the world” (Ps.18:1-5). This means that the Gospel was first preached not by the Apostles, to whom the liturgy justly applies these words, but by the heavens.3

Tampering with man’s view of the physical universe is therefore not inconsequential, because inevitably it alters his view of God and spiritual reality. Built hierarchically on inequality as principle, with man – not to mention God-made-Man – standing exactly midway between the macrocosm and the microcosm, the largest and the smallest bodies in the chain of being, the universe was expressly constructed by God to draw the minds and hearts of men to Himself as apex, center and end of all things. As St. Paul said, no one contemplating the order and majesty of nature has any excuse for doubting God’s existence or not being aware of His attributes, “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” (Rom. 1:20).

Incapable of attacking the faith directly, Satan and his think tanks inspired their tool Galileo to reverse the order of the universe in men’s minds, persuading them that with the sun at the center, the earth had no special importance, being merely one of the planets revolving around it in one of any number of similar galaxies. Suddenly, with no longer any up or down, the heavens taught a completely different story and the way was open to speculation on an infinitely expanding, centerless universe, ending who knows where and to what purpose. And as our Lord told Nicodemus, “If I have spoken to you earthly things and you believe not, how will you believe if I shall speak to you heavenly things?” (John 3:12). When science declared its independence from the faith which till then had preserved it from serious error, scientists “professing themselves to be wise,” as St. Paul says, “became fools” (Rom. 1: 22) who by tailoring the faith to their reasoning, ended by abandoning it altogether.

Building on Galileo’s error, reality was left even farther behind after the Freemason- alchemist Isaac Newton began constructing a whole new universe based on a mathematical system existing largely in the human mind, where matter literally moved itself by so-called “laws of gravity,” which in due time were generally accepted as true with no more proof behind them than Galileo’s heliocentrism. The next step was the theory of evolution, which led men to believe that matter actually generates life. The heresiarch Teilhard de Chardin, who asked, “Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis?” answered his own question by affirming, “It is much more. It is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforth bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow.”

Back in 1907 Pope St. Pius X had already pinpointed evolution as the “principal doctrine” of the Modernists, noting in Pascendi that “to the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death – dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself.”(26) Einstein’s theory of relativity is likewise believed without proof, for with revelation disregarded, the new atheistic science arrogates faith to itself alone, whose false dogmas must be “believed” on its own unsubstantiated word. After incurring so much worldly ridicule for its condemnation of Galileo, the Church backed away from any and all pronouncements on purely scientific matters. Not only has there been no official condemnation of evolution and other falsehoods, but the Second Vatican Council actually encouraged the faithful to “blend modem science and its theories and the understanding of the most recent discoveries with Christian morality and doctrine,” so that “their religious practice and morality can keep pace with their scientific knowledge and with an ever-advancing technology.”4

The secular press reported an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences delivered by John Paul II on October 22, 1996, wherein he declared that “new knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge.”5 L’Osservatore Romano for October 30 rendered these words as, “New knowledge has led to the recognition of more than one hypothesis in the theory of evolution,” but whichever is the correct version, it is the common acceptance of evolution which injected the idea of “change” into the proceedings of the late revolutionary Council, thereby serving to undermine the very notion of Catholic Tradition.

When God gave Adam and Eve “dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth,” (Gen. 1:26), He said nothing about the heavens, which He reserved to Himself and His angels. As we have seen, He even named the stars personally, and so far the actual design of the movements of the celestial spheres remain a secret known only to Himself and His angelic ministers. Inasmuch as the best we can do is guess at them from what we can observe within very limited perspectives, how can we hope to learn anything about what really goes on in the universe if we presume to. ignore what God has actually revealed to us about it? Trying to disprove evolution without first disproving the heliocentric falsehood which preceded it is like trying to fight abortion without fighting the practice of contraception on which abortion is based.

It is because heliocentrism destroyed the credibility of Holy Scripture that the biblical accounts of the world’s origins and future destiny are now rejected even by Catholic churchmen as fanciful stories invented by semi-evolved peoples, whereas the fantasies concocted by modem scientists are received as indisputable tenets to be universally believed until they are discarded or superseded. Small matter that evolution remains as unproven as the heliocentrism which ushered it in and flies directly in the face of God’s revelation that matter has no power whatever to produce anything of itself. As our Lord said, “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:64). The faith furthermore teaches that God created the world and every living creature out of nothing “according to their kinds” (Gen. 1:25) in the beginning, and not by a long process. Far from expanding to limitless new horizons and producing ever new species, we in fact have God’s word for it that heaven and earth as we know them “shall pass away” (Matt. 24:35 ), being “reserved for fire unto the day of judgment” (2 Pet. 3:7).

In other words, two faiths are now confronting each other, the one held by those who believe in God and the other by those who believe in science, for science in our day has elevated itself to the status of a whole new religion, whose dogmas need not be proved empirically to be believed, but accepted on its word alone. This means that to defeat false science Creationists must be something more than mere scientists. Instead of meekly restricting themselves to the artificial terminology invented by the enemy and abiding by its arbitrary dictates, they must also be apostles of the one true Catholic Faith, boldly using the metaphysical, yet wholly scientific language of this Holy Faith, outside of which there is no salvation for science or anything else.

The Word of God must be re-admitted as the incontrovertible, bedrock evidence it really is, in the natural as well as the supernatural order. And why not? God’s Word is truth itself, the only actuality of which we can be absolutely certain in this world. It outweighs all natural evidence and supersedes all natural reasoning. Lying above and beyond every experimental datum, it automatically invalidates whatever contradicts it. Reassuring as it may be to discover physical evidence to support revelation, in the final analysis true faith demands that what God has revealed must be believed on His word alone, which can never deceive, even if all supporting evidence were lacking or contrary.

As St. Basil said, “Let us prefer the simplicity of faith to the demonstrations of reason.” After all, like material creation itself, the end of natural science does not lie in this world. Borne aloft by the gift of Knowledge conferred by the Holy Ghost, scientists must look to the Transfiguration of all things in Christ-God if they are really to explain anything. That is the only direction in which the universe can be expanding from the here and now into limitless eternity, and it’s their duty to provide the tangible evidence for what is actually going on!

