[geocentrism] "The Lesser Light to rule over the night..."
- From: Amnon <yerushabel3@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 19:56:49 +0200
The "Bulletin of the Tychonian Society" number 40 (September 1985)
quotes Professor Harold Armstrong:
"It has struck me that there is some Scriptural evidence for a geocentric
cosmology, and moreover that it favours the Tychonian, not the Ptolemaic
model.
<>
It is this. Genesis 1:16 says that the greater light, which everybody, I
think, grants to be the Sun. was to rule the day. The Hebrew word is the
ordinary word used to state, e.g., that a king rules over a country; and
the same is true of the Greek of the Septuagint. But what, in this context,
is the day? 1:5 says that it is the light. In other words, it is day
wherever
it is daylight, and that applies to interplanetary space. Even out beyond
Pluto it is daylight; the light from the Sun there is still much stronger
than that which we receive from the full Moon here on Earth.
How, then, does the Sun rule all of this territory? To rule a territory
could mean to control what happens there. The Sun, then, controls what
happens in interplanetary space; the motion of the planets. It controls
also the motion of irregular or occasional objects there, viz: comets,
meteoroids and, nowadays the occasional rocket. In other words, the
motions of these things are ordered to the Sun. So (by hindsight) that
could have been deduced from Scripture. The Ptolemaic theory, then.
misses noticing the action of the Sun (although, of course with the
epicycles, etc., the motion can be represented as close as desired);
and the older theory in which the planets were embedded in revolving
crystal spheres missed the point farther <>In saying, then, that the
motion of the planets is ordered to the
Sun, the Tychonian theory is saying the same as the heliocentric theory;
in fact, I suppose, it is partly heliocentric. So none or the observed
motions is any proof for a wholly heliocentric theory, against the
Tychonian one.
However, these arguments would not give Scriptural support to a
completely heliocentric theory For the lesser light, which, I think,
almost everyone takes to be the Moon was to rule the night. Now
according to the heliocentric theory, and the interpretation adopted,
the Sun
would be ruling both day and night; for in controlling the motion of the
Earth it would be controlling the motion of the dark side as well as that
of the light one. But the Tychonian theory does not encounter any such
difficulty.
Incidentally, the common theory nowadays is not the Copernican
theory, nor the Keplerian. It is the Newtonian. For neither Copernicus
nor Kepler really described the state of affairs all that well. It was not
until Newton made it possible to consider the perturbations, the effects
of one planet on another, that the theory could be really satisfactory.
But, then. the statement often made. that the heliocentric theory is so
much simpler than the geocentric, is false. For when the perturbations
are adequately taken into account, the theory is as complicated as the
geocentric ever was with its fullest glory of epicycles, etc....".
To which Dr G.Bouw adds:
"It is the second to last paragraph which contains a most subtle
observation, one alluded to in Bulletin number 39. The point here is
that since the night-side, along with the day-side of the earth both
orbit the sun in the heliocentric framework, the sun can be said to
control and thus to rule the night as well as the day. This runs contrary
to Genesis 1:16. Figure 1 shows the case from an heliocentric
perspective, showing the night as the cone of the earth's shadow. This
is how as night is commonly conceived in scientific circles. You'll note
that the cone "orbits" the sun during the course of the year and so
can be said to be controlled by the gravitational field of the sun.
Figure 2 gives the Tychonic view where the cone of night is simply seen to
rotate around the earth with the same period as the sun (in this case
rotation is ignored so that the period is one year). Again, this is a very
subtle point and will take a bit of concentrated effort on the part of the
average reader to grasp, but once understood it is very compelling".
Other related posts:
