Public school students in Texas, for their part, are more even-keeled. One student at a Dallas High School was quoted as saying, “Whatever. You know what I’m sayin’?”

Um … no. We have no idea what people in Texas are saying.

The other day I was thinking how awesome it would be if everything revolved around me. Seriously, if I were the center of the universe, then all problems – worldly and otherworldly – would take a back seat to my own. When I moved, I would move the universe. When I shake, I would shake the universe. Each time I would fart, a new brown nebula would be born.

Early humans had a similar desire – to not only matter, but to be VERY IMPORTANT. Indeed, some went so far as to codify our self importance into our religious beliefs. For example, it was a matter of Christian faith for over a thousand years that the Earth stood at the center of God’s universe. We had that special place, because we we mattered to god. Earth was His creation and therefore VERY IMPORTANT, and being His children, we were also VERY IMPORTANT.

But then some uppity know-it-alls had to mess up that pretty picture. They used mathematics, and careful measurement and upset a common assumption that had been in place long before the world was declared round. And that, according to an astounding flyer I recently received in the mail, is where western society began to break down.

Yes, I just got a serious-looking pamphlet about the Geocentric Bible, which claims that scientists have been wrong for 400 years, and that the Earth is really still at the center of the universe. By still, I mean “continues to be” although you could take that to mean “motionless” and that would, um, still be correct.

The change from the geocentric theory to the heliocentric theory damaged our viewpoint of the Bible. Genesis 1:1 is literal, and so is Psalm 50:1 “the Lord … Called the earth from the rising of the sun”. Both the earth and the sun are in the same sentence and it is the sun that is moving around a stationary earth

I think there’s some truth in that quote, but not what the purveyors of the Geocentric Bible claim. By adopting the heliocentric view, our view of the bible changed – and whether this is “damage” remains to be seen. Rather than interpreting the bible literally, most people interpret it allegorically, or thematically. Indeed, the bible is literary work that has profound scope and scale, and interesting characters that lived in ancient times. It may be the source of your faith – but it is clearly not 100% factually accurate.

One of the subjects that the bible fails us is in astronomy, since, if biblical claims of geocentrism were accurate, not only would our understanding of the universe be false, any sort of space program based on such faulty understanding would be impossible. That would mean – no weather or communication satellites, no moon landings, no probes to mars or the other planets. Nothing. All of these technological feats are only made possible in a universe in which planetary bodies move in predictable elliptical orbits, and gravity works as we think it does, and the planets and asteroids are where we expect them to be when our space probes get there. Since our universe has a successful space program, then our universe is incompatible with a literal interpretation of every verse in the ancient text of the Bible. Maybe we need to reconsider the veracity of the text rather than our lying eyes.

The earth has not rotated since the day of creation nor will it rotate until midway through the tribulation period.
The firmament carries the sun around the earth faster than the moon because the moon is closer to the earth, the center of the universe. “If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness” (Job 31:26). The sun never walks, but runs; “…the sun. Which…rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race” (Psalm 19:4,5).

Another small issue with the geocentric theory is that it posits that the entire “firmament” of the universe revolves around the earth once per day. In this quote, from the Geocentric Bible Foundation, we see that celestial objects closer to the earth move more slowly than those that are farther away (the moon walks while the sun runs). What about objects that are farther away than the sun? Since we know that many stars and galaxies are at least 12 billion light years from the earth, they would have to travel at least 74 billion light years per day (assuming a circular orbit around the earth with a radius 12Bly). To accomplish this, these object would have to be traveling just north of 856000 light years per second. That’s around 20 trillion times the speed of light, which according to the known laws of physics, is about 20 trillion times impossible. Somebody’s wrong by … well … an astonishingly colossal margin.

Could it be that the theory that has distant galaxies whizzing about at 20 trillion times the speed of light be wrong? Is that possible? It certainly conflicts with direct observation and established physical principles – of this universe. Yeah – that could the problem right there. Modern physics allows for the possibility of alternate realities – different universes that are similar to our own, yet differ in some critical way. For example, in another universe, this blog has quite a fan base. It’s also possible, that is some corner of the multiverse, there is a universe in which the sun and stars rotate around a stationary Earth. Yes – quite possibly in some other universe. In ours, however, those galaxies don’t revolve around little, old, but still VERY IMPORTANT, us.

Some links from the youtube post are here for support:

Assault on free speech in the Netherlands

Islam can no longer be criticised at the UN Human Rights Council

Novelist could face hate crime charge for despising Islamism

You can download an audio version of this video at http://patcondell.libsyn.com/

HT to Les at StupidEvilBastard.com

In this debate on what are arguably two of the most important questions in the culture wars today — Is Religion a Force for Good or Evil? and Can you be Good without God? — the conservative Christian author and cultural scholar Dinesh D’Souza and the libertarian skeptic writer and social scientist Michael Shermer, square off to resolve these and related issues, such as the relationship between science and religion and the nature and existence of God. This event was one of the liveliest ever hosted by the Skeptics Society at Caltech, mixing science, religion, politics, and culture.

You can watch the debate here.

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