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Geocentrist Robert Sungenis would like to convince you that a whole panoply of modern scientists “allow for” his strict Geocentrism, the view that the Earth is the immobile center of the universe.  But physicists writing from the vantage of General Relativity hold that any point in the universe can be treated “as if” it’s the center of all things.  It is only to that extent that they “allow for” a kind of “geocentrism” – but then they would also allow for moon-centrism and Alpha Centauri-centrism and tip-of-my-nose-centrism.  Since General Relativity inherently excludes the very concepts of an absolute center and absolute motion, these scientists most certainly do not allow for the strict Geocentrism espoused by Sungenis and Company.  The whole claim is built on a dishonest equivocation (for more, see “Equivocation, Thy Name is Geocentrism”).

Albert Einstein states this explicitly in a quote which the geocentrists regularly crop in order to wrench one phrase out of context (unfortunately not uncommon: see “Context Anyone? The (Literally) Incredible Geocentrists Strike Again”).  Here’s Einstein:

Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? If this can be done, our troubles will be over. We shall then be able to apply the laws of nature to any CS. The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, ‘the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,’ or ‘the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,’ would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS. Could we build a real relativistic physics valid in all CS; a physics in which there would be no place for absolute, but only for relative motion? This is indeed possible! . . . Our new idea is simple: to build a physics valid for all CS” (A. Einstein and L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, The Scientific Book Club and Company Ltd, p.224; my emphasis).

It should go without saying that there is no place for strict Geocentrism in a physics that itself has “no place for absolute but only for relative motion” and that therefore General Relativity does not in any way “allow for” strict Geocentrism.  Also, as soon as the neo-geocentrists insist that a immoble Earth is the one, absolute frame of reference of all the motion in the universe then they are compelled to start doing the heavy lifting of showing how their view fits all of the available evidence better than any other view.  This they never do.  Instead, they act as intellectual parasites who illegitimately grab bits and pieces of whatever they think will them to make their case.  Intellectual honesty should compel the neo-geocentrists to stop using this and other quotes from modern scientists who are speaking in the context of General Relativity.

At the heart of neo-geocentrism lies a deliberate equivocation.  And Robert Sungenis’s “must read” reply to my article “It Really Is That Simple: Geocentrism Lacks Basic Evidence” is built entirely on this equivocation.  He deploys it, as the geocentrists always do, to deflect attention from the fact that he was unable to produce any observational evidence in support of strict Geocentrism.

You see, the geocentrists have two usages of the word “geocentrism” and they switch back and forth between them, depending on their need at the moment.  Many other commentators have noted this equivocation and have called them out on it.  Here’s one of many examples:

It’s just [geocentrist Rick DeLano’s] usual bait-and-switch. He has two mutually exclusive versions of geocentrism; the one he actually holds, which requires relativity to be wrong, and his fall-back position, which requires relativity to be right. And every time someone brings up an argument against his actual position, he responds with a defense of his fallback position.

In short, he’s remarkably intellectually dishonest . . . (see this and other examples midway down the page here.)

In his “must read” reply to me, “Everyone Allows Geocentrism, Except David Palm”, Sungenis deployed the same bait and switch.   But let’s be clear – the “geocentrism” that Sungenis says that “everyone allows” is based on General Relativity, under which any point in the entire universe, including the Earth, can be treated “as if” it’s an immobile center, while inherently excluding the very concepts of an absolute center and absolute motion.  Within the framework of General Relativity (GR) those two concepts make no sense.[1]

Sungenis and Company do not espouse “geocentrism” (with a small ‘g’).  They do not hold that any point in the entire universe, including the Earth, can be treated “as if” it’s an immobile center.  If that were all they were saying then there would be no controversy.

