Mark,
I understand everything about translating coordinate systems, ok? I'm pretty much aware that mathematically, I can make that spider on my wall the center of the solar system, nay, the universe. Coordinate systems are arbitrary things designed to describe movement.
Sure, the solar system may be described geocentrically, or arachnocentrically, whatever.
But why? Why are you so obsessed with changing the metaphors? Why are these "cartoons" to you but your quaint attempt to restore an updated view of Ptolemy, "gospel truth" and all of the sudden, central to Catholic truth?
Dude, you're a man with great intelligence--and I'm not being condescending by saying this, you've given a lot of consideration to your point. Nevertheless, your picture is but a vast exercise in special pleading which undermines any theological you wish to do. Please, reconsider!
-Theo
Teofilo:"But why? Why are you so obsessed with changing the metaphors? Why are these "cartoons" to you but your quaint attempt to restore an updated view of Ptolemy, "gospel truth" and all of the sudden, central to Catholic truth? "
I am not the one who changed metaphors, Teofilo. Keep that in mind. Corpenicus, Galileo, Kepler, etc., caught the popular imagination of man (under whose guidance, I wonder) using incorrect models of the universe and they changed the metaphor. They placed the sun at the center of the universe instead of the earth. This had as much to do with anti-Christian mysticism as it did with cosmology. Of course in todays view (acentrism), they too are considered wrong.
Still, the amazing thing is that no scientist has been able to demonstrate that the earth moves (in a manner distinguishable from counter movement of the universe).
Why accept the changed metaphor, Teofilo? It has been more than 2000 years since Christ came. What has Lucifer been doing all this time? Do you not think he was behind the Orthodox Schism, the Protestant Revolution, Galileo, the rise of masonry, communism, abortion as a civil right, etc.?
How sucessful has the deception become? Is it to the point that man willingly pulls the cosmological wool over his own eyes in some distorted notion of truth?
There does not have to be a naturalistic explanation for the universe being in the configuration it actually is in. If it is geocentric, there really is only one explanation- God willed it so. The acentric view is easily reduced to a cosmic accident.
Mark Wyatt
www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com
Teofilo: "...your quaint attempt to restore an updated view of Ptolemy..."
Actually, the view is closer to a modern Tychonian view than a Ptolemaic one. In the modern Tychonic, the earth is stationary in the center of the universe. The sun and universe revolve around the the earth. The planets (earth not being one) orbit the sun with approximately LKeplerian type orbits (plus all other pertubations, etc.).
In the Ptolemaic view, all the planets directly orbited the earth with epicycles.
Mark Wyatt
www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com