To Boldly Go

Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. (Isaiah 47:13) KJV

Ask the average atheist science troll (AST) scientifically illiterate science worshiper (SISW) or popular science (SciPop) devotee to prove heliocentricity and the most frequent response is:

“Why? Heliocentricity was proven hundreds of years ago by Copernicus.” – Almost universal false belief.

It means that they don’t actually know anything about what Copernicus did. That’s not surprising though, the state of scientific knowledge among our scientific community is appalling.

Copernicus didn’t prove anything, that’s why he was ignored. The work that Copernicus did was only taken seriously after Galileo produced a major embarrassment to the religious establishment by using sleight of hand and Copernicus’s assumptions.

Copernicus’ Assumptions

There is no one center of all the celestial circles or spheres. The center of the earth is not the center of the universe, but only the center towards which heavy bodies move and the center of the lunar sphere. All the spheres surround the sun as if it were in the middle of them all, and therefore the center of the universe is near the sun. The ratio of the earth’s distance from the sun to the height of the firmament (outermost celestial sphere containing the stars) is so much smaller than the ratio of the earth’s radius to its distance from the sun that the distance from the earth to the sun is imperceptible in comparison with the height of the firmament. Whatever motion appears in the firmament arises not from any motion of the firmament, but from the earth’s motion. The earth together with its circumjacent elements performs a complete rotation on its fixed poles in a daily motion, while the firmament and highest heaven abide unchanged. What appear to us as motions of the sun arise not from its motion but from the motion of the earth and our sphere, with which we revolve about the sun like any other planet. The earth has, then, more than one motion. The apparent retrograde and direct motion of the planets arises not from their motion but from the earth’s. The motion of the earth alone, therefore, suffices to explain so many apparent inequalities in the heavens.

These assumptions have no basis in observable facts or experimental findings, they summarize the mental gymnastics necessary to imagine the universe from a different frame of reference than the earth. It expressly states the need to deny empirical observations on three occasions.

Copernicus’ Denial of Empirical Observations

Whatever motion appears in the firmament arises not from any motion of the firmament, but from the earth’s motion. What appears to us as motions of the sun arise not from its motion but from the motion of the earth. The apparent retrograde and direct motion of the planets arises not from their motion but from the earth’s.

Copernicus taught us how to imagine an alternative reality. He wrote the first episode of Star Trek. Galileo, Kepler, Newton and others convinced the modern mind that their imaginary alternative is reality.

Now almost no one on earth can even conceive the possibility that empirical observations could be reality. It’s ironic, because empirical is one of the words that ASTs, SISWs and SciPop devotees throw around as supposedly proof that people of faith are stupid. Empirical has to be flushed down the toilet in order to believe the SciPop paradigm.

Imaginations of Their Evil Heart

Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart: therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do; but they did them not. (Jeremiah 11:8) KJV

SciPop is an inductive rationalization of the premise that the universe has no divine or supernatural cause. It’s an outgrowth of our corrupt nature and embodies our desire to be free from the consequences of sin. Part of our nature hates God and what we perceive as his overbearing domination of creation. Some of us are able to understand the mercy involved in allowing us to exist and so we overcome this evil intent and submit ourselves to the will of God. However, it’s not always easy and we can still feel resentful at times about why God hasn’t done more to facilitate the often winding paths we take through life. It’s easy to convince ourselves that wrong is right, black is white, and justify our bad and self-destructive decisions.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9) KJV

For some of us the desire to be free of God’s omnipotent power takes on the form of an intellectual challenge. We try to free ourselves from God’s influence and control by concocting elaborate reasoning about why God doesn’t matter, or even exist. However, it’s not freedom which comes from obeying the Lord, it’s a false sense of security which requires denying the truth. People who show us compelling rationale for why denying the truth is the only sensible thing to do are hailed as enlightened minds, and this has allowed the development of the modern age. Today, most people believe that the Star Trek universe is real.

Strong Delusion

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12) KJV

Years ago Ken Ham wrote a book called Evolution: The Lie. He was making the point that the people of our time have been fooled by SciPop into believing a false narrative of godless existence. He was only partly right. He made the case that evolution is the strong delusion that causes people to believe the lie of godless existence.

My scientific background is Evolutionary Biology. I got saved in July 1997 and one of the first books that I read, after the Bible, was Ken Ham’s “The Lie: Evolution.” I loved it. At the time it made perfect sense to me and it gave me the impetus to write about how evolution doesn’t disprove the Bible. It got me started.

However, describing evolution as the lie hamstrings (pun intended) the Christian apologist and mires us in tedious and unnecessary wrangling about an issue which is merely a distraction. When handled correctly, Devolution solves more problems than it causes.

Devolution is change in allele frequency in a population, combined with accumulated mutations and DNA replication errors, that causes genomic decay, sickness, and loss of variability over time. It includes both macro and micro evolution. It began at the fall of man in Genesis 3:16. – Devolution, definition

We can even give devolution a context which solves even more problems.

Devolution is the process of genetic change over time by which the animal kinds saved on Noah’s ark gave rise to the distribution of current biodiversity. – Devolution, context

As a result, if there is a strong delusion which has been used to cause people to believe a lie then the very essence of it has to be heliocentricity. If earth is at the center of the universe (an empirical observation) and the cosmos orbits the earth (also an empirical observation) then the earth is special, and it must have been created as part of a divine plan in which the human race is the subject. The way to get people to believe in godless existence, where the earth is an insignificant speck orbiting another insignificant speck, has to be done through heliocentricity, not evolution.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think that [iPhones] are a pretty neat idea. – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This is how SciPop became nothing more than an increasingly flimsy validation of the Star Trek universe. People believe it because they want to, because of the corruption in our hearts.

Thought for the Day

Matty’s Razor The idea that evidence is neutral and we all have access to it is known as Matty’s Razor. “We all have exactly the same evidence. Our choice of paradigm determines what we believe it’s evidence of.” – Matty’s Razor

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