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Featured Heliocentricity: Behind the Times

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by Aaron, Apr 14, 2016.

  1. FrigidDev

    FrigidDev Member

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    Because tilted circles
     
  2. TCassidy

    TCassidy Late-Administator Emeritus
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    Zweiundzwanzig grad achse kippen?
     
  3. percho

    percho Well-Known Member
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    I see some of you have erased the result of the Tower of Bable.
     
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  4. agedman

    agedman Well-Known Member
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    Didn't I read a thread or two on the gift of "tongues" having ceased? :)
     
  5. TCassidy

    TCassidy Late-Administator Emeritus
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    Yes. But that is not a gift. That is having a German grandfather (on my mother's side). And having lived in Germany for a couple years back in the 60s. :)
     
  6. percho

    percho Well-Known Member
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    Will not be long and we will start to build that tower again. I wonder how God is going to respond this time?
     
  7. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    Beekoss, sumzeen ees moving. Off zaht, vee kahn bee seertuhn.
     
  8. revmwc

    revmwc Well-Known Member

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    Man is using that tower today. It had nothing to do with the Languages except for man being dispersed and different languages given. That tower was being built to study the heavens. Man now has a perverted form of reading the heavens today.
     
  9. FrigidDev

    FrigidDev Member

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    (Tries not to throw up)

    So you basically think astronomy and science is bad!?? What lol!

    The tower of babel was about man trying to enter heaven of their own will...not to "study the heavens". To say that is to distort the Bible, and I would recommend that you don't do it again.
     
  10. revmwc

    revmwc Well-Known Member

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    No not astronomy and science, when matched with scripture they work beautifully. Astrology now that is another thing totally of course that too is seen in scripture so God has a scriptural use for reading the stars. However the biblical way is not what man uses, he uses a perverted way in Astronomy.
     
  11. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    The framework used to reach the stars is definitely suspect. It isn't curiosity or the quest for knowledge that drives modern space exploration. It's the desire to cast off the "bonds" of God's revelation. The holy grail of their quest is extraterrestrial intelligence. (The science fiction genre would be dead without it.) But they will settle for a bacterium, or something that may hint of one on a rock supposed to be from Mars.

    We need a new creation story, and a new destiny, and that is what modern cosmology is all about. Any evidence that might hint at purpose or directed processes is tossed out for the favored naturalistic assumptions. The drive to establish the new creation story as the reality is what drives space exploration.

    But the closer they look, the worse things get for them. Hubble observed the galaxies receding from the earth and each other, an observation that can be explained only if the earth occupies a position somewhere very near the center of the observed expansion—UNLESS, we assume that 3d space itself is expanding in an unbounded universe, and that the expansion is uniform. (And from this point of view, the universe is flat.*)

    Now we can assume that Hubble's observations would be the same observation of an astronomer on a planet in a galaxy far, far away. It would look to him like HE was in the center of expansion too.

    So, that must be the reality, because if the reason we're here is really the result of natural processes, it is highly improbable that the earth would occupy the center region. That sounds too much like purpose. No, Naturalism demands a purposeless existence with death as its destiny.

    *I find it amusing that cosmologists mock the fabled flat earth cosmology of ancient times, and yet their basic, naturalistic assumptions lead them to conclude a flat universe.
     
  12. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    Geocentricity, Heliocentricity, Relativity.

    It's all about meaning. Tell me one technological or medical advance that depends upon or is hindered by one of those cosmologies. They exist simply to explain the observations of astronomers. They do nothing for mankind. They do nothing to feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, free the slaves, or sail the ocean. (Well, a geocentric model is the preferred model for navigaton.) As far as mankind is concerned, Newton's laws are good enough. They breakdown the farther one looks into our solar system, but then the new physics breaks down the farther out one looks too. There simply is no naturalistic, grand unified theory. As the scale changes, so do the laws.

    But then, the whole purpose of the stars is to link man on earth to Heaven. The firmament showeth His handiwork. Christ's reference to the behavior of the closest star wasn't about photosynthesis, it was to say something about the character of God, and how the elect should emulate that character. Abraham was told to look at the stars for an example of what God would do for him. God humbled Job's highmindedness by directing his attention to the stars.

    The stars are still fulfilling their purpose. There is simply a new priesthood telling us what it all means.
     
  13. Rob_BW

    Rob_BW Well-Known Member
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    You may want to scratch out sail the oceans. We have already talked about how modern GPS relies on relativity.
     
  14. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    Relatively geocentric, you mean. But the Institute of Navigation is casting doubt on a fundamental tenet of Special Relativity:

    Contrary to the assertion of Special Relativity, the speed of light is not always constant relative to a moving observer. The Global Positioning System (GPS) shows that the speed of light in the Earth Centered Inertial (ECI) non-rotating frame remains at c relative to the frame, but not relative to an observer or receiver moving in that frame.
    https://www.ion.org/publications/abstract.cfm?articleID=981

     
  15. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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  16. Sapper Woody

    Sapper Woody Well-Known Member

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    I had decided to abandon this discussion, but after reading a bit of Steven Hawking's "A Brief History of Time", I decided to revisit it. Mainly, because in the very first two chapters he destroys the argument of geocentricity as anything but a coordinate system. I'm on my tablet right now, but I plan on posting a more detailed explanation as soon as I get home.

    Sent from my QTAQZ3 using Tapatalk
     
  17. Sapper Woody

    Sapper Woody Well-Known Member

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    So, I've been reading Hawking's "A Brief History of Time". On page 18, Hawking is discussing the idea of relative rest using the illustration of how a ping pong game can be played on a moving train. To those on the train, the ping pong ball can bounce straight up and down, while to an observer on the outside the ping pong ball is actually traveling in a wavelike pattern. Hawking then goes on to say how there is no such thing as absolute rest.

