Our Friend, like most other heliocentrists since 1820, argue the Galileo case as a scientific dispute. But it was not as the following quote demonstrates.‘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. This shows a defect in Newtonian dynamics, since an empirical science ought not to contain a metaphysical assumption that cannot be proved or disproved by observation.’-- Bertrand Russell.
Note carefully what Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and physicists for the last 100 years have had to admit; that empirical science cannot show us the order of the world for certain, as relativity makes it a metaphysical matter. Metaphysics is not a scientific way of knowing things because it seeks a different sort of truth which cannot be acquired by the methods of modern science. Physicist Russell basis his comment on Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) 1905 attempt to rescue heliocentrism from its falsification by the evidence of the 1871 Airy and 1887 M&M tests. Einstein conjured up his Special Theory of Relativity (STR) trying to give heliocentrism a 50/50 chance of credibility by claiming that there are two possibilities, the whole universe turning around a fixed Earth or an orbiting Earth around the sun in a fixed star cosmos as Russell put it in his quote. As for their 50/50 universal systems being interchangeable, well that is simply another delusion. Try it and you will find stellar aberration cannot be found in the heliocentric version. Accordingly, the Galileo case was not one of ‘faith and science’ as presented in millions of books, articles and websites, but one of ‘faith and metaphysics.’The problem with whether the universe is geocentric or heliocentric, is one of relative movement in space. Only if we could position ourselves outside the finite universe and look in at it, would it have been possible for Archimedes, Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein, Russell, Hawking or our friend to know what cosmic body is fixed or moving, and only then could man’s science confirm the true order of the universe. But because we are confined within our place in space and cannot get outside the universe for confirmation, man’s empirical method cannot tell us for certain how it is structured. The atheist Richard Dawkins confirmed this situation with his comment: ‘It is not actually provable that the Earth orbits the Sun, but it is perverse to deny it.’ But the Lord God does know what He created and in His Bible He revealed to us that the sun and stars revolve around a fixed Earth, His 'Footstool,' and irrespective of the fact that man’s science cannot determine this order, those who believe in Him can take it as the absolute truth, and more so as it was further confirmed by His Church in 1616 and 1633. Nevertheless, popes and other Catholics like our Friend above since 1820, think they know better than God's revelation. Then the Jesuits went on to dismiss other Genesis revelations.‘Down to a generation or two ago it was the general belief of Christians that the deluge of Noah covered the whole Earth, and that it is so described in the most explicit terms in the Bible. Certain new considerations, mainly drawn from geology, led specialists to the contrary conclusion that the deluge was by no means universal, but was a comparatively local phenomenon; widespread enough to cover the area occupied by mankind at that time, but not much more….The partial-deluge-view gradually came to look more feasible, and the possibility of interpreting Scripture accordingly became more evident. This view gradually filtered down from learned circles to the man in the street, so that nowadays the partiality of the deluge is a matter of commonplace knowledge among all educated Christians, and taught to the rising generation in elementary schools.’---Fr Hull SJ: Galileo and his Condemnation, Catholic Truth Society, 1913, p.71.
Topic: A bit of Jesuit history (Read 1723 times)