􏰀􏰀􏰀

Reprinted from a Feb 2003 issue of

The Remnant

Evolution and Cosmogony

The Achilles’ Heel of the Creationists’ Position

and

Einstein, a Solipsist?*

Walter van der Kamp

* Solipsist – one who believes the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing (Webster).

Preface

This page is a brief commentary by a former correspondent of the late Mr Walter van der Kamp.

This particular 2-part paper [originally a booklet] was his last work, as he indicates on the next page in a copy of his hand-written letter which he originally sent, along with this paper, to his correspondents, as per the date on that letter.

Mr van der Kamp, who liked to be called “Walter” by his associates and correspondents, was an international speaker on his topic. It is most unfortunate that he was physically unable to attend the conference to which he refers in his letter. I do not know if this paper was presented, “in absentia”.

You will note that Walter was more of a philosopher than a scientist. He was also, in the opinion of more than a few, a gifted writer and a man who was passionate about Truth and the pursuit of it.

I believe his single greatest contribution in the field of cosmogony was his ability to precisely articulate a challenge for the scientific community to “get honest” about their total lack of proof on what’s moving in the cosmos and what, if anything is not.

Indeed, we are now seeing some significant developments on the international scene by scientists who are stepping forward to critique the work of such notables as Newton and Einstein.

I take this opportunity to also pay tribute to Dr. Gerardus Bouw who took over the quarterly geocentricity journal that Walter started several decades ago. Current name for that journal is Biblical Astronomer.

With permission of Walter’s family, this paper was scanned [from Walter’s booklet] into the computer in early 2002. It is being circulated on a not-for-profit basis and recipients are encouraged to photocopy it for further circulation within their own sphere of activity.

As long as I remain functional, copies of this paper are available in photocopy and electronic format from me at . . .

F Kramer ! 1020 Raleigh Dr – #2303 ! Carrollton TX 75007 ! USA origins@ev1.net

Walter van der Kamp
3687 – 1507 Queensbury Ave. Victoria, BC V8P 5M5

Dear Friends:

Victoria, Aug 26, ’96

COPY

Allow me to begin with an apology. Most of you haven’t heard anything from me for a long time. The reason is that during the last nine months I’ve been in ill health and unable to keep up with my correspondence. I’ve also been compelled to decline the invitation again to attend another International Conference on the Problems of Space and Time in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the third one of which I presented a paper in 1994. And I’ve been hard put at least to contribute a paper that, D.V., will be read there “in absentia”.

It is this paper, “Einstein, a Solipsist”, which you’ll find enclosed, and that combined with a last appeal to the Institute of Creation Research.

There is, however, more. Actually – I’m 83 – I’ve decided to retire. Mistakenly or not, I think I’ve shot my last bolt.

Thank you from the heart very much for bearing with me, in many cases for many years. As long as it the Lord’s will and I live, I’ll treasure the memories of you all and your encouragement for my Tychonian efforts. Of course, I shall always love to hear from you and your labours, but expect from my side no more than grateful responses.

Warmest greetings and a “God speed you!”,

In Christo, [signed]

Walter _____________________________

The Achilles’ Heel of the Creationists’ Position

Introduction

When, among us orthodox Christians, evolution and creation come up for discussion, all agree that the final responses to the “Whence, where, why and whither?” of the world and of ourselves have been given by God in His authoritative Word. To leave the matter at this consensus, however, is doing no more than mouthing a platitude. For we, unhappily, differ widely in our understanding and appreciation of the Divine Revelation. Even if we overlook the countless disputes and endless wrangling about dogmatics and doctrines, one deep rift remains that divides us into two camps: our attitude toward the relationship between science and Bible. With our God-given reason, are we to read the Message from Above by the light of human theories, or is it possible by the light of the Message itself? For the present purpose, restricting the argument to Genesis One: shall we study that chapter’s creation account advised by modern astronomy and biology, or take it straightforwardly and, wherever necessary, enlightened by the most elementary logic, the validity of which is for our present mode of being assented to by all men? In short: are the theistic and the progressive evolutionists in the right, or do the strict creationists carry the point?

The thesis I am defending and promoting in the present essay is that Christians on both sides of this dispute, theologians as well as laymen, are behind the times. They are with respect to the cognitive power of scientific theories still living in the Age of Reason. In their understanding of the Bible’s first two chapters these otherwise more or less orthodox believers differ from each other like the day from the night in the matter of evolution. Yet they agree on a cosmology not implied by the text. To all of them astronomy has “proven” that the Earth circles the Sun, which is a shortsighted position, as the philosophers of science acknowledge again today along with their medieval forebears. For often we may accept statements as “proven”, but a physical theory, to quote Stephen Hawking, is “always provisional, in the sense that it is only an hypothesis: you can never prove it”, while at the same time “you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.”1 That should indeed be the hard-and-fast ruling. Yet reigning Scientism and vested Christianity do not consider this verdict applicable to the hypothesis that the Earth is orbiting the Sun. Even for Hawking himself, this is an “obvious” fact.2 And so, though it has been repudiated by experiment after experiment, this hypothesis remains the noll me tangere of all astronomy. Endeavouring scientifically to unmask this “fact” as a pseudo certainty is hence by all and sundry likely to be considered a fool’s errand.

Yet this is what I shall do, for I maintain that the strict creationists’ defense of the Bible’s inspired account of the creation of Heaven and Earth is half-hearted and logically crippled. Rejecting godless Darwinian evolution for the Earth’s biosphere they accept the equally unproven and unprovable Copernican astronomy as “proven” with respect to the observable Heaven surrounding us. And the stranglehold of this misapprehension on these Christians’ minds is, sad to relate, strong. Unless I succeed in at least somewhat or somehow first loosening that

1 Stephen W. Hawking. A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, p. 10. 2 Ibid., p. 2.

grip, my logical, historical and scientific reasons for promoting an Earth-centered Universe will be reckoned not worth their serious attention. The only way to manage that is, as I see it, in a preliminary way to approach the issue by means of a roundabout digression from a Biblical perspective on the origin and evolvement of our today clearly disintegrating post-Christian society. Its present godless traits have had a cause, and I hold and shall show that this cause can be pinpointed.