What the new geocentrists actually espouse is strict Geocentrism (henceforth with a capital ‘G’).  That is, they insist that the Earth is the one, absolute, central, and immobile frame of reference for all motion in the entire universe.  Within strict Geocentrism there is one absolute, central, and immobile reference frame, whereas within General Relativity absolute center and absolute motion are inherently excluded – within GR those two concepts are literally nonsensical.  The distinction between these two positions could not be more stark.

What’s more, the geocentrists vociferously reject General Relativity.  Sungenis states, “Let me say it again for the umpteenth time . . . we don’t believe in General Relativity.”  He considers General Relativity literally to be the product of Einstein’s moral degeneracy, possibly even of alleged syphilis-induced insanity: see e.g. the section “Albert Einstein Everything’s Relative: Including Morality” in Galileo Was Wrong.  Sungenis’s co-author Robert Bennett says, “GR is inconsistent, and an inconsistent system is worse than being incomplete… it’s worse than being wrong.”   And geocentrist Rick DeLano says, “I am certain that it is not correct” (see here.)

Whether one holds to General Relativity or not, it should be obvious that these two views – strict Geocentrism and General Relativity – are fundamentally incompatible.  It is a deeply dishonest equivocation for the geocentrists to continue to claim that somehow General Relativity “allows for” strict Geocentrism, when General Relativity inherently excludes Geocentrism’s most fundamental premises.  It’s like arguing that Hinduistic polytheism – in which there are many gods and which inherently excludes the idea that any one god has ultimate supremacy over the others – somehow “allows for” the existence of just one God, with all the other “gods” being no gods at all.  Or, coming at it from a different angle, perhaps an even better analogy would be to argue that atheism – which contains a rejection of theism right in its name – somehow “allows for” the existence of God.  General Relativity, as its very name indicates, does not in any way “allow for” one absolute center about which there is absolute motion.

Bottom line – if someone thinks it’s possible for a scientific theory that inherently excludes both absolute motion and an absolute center to somehow “allow for” the fideistic view that the Earth is the absolute, immobile center of the whole universe then it is his burden to explain how.  Not surprisingly the neo-geocentrists never do this.  They are content to bamboozle those unwary or credulous enough to take their rhetoric at face value, without noticing the fundamental equivocation over the word “geocentrism”.

Geocentrism Fails to Provide the Most Basic Observational Evidence in its Favor

Now, let’s get down to brass tacks.  The geocentrists cannot appeal to General Relativity, period. Why?  First, because their view is inherently excluded by that theory; General Relativity does not in any way “allow” for strict Geocentrism.  Second, because they themselves vigorously reject General Relativity (again see here).

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So what does this mean in practical terms?  It means that strict Geocentrism has to stand on its own two feet.  To be taken seriously the geocentrists are going to have to put on their proverbial big-boy pants for a change.  They are going to have to become something other than intellectual parasites who illegitimately grab bits and pieces of whatever they think will them to make their case.  They are going to have to start doing the hard work that real scientists do.  They are going to have to put forward positive, observational evidence when their own system is challenged.

And what did we get from Sungenis when he was challenged to provide the observational evidence for the gravitational sources that will keep the Earth from plunging into the Sun?  We certainly didn’t get observational evidence, because there isn’t any and he knows it.  Instead we got more hand waving, a “God just did it” pseudo-argument.  Sungenis said,

Can the universe be built in such a way that the combined inward force of gravity can be precisely balanced against the outward pull of centrifugal force? Of course. That is precisely what God did. He knew all the forces. He knew the exact speed needed for the universe to rotate in order to create the precise centrifugal force needed to offset gravity.

Do you think God can do that, or is it too hard for Him? Apparently, in Mr. Palm’s new twist to his argument, he thinks it is too hard for God to make all the necessary calculations. God can make the human body with its trillions of cells to interact with each other in astounding ways, but according to Mr. Palm, God can’t make all the celestial bodies of the universe balance because it is too hard for Him (“Everyone Allows”, p. 8).

