By observation we can see that the earth revolves around the sun for the same reason that we can see that the moon revolves around the earth. Both are each understood to revolve around because they are observed to be a lesser body in relation to a greater body.
We can’t step back and observe the motion of either from an outside fixed position so as to know with certitude the true relation of moon to earth or of earth to sun, but we can know each motion sufficiently by first knowing other motions such as spinning a ball attached by a string. An observation we in turn extrapolate outward from in conjunction with the self evident understanding that God created a world which is knowable and constant.
We observe relations of objects that are knowable to us first hand and by those observations deduce relations that are less knowable to us. But what is important to note here is that what we are observing is the relations of objects in motion to each other. Relations which we expect to conform to an ordered creation.
Le me rewrite that : Relations which we expect to conform to an ordered creation by which I mean as I've written elsewhere God created a world where our sense of touch and sight are sufficient to know it, where the proper order is for machines to enhance our senses because our senses give us true knowledge. Where the simple explanations from of our senses are the correct explanation. As opposed to the modern physics explanation that concrete matter is void with scattered bits of force and what our senses are telling us is an illusion.
As with much of life, God created a world sufficient for our needs where the simple solution that men typically gravitate toward is typically the best because men typically gravitate toward common sense solutions that are at human scale and natural to us.
God gave us an ordered creation where how we come to know and extrapolate and formulate fits with creation because creation was designed for us and we were designed to live in creation. And it is because of this that we can know that the common arguments for geocentrism are false because they deny our capacity to observe and know creation as a holistic whole because they deny the observation that the earth is part of the larger whole its observed to be part of. In in so doing they deny the proper ordering of coming to know from the simple and more knowable towards the less simple and less knowable because they deny observation.
The common geocentrists deny the common observation that lesser bodies rotate around greater bodies, and by their denial they deny that God created a world that is ordered and knowable. Because of all the sciences, astronomy is preeminent insofar as it was the science God gave us where we could first apply mathematical symbol to know the concrete by means of mathematical symbol.
Geocentrism is true, but it is not true as commonly explained.
We also by observation know that more gross matter moves downward in relation to less gross matter, for instance, if I let go of a rock I’m holding it will move toward the earth while the ethereal of matter will seek the heavens above. Rocks sink when set down on the surface of water. And its because of these and similar observations that it was in past surmised that the heavens were in some manner of more pure matter than found down here on earth where we too similar to rocks sink down below the surface of water when set down on it.
Which is why geocentrism was not a glorification of man’s perfection but a recognition of man’s relation to other earthy matter by means of observing ourselves in motion in relation to that other matter. A relation where air and water are seen as more perfect in relation of observed motion. While of course on the other hand also recognizing how we are a perfection of creation since we are distinctly from the rest of earthy creation created with an immaterial immortal soul.
There is a fittingness to Dante’s depiction of hell where hell’s greatest depth are cold and motionless, just as there is a fittingness to C.S. Lewis’s depiction of reduction in size where the bus from hell was minuscule while in turn to those in hell hell itself appeared to them as a vast wasteland, because material relations reflect a spiritual understanding because we are created both body and soul. Which is likewise why the sacraments are form and matter, material sign of inward unseen act.
Water is a fitting sign for baptism because it signifies purity and cleansing, similarly, hell is fittingly signified as cold and motionless because both signify deprivation of what is proper to men. As St. Athanasius writes in the Incarnation of Christ, prior to the incarnation man through sin was ceasing to exist.
Further, because at the end time we shall all be reunited with our flesh, hell must in turn be a physical location for eternal habitation of the damned. And it’s fitting according to our observations of relations of earthy matter that hell be below us which would put it somewhere not too distant from our feet somewhere near the center of the earth. A fittingness of relation we have further proof of to be true by Fatima, among other revelations, where hell was depicted to be within the earth with bodies falling downward into the earth.
So by observation of matter in motion in relation to each other, it appears heliocentrism is true, and that geocentrism is likewise true because geocentrism is true according to a different and equally valid set of relations from those that lead us to conclude that heliocentrism is true.
That different set of relations includes an altogether different fixed reference from heliocentrism. A different fixed reference fixing the earth as stationary. Because while we can see that the earth does move in relation to the sun, it would appear to not move according to the different geocentric set of relations, which is not to deny gravity on other planets and such but to look at the earth as man's abode, and thus where hell is, and where Eden remains unseen to us. To look at earth in the same manner as Genesis treats it as rather central to all of creation.
This fixed reference isn't bound by the same observable creation which leads us to conclude the earth revolves around the sun, but bound by a different and more perfect fixing of matter into place. A more perfect fixing into place because its object is more perfect. Hell, for instance, may be the most horrid of places, but its fixed reference causing motionlessness is more perfect in nature than that fixed reference causing the earth to be observed to rotate around the sun.
As I wrote above, what is important to note here is that what we are observing is the relations of objects in motion to each other. Relations which we expect to conform to an ordered creation. A creation which is more than simple material rocks and such moving in relation to each other, a creation which has other higher and more perfect relations which we can observe because we as immortal creatures with immaterial souls can see beyond simple matter to other more perfect causes.
When my daughter, the other day, asked me how fast I’ve ever ran I told her I once ran about 500 miles an hour when I sprinted about half a dozen steps forward while flying in a plane. To which the response was “no daddy, really?” And while my answer was correct because motion is a relation, it wasn’t the relation she was asking to know about. Similarly, and much less politely than my daughter, the professional Catholics who write scornfully of geocentrism are likewise looking solely at one set of relations to exclusion of all others. A less than catholic, i.e. universal, approach both historically, and observably.
Those professional Catholic scorners of geocentrism are products of our culture, no different really than the more recognizably liberal professional Catholic occultist who in their turn want to drag the Church down to embrace contraception or whatever the current soup milieu de jour currently acceptable modern american social fashion happens to be. No different really because like the Church’s stand against contraception, geocentrism is embarrassingly unfashionable and thus their need to write articles distancing themselves from their dreadful backward relatives, because while the professionals are now Catholic, they’re not ‘that’ kind of Catholic.
As Catholics, we are, or at least should be, inculcated to see the world poetically where we see God’s creation as signs signify relations. Relations which signify our place in God’s ordered creation. A Catholic way of seeing the world diametrically opposed to the modern world's way of seeing the world and its enamour with materialist occultism where all God’s creation is directed to gratification of the lower appetites, such as contraception, which is occult because it’s the use of scientific knowledge in the service of frustrating God’s created order. Which is likewise a geocentrism of the most vulgar kind because it not only places man above nature, but also above God.
“21 they knew God and yet they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but their arguments became futile and their uncomprehending minds were darkened.
22 While they claimed to be wise, in fact they were growing so stupid
23 that they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an imitation, for the image of a mortal human being, or of birds, or animals, or crawling things.
24 That is why God abandoned them in their inmost cravings to filthy practices of dishonouring their own bodies-
25 because they exchanged God's truth for a lie and have worshipped and served the creature instead of the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” St. Paul Romans 1: 21-25
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