Technology and Theory

When we compare our present Western outlook on life with that of medieval times, we cannot deny that the inductive and empirical “New Science” of Galileo (1564-1642) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) since it began to make headway, has slowly but steadily been changing our view on the world around us. Especially after the Second World War, with English now being spoken everywhere, the tempo of this metastasis has been accelerating. For research and technical acumen the barrier of the long ago by God imposed “confusion of tongues” has actually been cleared away. Internet and E-mail driven, world-wide instantaneous exchange of information is the watchword of our age. Being again, as before Babel, of one language and of one speech, nothing that modern researchers imagine to do seems impossible to them. For good or evil: a new twist of the supposedly unstoppable mega-evolutionary process is willy-nilly carrying mankind along faster and faster, it appears, into a New Age.

We shall, however, do well to keep in mind that the term “science” as it is used today comprises two basically different sets of disciplines – Baconian trial-and-error technology and research on the one hand, and what was formerly called “natural philosophy” on the other. A goldsmith may impress us with his artifacts, but he cannot create gold. A microbiologist may splice cells and recombine genes – he cannot “make”, let alone ex nihilo create, life and energy. There are more things in heaven and earth than those of force, matter, technology and computerized cyberspace. To be an expert in manipulating these aspects of the present phenomenal world does not concomitantly make a man a trustworthy guide in formal logic and metaphysics. The theoretical airy castles, for instance, which astronomers are building all the time and are wrangling about, often clearly carry religious overtones. In sounding these overtones those researchers, I hold, exceed their authority. How the materiality they work with came into existence they guess but do not know. They were neither there when somehow the things that are seen appeared out of nothingness, nor can they attest any existence from eternity. Scholars pondering the whence of the world may arrogate to themselves the name of scientists, but when they talk as if they have “proven” their several cosmogonies and cosmologies they likewise go beyond their brief. They can only offer us plausible hypotheses, commonly called theories, which have a limited value, as today’s leading philosophers of science again admit. Yet the majority of more or less orthodox Christian standard-bearers and “the man in the street” all still appear to believe in a science that is empowered to give solid answers on whatever questions they want to ask about the aspects of the observable reality. We may have heard that the philosophy of science nowadays has returned to the medieval “not proven, nor provable” for all hypotheses, but we are ever and again inclined to forget it, wont as we are to dislike uncertainties. It has sagely been said: the satisfaction of truly knowing something hobbles our thinking more effectively than that which we consider “known” itself. We shall do well to keep this in mind with respect to what follows here. Discourse aimed at dislodging our convictions we do not like a whit better than the Athenians, who gave that gadfly Socrates, constantly

6 challenging their self-assuredness, hemlock to drink.

The Claims of Mega-Evolution

From kindergarten on we have been told, and therefore “know”, that what the Heavens declare and the firmament shows is in fact deceptive. Sun, Moon and Stars do not go around the Earth, but the Earth runs around the Sun. Moreover, centuries of painstaking astronomical research claim to have established that the Universe is billions and billions of years old. Countless galaxies containing innumerable stars are scattered throughout space. Around stars suited for the purpose sets of planets will have emerged. On some of these planets possessing the indispensable collocation of parameters for carbon-based life, as likely as not, forms of life did develop. For on at least one of such planets at any rate we find this to have been the case. After aeons of time, initiated by a Big Bang or some other not yet scientifically unveiled happening, the ongoing evolutionary progress took that next step on our Earth. Starting in an ammoniac atmosphere with an autocatalytic chemosynthetic reaction caused by lightning in a puddle of thereunto somehow predisposed murky soup, time concocted cellular life. Through many punctuated equilibria or some process not yet apprehended, such self-organizing systems led a few million years ago via a from tree to tree swinging ape to Homo Erectus. And last, but not yet best, to Homo Sapiens, that is to us, who now “know” those prodigious events of the past. Neither is this all. The Genesis of the Secular Scripture does not only divulge the past. Its Gospel, though it leaves us without any hope for a personal life after death in a world to come, at least offers our descendants great promises. The ongoing evolutionary process will allow them manned missions to other star systems, longer healthy peaceful lives, and what not. The foremost futurists even speculate on mankind, fully come of age, slaking the bonds of matter and mortality, deifying us into life everlasting.

In any case, ask any human, young or old, from first-grader to postgraduate, from Calvinist to Catholic, from agnostic to atheist. They will agree: two times two equals four, and the Earth circles the Sun. Hence, clearly, common sense leaves us no choice. The Sun was there first. Mother Gea did not begin to circle around nothing. In one way or another – the theory of their formation is still a controversial issue – those congealed exudations we call planets came later. The conclusion of the matter is that from an astronomical point of view our home in the heavens is therefore a recent next-to-nothing fleck of dust in an immense cosmic pageant.

Revelation and Reason

Now contrast this scientific account of the world’s origin, and the resultant depiction of its structure, theoretically developed after 1543, with the simplicity of the folk tale of Genesis One. Then, Creationism has concluded, it becomes manifestly impossible still fully literally to accept the latter. And it is hence understandable that even otherwise orthodox Christians whatsoever their dogmatic persuasions, almost to a man are agreed upon some non-literal treatment of the first half of the Biblical Creation story. In fact, even the staunchest expositors of the Book of God shrink back from a simon-pure word-for-word acceptance of the Genesis Cosmogony.

No one can reasonably deny that this revealed account clashes head-on with the extant theories of astronomy, the queen of sciences. What is more, it contradicts those theories with respect to a physical aspect that is open to investigation, to wit: the locale and hence the status of

our Earth in the immense pageant of observable being.

For the first time in my life forcing myself to read and re-read the whole of Genesis One in the steadfast literally-believing mood in which my Creationist brethren read the chapter’s second half, the process dazed me. I “knew” that the Earth orbits the Sun. I had been told that Galileo only had escaped being burned at the stake by recanting what he had demonstrated to be true. Yet the Old and New Testaments appear to reveal, viewed from the Creator’s supra-spatial perspective, an unmoved Earth with respect to the created Heaven around us.