This is bald assertion, devoid of any demonstration.  The question of whether God could do something is completely irrelevant.  How does Sungenis know what He did do with respect to the motion of the entire universe?  How does he know that his proposed system, “is precisely what God did”?  Where is Sungenis’s evidence?  Since the Catholic Church does not now and has never taught any particular cosmological scheme (see here) and the Popes have repeatedly taught that the Holy Spirit did not put any such details of the physical universe in sacred Scripture (see here), the only way from a Catholic perspective (and Sungenis is arguing from a Catholic perspective) that we can know the details of the motion of objects in the universe is by scientific observation.  Sungenis thinks he has this covered even outside of General Relativity and quotes an unpublished manuscript from Newton thus:

In order for the Earth to be at rest in the center of the system of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, there is required both universal gravity and another force in addition that acts on all bodies equally according to the quantity of matter in each of them and is equal and opposite to the accelerative gravity with which the Earth tends to the Sun…Since this force is equal and opposite to its gravity toward the Sun, the Earth can truly remain in equilibrium between these two forces and be at rest.

As we lay out in detail in “Sungenis Tries to Proposition His Readers”, Sungenis gets this English translation from Dr. G. E. Smith, but his ellipses obscure verbiage that shows that such a force is bizarre, unsupported by any physical evidence, and is thus essentially magical (quite likely the reason Newton chose not to publish this proposition.)  Sungenis’s suggestion that it is centrifugal force is a non-starter for many reasons (see here.)  With no other viable source for this force we’re left with gravity, which brings us right back to the very point I made, namely that for strict Geocentrism to work there would have to be, “some other masses that perfectly and continuously offset the Sun’s enormous gravitational influence on the Earth. . . . [and] these offsetting masses would have to be moving constantly and be positioned perfectly at every second of every day of every year in order for the Earth to remain motionless” (link).  So, in effect, all Sungenis has done by citing this quote from Newton is to affirm the validity of my point: for Geocentrism to be scientifically tenable, we would need observational evidence for these continually offsetting masses.  No bogus appeal to General Relativity.  No hand waving.  No fideistic, “God can do anything” pseudo-arguments.  We need observational evidence for the masses producing the gravitational forces needed to make Geocentrism a viable scientific view.

And there’s the problem.

There isn’t any such evidence, which is why Sungenis didn’t even make an attempt to produce it.  Instead, he engaged in the stock debater’s trick he has learned over the years in order to divert the reader’s attention away from the embarrassing truth about his case.  As always happens when Sungenis and the new geocentrists are pressed to stand on their own feet, their rhetoric devolves into equivocation, special pleading, hand waving, and finally conspiracy theories to fill in the gaping holes.  It’s a predictable pattern.

This is why all working physicists – Christians, Jews, and yes, even atheists – have for centuries rejected strict Geocentrism (but not “geocentrism”.)  They rejected it before big bang cosmology came on the scene and they’ll continue to reject it if some other theory replaces it.  There isn’t any “they know it, but they’re hiding it”, atheistic conspiracy theory to suppress Geocentrism, as Sungenis claims.  These scientists reject strict Geocentrism because there is no observational evidence to support its most basic claims, whereas on the other hand there is a perfectly simple explanation for why the Earth doesn’t plunge into the Sun – it’s revolving around its star according to the universal law of gravity, like every other planet.

It comes down to this yet again.  Strict Geocentrism is parasitic pseudo-science, a massive exercise in special pleading gummed together with conspiracy theories.  The geocentrists regularly deploy a dishonest equivocation in their apologia for Geocentrism, but balk when pressed to provide the most basic observational evidence in support of its most basic claims.  It’s abysmal science.  It’s bad philosophy.  And it’s rotten theology.  What a terrible combination.

