Originally posted by RJHinds
Well, from a child we have always been taught in school the geocentrism is wrong and it makes it hard to consider the possibility that we were taught wrong. It has been proven that the earth is not flat, but geocentrism has not been disproven and the Holy Bible seems to support it to me.
So are Christians just to ignore that part or can we explain it away like some try to do with the six days of creation?
OK.
The two arguments given in the portion of the video I was prepared to sit through were these...
1. If the Earth orbits the sun with it's axis inclined at ~23.4 degrees with the orbital diameter
being 300 million km [haven't checked that number, but it's in the right ballpark] then the point the
Earth's axis points at [he imagines a laser being fired along the Earth's axis towards Polaris] will
shift by 300 million km on either side of the Earth's orbit. This is true.
He then goes on to claim that this would mean that the Earth's axis would not always be pointing
at Polaris and thus the stars in the sky wouldn't always revolve around Polaris as we observe them
to do.
This is wrong, the reason being that the stars are so far away that an ellipse the size of Earth's orbit
[which is what this hypothetical axial laser would trace out] at the same distance as the stars would
look like a point. And that's just for the closest stars which are 100 times closer than Polaris is.
The point that the night sky appears to rotate around does indeed move as we go from one side of
our orbit to the other... it's just that the stars are all so far away that we can't see that movement
without the aid of large telescopes.
He brings this objection up, and responds by stating that he can't imagine how we could measure
the distance to the stars, scoffs at the idea that they could be that far away, and then moves on.
This is the argument from ignorance fallacy, the fact that he doesn't know and can't imagine how we
can accurately measure the distance to the stars doesn't mean that we can't do it.
And the simplest method is to use the very fact that the stars move in the sky as we go around our
orbit [parallax]. The closer stars move more, and we can see their position change relative to the
position of much farther away background stars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax
This is a direct measurement and is very accurate.
So his first argument is wrong.
2. If you look out the window of your car driving down the highway you will see objects close to
you speeding past very rapidly and objects farther away taking longer to go past and the
mountains in the distance seem hardly to move at all.
He then argues that this effect should apply to the Earth spinning and that objects close to us
such as the moon, appear to go around faster than farther away objects like the stars.
This is wrong too.
And you can prove this to yourself very easily.
Stand up, move to the middle of your room, and slowly spin on the spot.
You will observe that all objects around you appear to have exactly the same angular velocity,
and that they all appear to go around you in exactly the same amount of time meaning that objects
farther way appear to be moving faster.
If you look directly up at the ceiling you will see that there is a point directly above you that
everything appears to rotate around, and that the farther away from that point things are the
faster they appear to move.
Exactly like the observations of stars he provides.
Created by spinning on your axis just like the Earth does.
Second argument wrong.
Given how epically stupid his arguments were, and how trivial they are to disprove, I would suggest
reconsidering agreeing with him.
False Science Exposed
04 Feb '15 19:004 edits
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