This contradiction, once lodged in my mind, proved incapable of resolution. Try as I might to fit together the pieces of the puzzle, they did not match. Either Scripture is, at least with regards to cosmogony, to be taken with quite a few grains of salt, or science has been leading us by the nose. I agree with those to whom the Bible is no more than a quaint compendium of myths: the Good Book does not beat around the bush. From Genesis to Revelation it holds the premise of an Earth at the center of a revolving Sun-ruled and star-studded dome to be so self- evident that the matter needs no words to stress this fact’s factuality. Yet even Christian astronomers told me in no uncertain terms that it was out of the question to accept and understand the text as affirming the Earth’s uniqueness. Doing so would amount to rehashing long-discarded, unthinkable, credulous, pre-Copernican fatuities. Spiritually our Earth is significant, but physically, cosmologically...?

When however, in an attempt to be better instructed, I surveyed the many exegetical reconciliations between scientific “facts” and the constraints on divine inspiration which the theologians have put together, I found only one certainty I could accept. Namely, that what seems plain expository prose in Scripture should be read as plain expository prose, unless there are compelling reasons to understand the wording non-literally. Reasons, that is, not from without but from within the context of the passage under consideration.

My in many aspects “high” view of the Scriptures obliged me to reject all other solutions as ingenious circumlocutions devised to make the Bible play up to Copernicus. Moreover, in all honesty I could not blame the sincere and serious unbelievers who ridicule such tinkering with the clear text in order to let the “inspired” Bible say what it does not say. At bottom there is here an insuperable “either-or” between secular science (loosely defined as an inductive method to approach an understanding of the cosmos) and any form of supernatural information. The issues are not joined and cannot be joined.

Looking for a way to escape this predicament, I felt myself relentlessly driven toward a question I was afraid to ask, a question which would in our age express a doubt too ridiculous to be even pitiable. What if God’s Word with regard to the world’s foundation, were to be speaking the truth – and the more I thought about it the less I doubted it – rather than the science of cosmogony and its concomitant disciplines...? What if all post-Copernican astronomy has to be rejected, lock, stock and astrophysical barrel, because it squarely contradicts Divine Revelation about an Earth that cannot be moved forever?

The Great Deceit

With that question in mind, I ploughed my way through book after book, and soon I began to become aware of a fraud so inconceivable that I could only suppose myself to have lost touch with reality. Whatever I read, whomsoever I asked, nowhere could I find a physically and logically sound refutation of the Bible’s Earth-centered picture. The textbooks took our annual revolution around the Sun to be so self-evident that no further verification was necessary. Anyone accosted about the matter assured me that, as everyone knows, Copernicus had settled the point long ago. “Proof?” The answers evoked by all my queries came down to: “Why should we have to prove something we know to be true?” Darwinists, for instance, when looking around for a clincher in a debate with doubters, are wont to maintain that the evolution of life on Earth is just as undeniable a fact as the Earth’s revolution around the Sun.

I quested far and wide, and everywhere I came face to face with a bias, an improper practice that I would not have thought possible. None, but none among the fanciful assertions of the believers in Galileo’s Sun-centered astronomical gospel have anyhow or anywhere ever been soundly affirmed, let alone “proven”. They are well-nigh the most misleading deceptions ever foisted on mankind. The procedure for bringing this about has been an old but effective one. The late non-lamented Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s henchman for propaganda, used it with great success in Nazi Germany: proclaim a lie again and again as truth, then in due course all people will believe you. Or, to cite C. S. Lewis’ Mr. Enlightenment:

Hypothesis, my dear young friend, establishes itself by a cumulative process, or to use a popular language: if you make the same guess often enough it ceases to be a guess and becomes a scientific fact.3

I am aware that many a reader at this point may feel obliged to protest against such a sweeping judgment. Scholars, surely, are not such fools as those accusing trumpet blasts declare them to be? Surely theologians are not without reason when they take note of modern astronomy in their expounding of the Creator’s report in Genesis 1:1-19?

They are not? Before judging, please reflect for a few moments on the question of the nature of theory, to which I have alluded a few times already.

From Antiquity and until the end of the Middle Ages all men thinking about truth and untruth agreed on a “You never can be sure” with regard to any theory whatsoever. But this changed when during the first half of the seventeenth century the so-called Scientific Revolution began to conquer the mind of Homo Sapiens. A new doctrine took charge, “a new theory of the nature of theory; namely, that, if a hypothesis saves all the appearances, it is identical with the truth.”4 From the days of Kepler and Galileo until about the end of the Second World War this “Science has proven” ruled supreme, though time and again that “proven” was “proven” to have been premature. Today the scholars have happily again come to their senses, and that proud “proven” itself has gone the way of all flesh. Allow me to repeat the apothegm of Stephen W. Hawking already quoted: “Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it.” That is to say, as I mentioned earlier, with the exception of the – for his Weltanschauung indispensable – proven “obvious” fact that the Earth is orbiting the

3 C. S. Lewis. The Pilgrim’s Regress, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, p. 17
4 Owen Barfield. Saving the Appearances, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., p. 51

Sun!

I therefore maintain that there is nothing extravagant or asinine in criticizing the now dominant dicta of cosmogony and cosmology. Not only are the disciplines in all branches of astronomy still by schisms rent asunder and by heresies oppressed, but their hypotheses are without fail founded on, and stand or fall with, the Copernican thesis. Our forefathers and indeed the whole Western world have been bedazzled by the simplicity of a Sun-centered planetary system. The formation of the real world will turn out to be more complicated.

There are good reasons, then, why one ought to doubt the validity of modern cosmology, reasons that have to do with reading Genesis One in a coherent way and with the failure of experiments testing the Earth’s motion, reasons that have to do with the nature of theory. But there is another crucial reason that should cause my creationist brethren to take another look at their assumptions and at what may seem my preposterous position.