    With the impossibility of absolute rest, then that means that the earth cannot be stationary with the universe spinning around it.

    Now, I will again concede that to use this idea as means of navigation and coordinates is okay. But, to use it as a model of reality doesn't work.
     
    #117 Sapper Woody, May 15, 2016
    Last edited: May 15, 2016
  18. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    The impossibility of absolute rest necessitates the meaninglessness of absolute motion, and is a presumption only, itself based on the assumption there is no absolute space by which absolute motion and rest can be measured. So even in your safe little conclusion, you have to begin with untested, arbitrary assumptions about the nature of the universe.

    In your same train car, there is a lamp in the center. As you're passing the observer outside the train car, you switch on the lamp. (remember, your train car is moving very close to the speed of light) The theory of Special Relativity will say that the passenger will see the lamp illuminate both ends of the car simultaneously, but the observer outside the train car will observe each end illuminate at different times. To one observer, the ends of the car are illuminated simultaneously; to the other, each end is lit at different times. So what really happened? You can't know, and it makes no scientific sense to speak of the observations of one observer as being more true than the observations of the other, because we can assume either observer to be at rest, and each set of observations can be equally justified by the theory. And that is what is meant by "coordinate system." A coordinate system is not mere geometry, it's a model with laws and theories.
     
  19. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    I'm going to quote, again, the article cited in the OP. You keep thinking that Aaron is saying these things. But it's not. It's physicists.

    Here we go:

    3. What does modern science say about geocentricity?

    Many attempts were made to prove that heliocentricity was true and geocentricity was false, right up until the early 1900's. All such attempts were unsuccessful. The most well-known of these is the Michelson-Morley experiment which was designed to measure the change in the speed of light, due to the assumed motion of the earth through space, when measured in different directions on the earth's surface. The failure of this experiment to detect any significant change played an important role in the acceptance of Einstein's theory of special relativity.

    The theory of special relativity holds as a basic assumption that the speed of light will always be the same everywhere in the universe irrespective of the relative motion of the source of the light and the observer. The ability of special relativity to successfully explain many non-intuitive physical phenomena which are manifested by atomic particles when moving at speeds greater than about one-tenth the speed of light seems to corroborate this assumption. Thus, the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment (and all other experiments of similar intent) to detect any motion of the earth through space is understood by modern science in terms of relativity rather than geocentricity.

    Einstein's theory of general relativity adds further to the debate. It asserts that it is impossible for a human observer to determine whether any material body is in a state of absolute rest (i.e., immobile in space). It claims that only motion of two material bodies relative to one another can be physically detected. According to this theory the geocentric and heliocentric viewpoints are equally valid representations of reality, and it makes no sense whatsoever scientifically to speak of one as being true and the other false. This shift in emphasis from an either-or argument to a synthesis and acceptance of both viewpoints is summed up by the well-known astronomer, Fred Hoyle, as follows:

    The relation of the two pictures [geocentricity and heliocentricity] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view.... Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory 'wrong' in any meaningful physical sense.[1]

    Relativity is the theory which is accepted as the correct one by the great majority of scientists at present. However, many science teachers and textbooks are not aware of this, and it is not uncommon to find heliocentricity taught as the progressive and "obviously true" theory even today.​
     
  20. Sapper Woody

    Sapper Woody Well-Known Member

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    I am not arguing against what the scientists are saying. I am arguing against your (Aaron's) interpretation of what the scientists are saying. Much like when two people argue the same scripture as saying different things. No one is disagreeing with what the scientists are saying. I am disagreeing with what you say they are saying.

    To start with, your assumption about the light on the train is wrong. According to Hawking, there is no absolute time (as we know that from relativity and speeds closer to light how time seems to slow down), and so it would appear as if both ends of the train light up at the same time to an outside observer. Your own quote in your second post discusses this.

    To set up this excerpt, Hawking is discussing two people trying to measure the speed of light at two different distances, but the light reaches them simultaneously.
    This is a fundamental key in relativity. Hawking goes on to say that since the speed of light is an absolute, any individuals at different distances trying to measure the time it took light to travel will disagree on the time, since light will hit all points at the same time. We have to remember that time slows down to an outside observer as we approach the speed of light, so this makes sense.

    Now, to your next point (post), when the scientist is talking about heliocentricity vs geocentricity, look at his last paragraph you cited. "The relation of the two pictures is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation..." And that's what I've been saying all along. But the idea of a geocentric universe has been disproven over and over again. If one wants to say that the sun is orbiting the earth, they are not necessarily wrong from a relativistic point of view. However, if they want to say that the earth is the center of the universe, they are wrong.

    Reality as defined by what we can view in a physical sense is not always the same as reality as defined by laws. We must distinguish the two when we are speaking of reality, otherwise the discussion turns into little more than an argument over semantics.

    And so, before the discussion is taken any further, I need to know if you are speaking of a geocentric universe, or a geocentric galaxy, or even just saying geocentric as in the sun rotates around the earth, and all other bodies in our system rotate around the sun. If it's the latter, then there is no debate. It's a coordinate system and that's all. If it's the middle, there's still not much debate. If it's the first (geocentric universe), then science has disproven it time and again, most notably by the absence of any absolute rest.

    Edited because the autocorrect kept correcting "geocentricity" to "egocentricity"
     
    #120 Sapper Woody, May 16, 2016
    Last edited: May 16, 2016
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