End Notes:

[1] Albert Einstein states this explicitly in a quote which the geocentrists regularly crop in order to wrench one phrase out of context: “Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? If this can be done, our troubles will be over. We shall then be able to apply the laws of nature to any CS. The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, ‘the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,’ or ‘the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,’ would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS. Could we build a real relativistic physics valid in all CS; a physics in which there would be no place for absolute, but only for relative motion? This is indeed possible! . . . Our new idea is simple: to build a physics valid for all CS” (A. Einstein and L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, The Scientific Book Club and Company Ltd, p.224; my emphasis).

It should go without saying that there is no place for strict Geocentrism in a physics that itself has “no place for absolute but only for relative motion” and that therefore General Relativity does not in any way “allow for” strict Geocentrism.  Intellectual honesty should compel the neo-geocentrists to stop using this and other quotes from modern scientists who are speaking in the context of General Relativity.

by Dr. Alec MacAndrew and David Palm

Geocentrist Robert Sungenis has for many years tried to give Geocentrism a veneer of scientific respectability by a continual appeal to out-of-context quotes from scientists writing from the perspective of General Relativity.  Sungenis would like to convince you that all of these scientists “allow for” Geocentrism.  But physicists writing from the vantage of General Relativity hold that any point in the universe can be treated “as if” it’s the center.  It is only to that extent that they “allow for” a kind of “geocentrism” – but then they would also allow for moon-centrism and Alpha Centauri-centrism and tip-of-my-nose-centrism. But since General Relativity inherently excludes the very concepts of an absolute center and absolute motion, these scientists most certainly do not allow for the strict Geocentrism espoused by Sungenis and Company.  The whole claim is built on a dishonest equivocation (for more, see “Equivocation, Thy Name is Geocentrism”).

Unlike some geocentrists, Sungenis does not limit his claim to General Relativity.  He goes so far as to claim that Newtonian mechanics too “allows for” strict Geocentrism.  And he’s recently tried to buttress this claim by appeal to an unpublished Proposition from Sir Isaac Newton: “perhaps he [David Palm] will believe Isaac Newton when he says the same as we do” and,

Newton allows the very thing that David Palm denies. Everyone thought that Newton’s mechanics would not allow geocentrism, but here even Newton himself realized, especially after talks with Christiaan Huygens, that if he expanded his own laws outside the solar system, the geocentric system becomes viable, precisely as Mach and Einstein said (“Everyone Allows Geocentrism, Except David Palm”, p. 9).

As usual, what Sungenis leaves out of the discussion is fatal to his case.

In this article we’ll see that Sungenis has used ellipses to cut out an important caveat included by Newton which makes Sungenis’s use of this proposition all the more problematic, and that in the end it doesn’t advance his case at all since there is absolutely no evidence to support the existence of the strange force about which Newton was speculating.

Wikipedia

The Proposition:

Newton’s Proposition 43 is a proposition like those that comprise his Principia, but one which he chose not to include in the famous work – it is unpublished and known only in manuscript form.  Sungenis quotes an English translation of this unpublished Proposition 43 in the body of the text of his 4^th edition of Geocentrism 101 (and a Latin original in a footnote.)  The Latin text and English translation come from the work of Dr. G. E. Smith, professor emeritus of philosophy at Tufts University, in an unpublished article entitled, “Newtonian Relativity: A Neglected Manuscript, an Understressed Corollary” – we received a copy of this article from Dr. Smith and the story of how he came to possess this manuscript is fascinating, but that is his story to tell.

[NB: I [David Palm] originally stated that Sungenis did not document where he got the English translation of this proposition. The footnote on the English text in Geocentrism 101 takes one to the Latin text but not a reference, which led to my mistake. The next end note, however, does contain reference to Dr. Smith’s work and I missed it. This is my fault, I was not careful enough, and I apologize to Mr. Sungenis for the charge of plagiarism.]

So, About Those Ellipses…

In his own published work, Sungenis has cut out some of the text using ellipses.  Here’s his quotation of Dr. Smith’s English translation:

In order for the Earth to be at rest in the center of the system of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, there is required both universal gravity and another force in addition that acts on all bodies equally according to the quantity of matter in each of them and is equal and opposite to the accelerative gravity with which the Earth tends to the Sun…Since this force is equal and opposite to its gravity toward the Sun, the Earth can truly remain in equilibrium between these two forces and be at rest. And thus celestial bodies can move around the Earth at rest, as in the Tychonic system.