The Ruination of Christianity

As the late Arthur Koestler, certainly not a Bible-thumper, saw it: the cosmic quest set in motion by Galileo and his successors

...has destroyed the medieval vision of an immutable social order in a walled-in universe together with its fixed hierarchy of moral values, and transformed the European landscape, society, culture, habits and general outlook, as thoroughly as if a new species had arisen on this planet.5

Precisely, and I have yet to find one historian of whatever religious or philosophical persuasion who in essence disowns this appraisal or denies that the impact of the Copernican revolution has been far-reaching in its corollaries. Indeed, jubilated for instance the greatest of all German poets, Goethe:

Among all the discoveries and convictions not a single one has resulted in a deeper influence on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus... Humanity has perhaps never been asked to do more, for consider all that went up in smoke as a result of this change becoming consciously realized: a second paradise, a world of innocence, poetry and piety, the witness of the senses, the conviction of a poetic and religious faith... 6

Yes, concludes C. F. von Weizsäcker:
...the Christian myth was beaten out of the field by the new science.7

Even more to the point in summarizing the final results of that “New Science” is Theo Löbsack, a German popularizer of the progress mankind has been able to make after discarding the Earth-centered outlook of Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Galileo’s way of thinking laid 340 years ago the foundation for the modern science and technology, and into what crisis he since has brought theological thinking is difficult to describe. Until today the Church fights for an inventory of religious truths that are no longer compatible with the insights gained by means of the inductive method: among them the dogmas and the notion of a Supreme Being, an Almighty Father in Heaven.8

To quote Alexander Koyré, formerly professor at the Sorbonne, about astronomy’s progress after Newton’s victory and wholesale acceptance of Copernicanism:

The infinite Universe of the New Cosmology, infinite in Duration as well as Extension, in which eternal matter in accordance with eternal and necessary laws moves endlessly and aimlessly in eternal space, inherited all the ontological attributes of Divinity. Yet only those – all the others the departed God took with him.9

Historians agree: the logic behind the inexorably driving force spurring Galileo’s “New Science” has led humanity step by step to the mechanomorphic world view prevalent today.

First Copernicus had turned us into cosmic specks, secondly Darwin robbed us of any privileged position in creation, and finally Freud showed that man is not even master of his own mind, ...

says Brian Appleyard in his recently published Understanding the Present.10 And Freud’s vision did . . .

5 Arthur Koestler. The Sleepwalkers, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, p. 13.
6 J. W. von Goethe. Geschichte der Farbenlehre, Dritte Abteilung, Zwischenbetrachtung, my translation.
7 C. F. von Weizsacker, The History of Nature, Chicago, University Press, p. 67.
8 Th. Löbsack. Wunder, Wahn und Wirklichkeit, München, C. Bertelsman Verlag, pp. 31-32, my translation.
9 Alexandre Koyré. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Baltimore, John Hopkins Press, p. 276.
10 Brian Appleyard. Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man, London, Pan Books Ltd., p. 76.

...finally deliver the one clear message that science has wished to pass on to us ever since Galileo applied his eye to the telescope: that we are nothing but trivial accidents and that each man must hope and believe what he can in the grim certainty that nobody and nothing will ever be able to tell him whether he is right or wrong.11

Man has become a “fragile, cornered animal in a valueless mechanism.”12 Paul Davies, another paragon among contemporary science writers, affirms it in his The Mind of God:“DarwinonlycompletedtherevolutionbegunbyCopernicus.”13 Man,createdintheimageand after the likeness of God and blessed with the promise to enjoy Him forever in the age to come, has now been found to be no more than a mammal destined to return to dust. Damnation by science has superseded salvation by faith.

“God died in the nineteenth century, and man is dying in the twentieth century”, declares Norman Geisler, a staunch defender of Biblical inerrancy, referring to the theory of evolution,14 I have no quarrel with this hyperbole; but would like to remind him of Schiller’s proverbial lines:

Truly, this is the curse of evil done: It must go on forever bearing evil.

Why did, as Geisler sees it, God only die after the publication of Origin of Species in 1859? The book merely articulated the logical outcome of a trend of thought that began to infiltrate Western man’s mind once the consequences of Newton’s cosmic model came to be realized.

The Divine Artifex had therefore less and less to do in the world. He did not even have to conserve it, as the world, more and more, became able to dispense with this service, ...15

thus to quote Alexandre Koyré, a second time.

I dare say that W. T. Jones in his History of Western Philosophy also accurately pinpoints the reason why man, as Man, is dying.

The theory of natural selection brought home as nothing else could the radical change in Man’s status in the universe, and made dramatically clear the attack on old values that had actually been implicit in the whole scientific development beginning in the sixteenth century.16

11 Ibid., p. 78.
12 Ibid., p. 112.
13 Paul Davies. The Mind of God, New York, Simon and Schuster, p. 18.
14 Norman L. Geisler in “Update”, Nov. p. 6.
15 Koyré, loc. cit.
16 W. T. Jones. History of Western Philosophy, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, p. xviii.

Einstein Superceding Einstein

Already thirty years ago a founding father of the Creation Research Society, Dr. Walter E. Lammerts, considered a geocentric theory to be “purely scientific drivel”.17 As matters stand at the present, the overwhelming majority of orthodox Christians still agree with him about the necessity of a non-literal interpretation of the sequential Genesis 1:1-19 account according to which the Earth’s flora had already been created when God made the Sun, the Moon, and the stars on the fourth day of the Hexaemeron. For taken prima facie, the inspired text causes the reader to believe something that, mankind’s faith in Galileo tells it is not true. Proving the Copernican Solar System by means of experiment may have turned out to be impossible, nevertheless the 1905 Special Relativity Theory [SRT] has shown it to be correct.

Indeed: begging the question by postulating an Earth in motion as “already proven”18 the SRT “saved the appearances” through the medium of the Lorentz transformations. Using his theory, Einstein claimed, “every optical problem concerning moving bodies is reduced to a series of problems for bodies at rest.”19 And, all and sundry agree, constant observations affirm this theorem. We appear not to be in motion, though we think we “know” that we move.

