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it does not necessarily accept it in every detail.
[Review by Eric Bermingham]
Galileo Was Wrong …and so was Einstein Volume I – The Scientific Evidence
Includes CD-ROM with pictures, animation and entire text of book
Robert Sungenis, Ph.D. and Robert Bennett, Ph.D.
Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc., 2006
678 pages $49.95 + $10.00 S&H
Available from: Catholic Apologetics International PO Box 278 State Line, PA 17263 1-800-531-6393 cairomeo@aol.com or on the web at www.catholicintl.com. Related items (T-shirts, mugs, hats, bumper stickers, etc.) also available at: www.galileowaswrong.com.
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Have you ever thought that the modern world has gone stark, raving mad? Does it seem to you that the present disorder is a result of the questioning of God’s word; a replay of the events which occurred thousands of years ago in the Garden of Eden? You are not alone. Drs. Sungenis and Bennett have exposed one of the primary causes of this disorder in Galileo Was Wrong – probably the most comprehensive book written on geocentrism.
Reveals what most scientists are afraid to admit – there is no evidence that the Earth is moving and considerable evidence that we are motionless in the center of the Universe.
Brings to light the fact that Galileo never proved that the Earth moved around the Sun, and that late in life he recanted his position in favor of geocentrism.
Shows that Einstein developed his convoluted Relativity theories primarily to avoid accepting a stationary Earth, and that he was wrong.
Demonstrates that the Cosmic Principle – otherwise known as the Copernican Principle – is the most sacrosanct belief of modern science, even more than Evolution, primarily because it undermines the authority of the Bible and the Church.
Quotes from Blessed Hildegard von Bingen, an eleventh century German mystic, who had visions of many things concerning the material world including the operation of the cosmos. She could be called the patron saint of geocentrists.
Divulges disturbing details in the personal lives of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Einstein. Shows what happens when people free themselves from the moral constraints of the Bible and the Church.
Robert Sungenis, Ph.D. is the founder and president of Catholic Apologetics International. He is the author of many books and articles on religion, politics, science and culture. He has appeared on radio and television, including programs on CNN, the BBC and EWTN. He is also an advisory council member of The Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation. He authored all of the text of this book except for Chapter 12.
Robert Bennett, Ph.D. holds a doctorate in General Relativity from Stevens Institute of Technology. He has spent many years teaching physics and mathematics. He also is an advisory council member of The Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation. He wrote Chapter 12, a technical and mathematical explanation of the various arguments for geocentrism.
Volume I of Galileo Was Wrong presents the scientific evidence for geocentrism. Volume II, to be published at a later date, will deal with the ecclesiastical and patristic evidence. The scientific evidence is being presented first because in the modern world, natural science has taken over theology as the final arbiter of truth in the minds of most people. It would therefore be futile to argue for geocentrism from a theological or metaphysical point of view without first addressing the scientific questions.
So what does it matter if the Earth is going around the sun or if the sun is going around the Earth? One could also ask if it matters whether evolution is true and the universe is billions and billions of years old, or if everything was created in six days only thousands of years ago. As long as we believe that God is responsible for it all, who cares? Is it not true that: “The Holy Spirit intended to teach us in the Bible how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go," as Galileo is supposed to have said?
Pope Benedict XV in Spiritus Paraclitus (Sept. 15, 1920), upholding the inerrancy of all Scripture, notes that it is not surprising that modern scientific theories are not in agreement with the Bible: “... by these precepts and limits [set by the Fathers of the Church] the opinion of the more recent critics is not restrained, who, after introducing a distinction between the primary or religious element of Scripture, and the secondary or profane, wish, indeed, that inspiration itself pertain to all the ideas, rather even to the individual words of the Bible, but that its effects and especially immunity from error and absolute truth be contracted and narrowed to the primary or religious element. For their belief is that only which concerns religion is intended and is taught by God in the Scriptures; but that the rest, which pertains to the profane disciplines and serves revealed doctrine as a kind of external cloak of divine truth, is only permitted and is left to the feebleness of the writer. It is not surprising then, if in physical, historical, and other similar affairs a great many things occur in the Bible, which cannot at all be reconciled with the progress of the fine arts of this age.”
