Does the Earth move?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(huskers @ Mar 24 2007, 05:18 PM) [snapback]411615[/snapback]</div>

Not only that, but the SUN is skippin' along at a nice pace ... last I heard, about 10K mph ... spinning around w/ the rest of the galaxy. B)

 

Movement is all relative, and the expanse of space only makes that more apparent. For all we know, the Earth actually IS stationary, and everything else is spinning madly around us. Given the scale of distance involved, that's highly unlikely though.

There's lots of observable evidence (observable by you and me using no instruments, or the most basic of optics) to support the facts of relative motion of different parts of our solar system.

Danile's point is well taken though, that fundamentalists will refuse the evidence. I had a fundie friend in high school. He excelled in science, but his attitude toward it was that all the evidence that he saw and fully understood for himself was put there by God as a challenge to his faith. He felt that he was more devout for trying to fully understanding the claims of science and still rejecting them, rather than blindly rejecting science. I respected his approach, but it was infuriating to argue the finer points with him because he already knew the arguments and could not be "enlightened" by the simple transparency of science.

I don't think this thread will draw the response that Daniel is looking for though. Putting myself in a fundamnetalist mindset, I see the question as a trap: If I truthfully answer "no, the earth is not stationary," then I foresee the immediate response of "well then, how can your faith and literal interpretation of other parts of the Bible withstand the same arguments without making you a hypocrite?"

If I answer "yes, the earth is stationary," I can see by the responses already that my views will not be held in any esteem here.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ichabod @ Mar 26 2007, 09:53 AM) [snapback]412297[/snapback]</div>

I know I feel the Earth move under my feet. I feel the sky tumbling down, too.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ichabod @ Mar 26 2007, 11:53 AM) [snapback]412297[/snapback]</div>

That's the beauty of relativity. You can just as easily say that your Prius is the center of the universe, and everything else moves around it. When you turn the steering wheel entering a curve, the Prius stays still and everything rotates around it, creating a disturbance in gravity which pulls you toward the outside of the curve. It works with any frame of reference, so we might as well get back to arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 26 2007, 01:34 PM) [snapback]412465[/snapback]</div>

If I were a creationist, or a climate change denier, I would answer like this:
If you believe the so-called "scientists" that the stars are light years away from us, as opposed to a few hundred miles which makes much more sense. Also, you're going by the "scientists" that you can't travel faster than light. Any fan of Star Trek would beg to differ.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 26 2007, 03:34 PM) [snapback]412465[/snapback]</div>

This is the special case described by Special Relativity, without having to deal with accelerated frames of reference.

General Relativity handles this quite nicely. When you start rotating the cosmos around the earth, gravity (as well as space-time itself) gets all twisted out of shape. Nothing has to exceed the speed of light for this to work, only the math is very, very inconvenient. A rotating reference frame is an accelerated reference frame. It works just fine.

Tom

 

I know this doesn't address Daniel's question from the perspective he is hoping for, but is there anything that doesn't move? Even at Absolute Zero, when all molecular movement ceases, the particles are still part of something else that`s either orbiting a centre of gravity or expanding away from it.

 

That's relativity. You'd need some frame of reference, some fixed point in (or outside of) the universe to prove that there was such a thing as a fixed point... and then that point has to be proven to be fixed... somehow. I don't know if that's possible, but more accomplished physicists than myself have probably spent a good deal of energy thinking about such things.

 

Assuming a fixed point is only theoretical, does that mean Relativity is absolute?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ Mar 26 2007, 01:20 PM) [snapback]412413[/snapback]</div>

My Prius is the center of the universe !!!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 26 2007, 04:10 PM) [snapback]412581[/snapback]</div>

He's busy over in teh Dubya At the Rapture thread.

Don't you see the foam?

Don't take the bait, Windstrings. Don't... don't.... don't...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 26 2007, 07:27 AM) [snapback]412278[/snapback]</div>

Yes, you are quite right; fundamentalists do hold on to certain views without regard to new evidence. There were some astronomers who refused to look through Galileo's telescope, as Galaxee said.

Scientists do change their entrenched views, but it does take them a while. And when you read the histories of science, you find it takes more than a mere preponderance of the evidence; there are still cosmologists who don't accept the Big Bang. And, they could be right, but they aren't "right" now. They have to prove their theory.

It is why I am much more comfortable with the climate change debate now that its proven there is not "100% consensus" ... because there simply isn't enough evidence yet to reach that point. And finding those few serious scientists that disagree, and can argue their views based on the science of the matter, makes me much more confident that the issue is really being examined.

There's a misconception that only the Church wanted to sanction Galileo, but the current folks doing astronomy at the time ... dare we call them scientists? ... had way too much invested to see it all thrown away. They had spent their lives proving out the epicycles and whirlygigs and such in detailed notes and hours of observations. Those same pressures do exist today in science, and eventually, the better thesis wins out. But it is never as calm, rational and non-political as people tend to make it out to be.

In regards to the modern day Creationists and ID folks and your original question, they will not hold those verses as "literal"; they choose to say that they interpret the verse as allegory because of modern "external" evidence (external to the text). I think that's a fine method of determining what you accept as literal and what is accepted as figurative, but I also think a Christian needs a more complete understanding of internal and external evidences, context of the passage, purpose of the original writer, and the historical framework of the writing. And that should be applied in all cases, and then a reasonable attempt can be made to interpret scripture.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Mar 27 2007, 03:17 AM) [snapback]412788[/snapback]</div>

I don't think you're ever going to get 100% consensus. No matter how strong the evidence, there will always be those who refuse to accept it.

 

I suppose you have the Book,chapter,verse to point to? I have never heard this stated before now.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Mar 26 2007, 01:20 PM) [snapback]412498[/snapback]</div>

Exception: Dubia’s brain :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(The Annoying One @ Mar 27 2007, 08:56 PM) [snapback]413338[/snapback]</div>

Dubya's so-called "brain" has been clocked as fast as .85C (85% the speed of light) when avoiding knowledge, accountability, responsibility, forthrightness, integrity, ethics, moral courage and other strange, similar phenomena alien (and frightening) to him. So I'm not sure the exception holds, although there were all those frozen minutes of paralysis in a Florida classroom one September morning when he was faced with trying to escape ALL the above named phenomena simultaneously and his half neuron locked up.

OK, back to the topic.

Mark Baird
Alameda CA