Time and thought, however, do not stand still. Especially we should not underestimate the radical change in our conceptions of space and time brought about by Einstein’s 1915 all- embracing General Relativity Theory [GRT]. These concepts may or may not turn out to be the optimum of understanding of which the human mind is capable in our present age. Certain it is that today physical theorists almost to a man go along with Einstein’s vision. “We know now”, says Sir Fred Hoyle, “that the difference between a heliocentric and a geocentric theory is one of motions only, and that such a difference has no physical significance.”20 In fact, these views, “when improved by adding terms involving the square and higher powers of the eccentricities of the planetary orbits, are physically equivalent to one another.”21 That is to say, “Since the issue is one of relative motion only, there are infinitely many equivalent descriptions referred to different centers - in principle any point will do, the Moon, Jupiter...”22

Indeed, that is what the GRT must insist on. Unhappily, to the best of my belief nobody has yet realized the irony arising out of this necessity. For while the SRT may take Copernicus in its stride, the GRT turns the tables on him. What is more, and I shall demonstrate this: the latter’s paradigm shows the amended Geocentric Theory of Tycho Brahe to be the only one possible for the space and time in which we find ourselves.

It is for these reasons that I present the following considerations to my brethren at the Institute of Creation Research. Their radical turnabout from allowing “scientific” input with respect to Genesis 1-19 to spurning it for verses 20-27 I cannot justify. It is the Achilles’ heel of their position and will before long put them to shame.

Perhaps a note of warning about the following pages is in order here first: they were

17 Ronald L. Numbers. The Creationists, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, p. 238.
18 A. Einstein. “Zur Electrodynamik Bewegter Körper”, Annalen Der Physik, Vol. 17, p. 891. 19 Ibid., p. 915.
20 Fred Hoyle. Astronomy and Cosmology, San Francisco, W. H. Freeman & Company, p. 416. 21 Fred Hoyle. Nicolaus Copernicus, New York, Harper & Row, p. 88.
22 Ibid., p. 1.

written separately for delivery in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the Fourth International Conference on Space, Time and Gravitation, September 16-21, 1996. They therefore repeat some of the argumentation of the previous section, before taking the argument a step further.

Einstein, a Solipsist?

“Give me but one firm point on which to stand, and I will move the Earth”, Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) exclaimed, thereby putting a finger on the irremediable shortcoming of all empirical astronomy. This science is ostensibly unable to point out somewhere in space a solid platform from which to judge matters of motion and rest.

Antiquity and the Middle Ages, owing to the lack of any evidence to the contrary, adhered to a static Earth. Today, however, we have convinced ourselves that we know better. For Einsteinian relativity, it is assumed, has caused Science to return to the position Archimedes hinted to be inevitable. The case for astronomy, as Sir Fred Hoyle has said, is “one of motions only.”1 In keeping with this way of thinking the late Isaac Asimov assures us that in cosmology “any object or system of objects (any frame of reference, that is) can be taken with equal validity as being at rest. There is no object, in other words, that is more really ‘at rest’ than any other”.2 As far as our Solar System is concerned there at first sight appear to be no problems with this assumption. Even Newton already somewhat reluctantly admitted: “It may well be that there is no body really at rest to which the places and motions of others may be referred.”3 But what about the stars?

It stands to reason that any theory of the Cosmos also has to render an account of its predictions with respect to the system of countless luminous objects wheeling night after night from East to West around us.

Twentieth-century astronomy gratefully grasped Einstein’s special relativity to countermand the Earth-centered model affirmed by all experiments that vainly tried to show our “planet” to be in motion. Unbelievable though it may sound, however, the profession has never yet paid much attention to the role of the stars in the economy of the Solar System. With respect to the status of the Earth this oversight is therefore still leading to contradictory aphorisms about our position in the entire scheme of being. Stephen W. Hawking holds on to an “obvious”4 Sun- centered Solar System, but for Asimov’s understanding of Einstein this is going a bit too far. According to him an Earth-centered hypothesis, using Hoyle’s dictum, “is as good as anybody else’s – but no better”.5

In any case, a geocentric Universe remains “unthinkable”.6 Physically considered, the Earth, surely, is as a matter of fact next-to-nothing in the stupendous realm of the far and widely scattered stars. To suggest that it could be the kingpin around which Sun and Moon, and the stars also, are just dancing attendance for the benefit of mankind would be downright preposterous, surely?

Well, no, it is not, and what is more: this updated Tychonian configuration of the world, taking the stars into account, will turn out to be the only one ontologically and logically possible in our present mode of being.

1 Fred Hoyle. Astronomy and Cosmology, p. 416
2 Isaac Asimov. Understanding Physics, Vol. II, p. 249
3 Dorothy Michelson Livingston. The Master of the Light, p. 253 4 Stephen Hawking. A Brief History of Time, p. 1-2
5 Hoyle. Frontiers of Astronomy, p. 304
6 Ronald W. Clark. Einstein. The Life and Times, p. 80

When we consider the Heavens we instantly come up against Asimov’s credo and the necessity to choose between two views, both of them encompassing the whole of discernible reality. Do the Sun and the starry dome “out there” diurnally rotate and annually revolve with respect to the Earth, or does the Earth rotate with respect to the system of Sun and stars? We clearly see the former motions occur, but have been conditioned to believe the latter. That is to say: learned and unlearned alike are convinced that if they could levitate themselves to a secure anchor in space they would find this consequence of Copernicus confirmed. Mother Gea is no more than a satellite of a humdrum star in the Milky Way, we feel sure.

There are, however, problems with this subconscious mental exercise. To quote no one less than a famed philosopher, the late Bertrand Russell (1872-1970):

Whether the Earth rotates once a day from West to East as Copernicus taught, or the Heavens revolve once a day from East to West, as his predecessors believed, the observable phenomena will be exactly the same.

And that, Russell concludes ...

...shows a defect in Newtonian dynamics, since an empirical science ought not to contain a metaphysical assumption which can never be proved or disproved by observation.7

What is more: even this unpermitted supernatural assumption is already in itself an invalid argument. The late Michael Polanyi made this trenchant remark: “Every object we perceive is set off by us instinctively against a background taken to be at rest.”8 But to set off an Earth not empirically proven to be moving against a Universe instinctively taken to be at rest, and this with respect to a space we have no hold on – whatever that means – it certainly does not clinch the matter for him who keeps Archimedes in mind.

