About: Modern geocentrism

Description
Metadata
Settings
- owl:sameAs
- Inference Rule:

About: Modern geocentrism Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

Modern geocentrism is a belief currently held by certain groups that the Earth is the center of the universe and does not move. The prime motivating factor for the modern belief, as opposed to the geocentrism of Ptolemy, is explicitly religious. Advocates generally argue that literal interpretations of certain Biblical passages demand that the Earth be properly described as being the center of the universe. Alternatively, in the case of Catholic geocentrists, scripture authoritatively interpreted by statements of Church Fathers and various Popes is used to justify their belief, even though this viewpoint is no longer endorsed by the Church itself. The geocentrist views are held in the awareness that essentially all modern scientists agree that there is no evidence that the universe has any

Attributes	Values
rdfs:label	Modern geocentrism
rdfs:comment	Modern geocentrism is a belief currently held by certain groups that the Earth is the center of the universe and does not move. The prime motivating factor for the modern belief, as opposed to the geocentrism of Ptolemy, is explicitly religious. Advocates generally argue that literal interpretations of certain Biblical passages demand that the Earth be properly described as being the center of the universe. Alternatively, in the case of Catholic geocentrists, scripture authoritatively interpreted by statements of Church Fathers and various Popes is used to justify their belief, even though this viewpoint is no longer endorsed by the Church itself. The geocentrist views are held in the awareness that essentially all modern scientists agree that there is no evidence that the universe has any Modern geocentrism is a bit of a puzzle. In opinion polls consistently 20% of Americans more or less answer that the sun goes round the Earth. And the proportion of Europeans who don't know the earth orbits the sun is unimpressively high too. European results may be skewed by answers from former Communist nations where education standards were different.
dcterms:subject	Pseudoscience Religion Science and Christianity
dbkwik:christianit...iPageUsesTemplate	dbkwik:resource/IaV73H18-eudS9LnKAyeNQ== dbkwik:resource/iozfem6qXGrKaaKSOzNfJw==
abstract	Modern geocentrism is a belief currently held by certain groups that the Earth is the center of the universe and does not move. The prime motivating factor for the modern belief, as opposed to the geocentrism of Ptolemy, is explicitly religious. Advocates generally argue that literal interpretations of certain Biblical passages demand that the Earth be properly described as being the center of the universe. Alternatively, in the case of Catholic geocentrists, scripture authoritatively interpreted by statements of Church Fathers and various Popes is used to justify their belief, even though this viewpoint is no longer endorsed by the Church itself. The geocentrist views are held in the awareness that essentially all modern scientists agree that there is no evidence that the universe has any center. Philosophically, since the concepts of center and absolute motion are not clearly defined and no evidence distinguishing any motion of the earth from motion of the universe is available, geocentrism in and of itself cannot be falsified and is therefore not a scientific theory. However, there do exist perspectives of certain modern geocentrists which run directly counter to observations and the scientific consensus. These perspectives are considered to be pseudoscientific by skeptics, similar to other religiously motivated rejections of scientific theories and data (for example, the doctrine of creationism). Modern geocentrism is a bit of a puzzle. In opinion polls consistently 20% of Americans more or less answer that the sun goes round the Earth. And the proportion of Europeans who don't know the earth orbits the sun is unimpressively high too. European results may be skewed by answers from former Communist nations where education standards were different. People know that the moon is a world like the earth. People have seen photographs of astronauts walking on the moon with the sun lighting the scene and casting shadows. People have seen photographs of Mars, clearly a rocky world like earth with the sun lighting the scene and casting shadows. If the sun moved round the earth none of this would be possible. Have texts from the Old Testament or the Qu'ran made believers blind to what should be obvious? In some cases that's true, there are rather silly religious websites that argue the sun goes round the earth based on the Bible. There probably are other geocentrists who weren't paying attention during science classes and geography classes at school and/or who have forgotten what they learnt there. They haven't thought out whether the earth orbits the sun or the sun goes round the earth and aren't really interested. They understand that, "our planet" or "this planet" refers to earth but haven't thought through that if the sun orbits the earth the earth must be different from a planet like Mars. Perhaps they don't understand the definition of planet well enough to understand all that. Very likely many people who answer that the sun goes round the earth in opinion polls just give the first answer that pops into their heads and haven't a clear idea what orbits what, don't notice their answer doesn't fit with other things they know.

OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3217, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu), Standard Edition
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2012 OpenLink Software