What did Sungenis cut out with the ellipses?  Newton additionally says, “For, such a force, acting on all bodies equally and along parallel lines, does not change their position among themselves, and permits bodies to move among themselves through the force of universal gravity in the same way as if it were not acting on them” (“Newtonian Relativity”, p. 9).

Newton had already derived the result that if the entire solar system is subject to the same constant force proportional to the mass of each body acting along parallel lines, and therefore being subject to the same acceleration in magnitude and direction, then this would not affect the relative motions among the bodies of the solar system at all. Relative to one another, their dynamic behaviour would be identical to that which would obtain in the absence of such a force.  Just such a situation exists for the orbit of the solar system around the galactic centre. The entire solar system experiences an equal and parallel acceleration towards the galactic centre and this does not perturb the orbits of any of the solar system bodies which behave as though the solar system is isolated.

Proposition 43 builds on this by saying that if the entire solar system is acted on by a parallel force which is in the opposite direction to the Earth to Sun direction and which is proportional to the mass of each body such that the additional force on the Earth is equal and opposite to the force on the Earth caused by the Sun’s gravity, then the Earth can be at rest in the centre of the system, but otherwise the solar system orbits are not at all perturbed compared to what happens in the absence of this additional force.  Of course, if such an additional force were to exist, this can be seen to be true, because there would be two equal and opposite forces acting at all times on the Earth (the force of the sun’s gravity, and this additional force), so that the Earth would not be subject to any proper acceleration and so would be at rest.

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Thus, in Newton’s view every body of the solar system, from the sun to the very outermost highly eccentrically orbiting comet has to have the force acting in parallel and which at all times is exactly opposite in direction to the sun’s gravitational attraction on the earth, and is proportional to the mass of each body but such that its magnitude at the earth exactly offsets the sun’s gravity at all times.  Since the direction of the strange force acting on all bodies must be parallel, its source has to be located a long way from the solar system and yet it has to have the same magnitude at the earth that the sun, located 1 AU away has.  And it would have to act at all times exactly opposite and with the same magnitude as the force of gravity of the Sun acting on the Earth, which force varies in magnitude over the course of the year (owing to the Earth’s elliptical orbit) and which changes direction through 360 degrees over the course of a year.

It is this combination of properties, including the property of the force acting on all solar system bodies along parallel lines, which Sungenis snipped away, that makes the postulated force so bizarre and unphysical.

Do You Have Any Evidence, Mr. Sungenis?

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Is there any possible source for such a bizarre force as described in Proposition 43 acting on the Earth and the rest of the solar system?  Sungenis suggests centrifugal force.  That’s a non-starter.  The centrifugal force of what revolving around what?  If you read Proposition 43 carefully without the ellipses it’s clear that Newton’s suggestion is not a force resulting from universal gravity (he says: In order for the Earth to be at rest in the center of the system of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, there is required both universal gravity and another force in addition”), but some additional unknown force acting arbitrarily and exactly in the way he described.

There are overwhelming reasons to reject centrifugal force as the source of the additional force acting on the solar system.  First of all, Sungenis’s assertion that the Universe rotates and that the centrifugal force on each body exactly matches the gravitational force pulling the stars, galaxies and clusters together (dynamic stability) doesn’t work for many reasons, but particularly for a spherical ball-shaped universe, because, as we have seen in another context (see here), there is no centrifugal force acting on bodies on the polar axes.  For a given angular speed and distance from the Earth, the centrifugal force would be greatest on the equatorial plane and fall off as the cosine of declination, falling to zero on the polar axis.  This means that bodies away from the equatorial plane would have less and less centrifugal force acting on them to offset gravity.  This is why dynamically stable rotating systems, such as Saturn and its rings and its moons, or the solar system itself, or spiral galaxies are flat not spherically symmetric because a system of free falling bodies revolving about an axis will dynamically evolve to be flat.