Einstein’s 1905 paper salvaged the Copernican Revolution. It won astronomy over by mathematically – courtesy of Lorentz – underpinning the “we move, but cannot prove it” of Poincaré and his “principle of relativity”. Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) expressed a medieval precursor of this idea: we are in a Universe of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. The view that de facto the Earth occupies this center is hence theoretically, says Sir Fred Hoyle, “as good as anybody else’s – but no better.”5 Or, to quote him a second time:

Since the issue is one of relative motion only, there are infinitely many exactly equivalent descriptions referred to different centers – in principle any point will do, the Moon, Jupiter ...9

It is with this assurance that the misapprehension of all post-Copernican theorizing reveals itself. Einstein’s General Relativity Theory may well be the closest to the truth we presently have for the Universe in toto. Yet applying it to the interaction of Earth and stars shows the heliocentric hypothesis to be completely erroneous. Not only that: all cosmological extrapolations founded on that premise are beside the mark. This may sound unbelievable, yet in what follows it will be proven. Neither by empiricism nor by theorizing of which, I agree with Hawking, “you can never be sure,”10 but by logical disproof.

In Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”, Lorenzo asks his Jessica to see “how the floor of

7 D. W. Sciama,. The Unity of the Universe, p. 102-103. 8 Michael Polanyi. Personal Knowledge, p. 12.
9 Hoyle, Nichlaus Copernicus, p. 1.
10 Hawking. Brief History, p. 10.

heaven is thick inlaid with patins of bright gold.”11 Four hundred years ago that was still an allowable view, as well as poetically up to par. Actually it comes nearer to the reality than we are now conditioned to believe. It is not for nothing that Hawking holds on to an “obvious” with respect to the Earth going around the Sun. All modern cosmology stands or falls with this concept being true, even though, to quote a text approved by Einstein himself:

We can’t feel our motion through space, nor has any experiment ever proved that the Earth is in motion.12

It is well-known how, after the probing efforts of Fitzgerald, Lorentz and Poincaré to overcome this contrariety, in 1905 Einstein resolved the problem to almost everybody’s satisfaction. We cannot prove the Heliocentric Theory, it is agreed, but of course it is true. The 149.5 times 106 km semi-major axis of the Earth’s orbit furthermore provides us with a solid base for determining the distance to many nearby stars. More still: starting from these measurements cosmology has been considered able to map out the Universe by estimating, inferring and intelligently guessing one thing after another.13 Yet these procedures have engendered a hodgepodge of weird and implausible hypotheses, their devisers squabbling about them ad infinitum.

Einstein’s 1915 General Theory, however, overthrows our well-worn certainties with respect to our Solar System, with the world of the stars around us, and not less with respect to our place in the over-all design of being. Which should not surprise us, for hanging on to an Earth “obviously” orbiting the Sun and also holding to Einstein’s magisterial insight with respect to the Universe is a feat contrary to reason. It comes down to professing Mother Gea’s mobility to be the proverbial exception that confirms the rule – a procedure not akin to sound science.

It is these considerations which lead to the thesis of the present paper. To wit: the General Relativity Theory demonstrates by indirect proof that an updated and amended version of the geocentric theory proposed by Tycho Brahe is for our present mode of being the only one possible. Applying Einstein’s profound vision to the Solar System interconnected with the stars puts Copernicanism in a deadlock of absurdity.

11 Act V-1.
12 Lincoln Barnett. The Universe and Dr. Einstein, p. 73. 13 George Abell. Exploration of the Universe, p. 378

Reducing the matter to its essentials, the annexed Figure 1 will make this evident. Avoiding any theoretical position with respect to parameters of spaciality, the simple drawing two-dimensionally betokens a section of the Ecliptic.

Figure 1

It shows the Sun encompassed by the orbit of one of her satellites, in this case the Earth, and a few fixed stars of the Zodiac. Now take a pencil, the point of it representing our “planet”, and trace with that point our trajectory around the Great Light. Then all definite observable facts duly will support the truth of the Copernican Revolution of 1543. Mankind, with its habitation rotating and revolving and gyrating through the Heavens, daily sees the Universe turning around us, and we observe the Sun yearly traversing the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac. Only two particulars remain to be accounted for. As James Bradley discovered in 1726: the stars do not completely stand still, but annually describe small circlets of equal size. These “aberrations” can, however, plausibly be explained. They are only apparent; our orbital velocity of 30 km/sec around the fixed star Sol requires us to tip our moving telescopes slightly forward. The other phenomenon is that of a number of stars exhibiting still secondary very small circuits. These so- called “parallaxes” are considered to originate from the observance of stars so near to us that by triangulation their distance from the Sun can be calculated.

So far, so good and not much room for doubt left if only we could complete the Copernican picture by verifying the Earth’s orbital velocity. But we cannot get this done.14 And it is here that special relativity is supposed to put things straight. Wherever we are and whatever we do, our experiments will always inform us that moving we do not move. As among

14 See my “The Bradley-Airy-Einstein Syndrome in Astronomy”, St. Petersburg, 1994.

professionals the saying goes: Einstein is “every day proven in the lab”. Nevertheless, to hold that the Earth is at rest and that everything in the Heavens revolves around us – under the auspices of General Relativity – this is a theoretical position of equal validity, and for a Copernican-style Solar System the GRT will be shown incompatible with the case.

To begin with: rotating the paper, i.e. the Cosmos, with respect to the pencil point, i.e. the Earth, does not work, for we will not see the fixed star Sun annually traversing the Zodiac. “True”, it will be conceded, “but what about visualizing the Earth’s orbit by shuffling the paper in such a way that the pencil point stays at rest and yet traces out our planet’s orbit?” At first sight this seems to vindicate Einstein’s 1905 justification of the – he wrongly wrote – “already proven”15 Copernican view. On reflection it will become clear, however, that here the wish has been the father of the thought: the principle of relativity is again irrelevant to the case under consideration. With our Earth comparatively at rest no motions will be measurable for the great majority of the stars making up our supposed Milky Way Galaxy. Only for nearby ones our telescopes may observe small annual circuits, which these fixed “lesser lights” will traverse concordantly with our Great Light’s trajectory. Perversely: this is not what we behold. We cannot, untrue as we think we know it is, – to quote a well-known textbook on astronomy – “avoid the impression that the sky is a great hollow spherical shell with the earth at the center” and “the stars embedded in it like tiny jewels.”16

That is to say: Bradley’s avouched, but never yet positively verified, “apparent” aberrations have now become actual astral orbits of about equal size, indicating (see Figure 2) the stars to be arranged in such a spherical shell, the Stellatum of old. Clearly: Hoyle’s GRT argument about a difference of motions only falls to the ground.

Figure 2

15 A. Einstein. Zur Elektrodynamik Bewegter Körper, p. 891. 16 Abell. Exploration,, p. 11-12.

Preparatory to drawing a few conclusions, which logically follow from the foregoing, it may be well to quote a caveat of Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1994), one of the first theorists accepting Einstein’s 1915 General Relativity Theory.

For the reader resolved to eschew theory and to admit only definite observational facts, all astronomical books are banned. There are no purely observational facts about the heavenly bodies. Astronomical measurements are, without exception, measurements of phenomena occurring in a terrestrial observatory or station; it is only by theory that they are translated into knowledge of a universe outside.17

Translating those in the foregoing relegated phenomena into knowledge about the status of our Earth, we find ourselves in an awkward position. Either the General Relativity Theory rules supreme, and consequently there is something seriously amiss with our concepts of the Solar System and the starry sky. Or those concepts are accurate, and then Einstein leads the scientific establishment by the nose.

We here hence seem to be saddled with two contradictory statements. Of course, and in the nature of being, that cannot be the case. In very truth Einstein is right, and Copernicus was wrong. And all cosmological hypotheses extrapolated from the latter’s misapprehension of reality will have to be revised or discarded.

Already mentioned, but not yet enunciated: there is a third phenomenally viable model of the Cosmos, that of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). Today it remains only remembered as an historic curiosity. With respect to the Solar System it “is in reality absolutely identical with the system of Copernicus, and all computations of the planets are the same for the two systems.”18 In fact Tycho held and holds the key to the only (in our mode of being logically possible) integration of all branches of astronomy and cosmology that are now at loggerheads with regard to the all- round applicability of the General Relativity Theory.

17 Edward R. Harrison. Cosmology, p. 226
18 J. L. E. Dryer. A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, p. 363

In this Dane’s Geocentric System Moon and Sun circumrotate a static Earth, and the planets revolve around the Sun. (See Figure 3). Only in one aspect his model has to be updated. Tycho anchored the sphere of the fixed stars on the Earth. Actually, as Bradley observed but refused to believe, the Sun is at the center of the astral dome and carries it along when orbiting our abode in the Heavens.14

Figure 3

Under the aegis of General Relativity “there are infinitely many exactly equivalent descriptions referred to different centers – in principle any point will do, the Moon, Jupiter ...”, thus Hoyle.9 What should be realized but unfortunately is overlooked: this is only correct on one condition: Copernicus has to be rejected. As I have demonstrated: his model cannot be fudged into the GRT’s, the totality of being overarching, schema. But try this fudging for Tycho’s Sun- centered Stellatum oscillating around our Earth, then it all tallies.

Lastly: allow me a tongue-in-cheek approach to the matter at stake from a bizarre perspective: It is an either-or: Einstein’s view and Hawking’s “obvious” cannot be reconciled. Imagine a solipsist Nicolas of Cusa mentally producing a Universe and cosmical framework in which Eddington’s “observational facts” affirm the GRT. Centering his Copernican System on any of the countless stars relatively “at rest”, then, viewed from that star, the Earth will be seen year after year describing a minute circlet around the static star Sun, the size of that orbit depending on the chosen star’s distance from our “planet”. Conversely, when our Solipsist makes the Earth the pivot of the Solar System, then mankind’s astronomers will behold all the stars displaying small circlets of a size inversely proportional to their distance from our telescopes.

If this were the state of affairs in the Universe as it is, the GRT would be established and together with it the heliocentric theory vindicated. Unhappily that is not what we Earthlings observe. Notwithstanding their supposedly widely varying distances from us, the so-called “aberration” is the same for all stars. Only by therefore rearranging those heavenly pinpoints of light in a Stellatum controlled by the Sun, our model-making fantasy will bring the truth in line with Einstein. But that at the cost of renouncing Copernicus and all his works! But Einstein is no solipsist: the GRT is correct!

To sum up the ins and outs of the foregoing: he who accepts the verisimilitude of the General Relativity Theory is obliged also to accept a Geocentric Theory about the status of the Earth and a Stellatum, a spherical stratification of the fixed stars. That is to say: the observable finite Cosmos in a finite Universe is centered on the Sun. This Sun orbiting an Earth “hung upon nothing”19 – as Aristotle would have agreed with Job – has been assigned the labour of dividing the day from the night and of doing this with the Cosmos in its train.

Whether, witnessed “from outside” the Universe of space and time, either the Earth or the Cosmos diurnally and annually rotate with respect to that Universe is another question. For reasons set apart from any science I prefer it to be the Cosmos, and General Relativity allows me to do this. What here concerns us are two theoretical conclusions, affirmed by the logical law of excluded middle. With the Copernican misapprehension no longer disorienting its efforts, Cosmology can be rebuilt on a solid foundation. And Solar Astronomy at last will come into its own – the first inklings are already appearing in the literature! It can begin to research how, wondrously fine-tuned, the Planetary System upholds, protects and regulates the life on Earth, for which task it was called into being.

____________________

19 Job 26:7

Nova Mundani Sytematis Hypotyposis ab Authore nuper adinuenta, qua tum vetus illa

Ptolemaica redundantia et inconcinnitas, tum etiam recens Coperniana in motu Terra Physica absurditas,

excluduntur, omniaq, Apparentiis Cœlestibus aptissime correspondent.

From the second issue of the Progymnasmata (1610) This diagram first appeared in Tycho’s
De Mundi Atherei recentioribus Phænomenis (1588).

Mick Jagger gathers no Mosque

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Evolution and Geocentrism.

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