Second, his claim that the Proposition 43 force is centrifugal force cannot appeal to the putative daily rotation of the Universe about the Earth, because Proposition 43 is an annually cyclic phenomenon.  Third, Thirring and all other gravitomagnetic phenomena are excluded, because his whole point is to show that the Earth can be static in Newtonian mechanics, where no such gravitomagnetic phenomena appear.  And fourth, Sungenis claims that the Proposition 43 force acting on the Earth and the rest of the solar system is centrifugal force, but in Newtonian mechanics, centrifugal forces arise only from acceleration of revolution or rotation – in other words, if the Earth experiences centrifugal force, then Newtonian mechanics says that the Earth is not at rest in an inertial frame (by definition), and so it cannot be static [stationary].

Since there is zero evidence for such a bizarre force and no possible source for it even in his day, Proposition 43 is really no more than an idle (though ingenious) speculation.  This seems likely to be the real reason why Newton chose not to publish it.

Conclusion

So does Proposition 43 “allow for” strict Geocentrism and is Sungenis right that Sir Isaac “says the same as we do”?  Well, we have seen that the source of the Proposition 43 force cannot be centrifugal force.  So, for Geocentrism to be viable in light of the universal law of gravitation, there would have to be masses somewhere in the universe that at every instant of time are moving so as to be positioned perfectly to offset the enormous gravity of the Sun and other planets, thus leaving the Earth motionless.  Moreover, such masses would have to be sufficiently far away from the solar system so that they act on parallel lines on all objects in the solar system.  They would have to move so that they always acted on the Earth in a direction exactly opposite to the Sun’s gravity, rotating through 360 degrees in the course of a year.  The magnitude of the force would have to match the annual variation of the gravitational attraction of the Sun on the Earth caused by the ellipticity of the Earth’s orbit.  There is no observational evidence that such masses exist (see again, “It Really Is That Simple: Geocentrism Lacks Basic Evidence”.)

Newton suggests that the force needed could be from something other than universal gravity.  But again this purely imaginary force would then have to vary constantly in just the way needed to offset the complex movements of the Earth with respect to the Sun.  Given that such a force is bizarre, unphysical, and completely unsupported by physical evidence, we begin to see good reasons why Newton chose to leave this proposition unpublished.  And there is no reason to appeal to such a force, since there is a perfectly good explanation for why the Earth doesn’t plunge into the sun, namely, that it’s rotating around its star like any other planet, according to the universal law of gravitation.

So we see that Geocentrism’s appeal to Newtonian mechanics, especially to Newton’s unpublished Proposition 43, relies on the existence of bizarre, essentially magical forces for which there is not one shred of observational evidence.  Sir Isaac Newton is most certainly not saying the “same thing” as the new geocentrists – not even close.

Appendix 1:

Sungenis’s response to this is predictable.  He will likely assert (but not prove) that it doesn’t matter that he used ellipses to snip out the very part of Newton’s Proposition 43 that shows just how incompatible this view is with modern Geocentrism.

Since Newton’s “force, acting on all bodies equally and along parallel lines” is nowhere in evidence, how will Sungenis salvage his claim that Newtonian mechanics “allows for” Geocentrism?  We should all know by now.  He will ironically yet again turn away from Newtonian mechanics to deploy yet another quixotic appeal to General Relativity – a theory he vociferously rejects and a position which he chalks up literally as an atheistic plot hatched from syphilis-induced madness.  And as we have demonstrated, this appeal to General Relativity represents a fundamentally dishonest equivocation (see again “Equivocation, Thy Name is Geocentrism”).  But his followers will not notice the bait and switch and will swallow the manoeuvre hook, line, and sinker.