Ernst Mayr, one of the most influential evolutionists of all time, said that perhaps Darwin’s greatest contribution was that he developed a new set of principles: the living world, through evolution, can be explained without recourse to supernaturalism. In other words, God is not necessary. It is generally agreed that Darwin eventually lost his Christian faith. Mayr also said that almost every component in modern man’s belief system is somehow affected by Darwinian principles.
In the introduction to Steven Hawking's Brief History of Time, Carl Sagan wrote that modern astronomers envision “a universe with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a Creator to do.” Sagan also wrote that, “we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” Steven Hawking lost his Christian faith and has become an atheist. His book has sold more than nine million copies worldwide.
Somehow those who accept purely materialistic scientific theories as true end up losing any faith in a supernatural God. Many want to be free of the moral restraints of the Bible and the Church, especially those related to sexual morals. Others may experience tragedies in life and wonder how a loving, all-powerful God could allow such events to occur. Some, being scandalized by the bad actions of those in positions of religious authority, conclude that rules were only created to consolidate power and maintain control over the common people. However, a complete rejection of God is inexcusable, as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans.
Putting these types of arguments aside, Drs. Sungenis and Bennett have compiled a tome which shows that geocentrism is not contradicted by any scientific observations. They examine all the evidence; starting from Copernicus and continuing all the way to recent developments. All told, geocentrism has never been proven false and many facts support it.
The book starts off with the Galileo case. It is generally known that papal bulls condemned the idea that the Earth moves around the Sun and that it rotates about its axis as being contrary to Scripture. While not reaching the level of dogmatic definitions, these bulls were authoritative and have never been officially renounced by the Church. Galileo was condemned to house arrest and his works were placed on the Index of forbidden books. What is not so well known is that there is evidence that Galileo recanted his position in favor of geocentrism late in life
Galileo Was Wrong shows how the system worked out by Copernicus was neither simpler, nor more accurate than the Ptolemaic system. Ptolemy had an immovable Earth in the center with the planets, Sun and stars moving around it. Copernicus put the Sun in the center with the Earth, planets and stars orbiting it.
At about the same time as the Galileo affair, Tycho Brahe came up with another system with the Earth fixed at the center, the Sun and stars moving around the Earth, and the planets moving around the Sun. A modern, neo-Tychonic model has the stars moving around the Sun. Yet another model is the galactocentric universe with the Milky Way galaxy at the center of the universe. Of course, most astronomers today accept the acentric/homogeneous model with no center and everything uniform in all directions.
In any of the modern systems the relative motion of the heavenly bodies is basically the same. It is just a question of where the center is and what, if anything, is at rest. Unfortunately, the evidence in favor of the supernaturally-designed, Biblically-based, Church-affirmed, Earth-centered universe is just not presented in public. For too many people, that would be “unthinkable.”
When Galileo contended for a Sun-centered universe, most scientists knew that he had not proven his case. Galileo only came up with arguments that seemed reasonable. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, experiments were devised to show just how fast the Earth was moving around the Sun. Many of these experiments were performed with interferometers.
Light beams can be measured as waves. A light beam can also be split and the two beams can be bounced off mirrors and reflected back the same point. An interferometer at that point can show a difference in the distance traveled by the light beams as a phase difference.
At the time these experiments were being performed, it was assumed that light traveled in space through a medium which was called “ether.” This is not the hydrocarbon gas, but a name given to that “something” which fills the space between the heavenly bodies. Scientists accepted that something must fill space and that light must travel through it. Furthermore, it was assumed that the ether was stationary and that light moved through it at a constant speed, much as sound travels through air at a constant speed.
It was assumed that the Earth moved through the ether in its motion about the Sun, and it was the motion of the Earth through the ether that the interferometer experiments were designed to detect. The result of the experiments was that little or no motion of the Earth through the ether was detected. One possible solution to this problematic observation was that the Earth was not moving. But to modern scientists, this was unacceptable. Some other solution had to be devised. Enter Einstein.
Instead of an Earth absolutely at rest, Einstein proposed that the speed of light was constant, relative to the observer. That is where the “relativity” comes from. Unfortunately, time and space had to be reconsidered if the speed of light was to remain a constant. There was no experimental evidence to suggest this, only his “thought experiments.” Although Einstein rejected the ether in his Special Relativity theory, he brought the concept back in his General theory which assigned properties to “space.” This space with properties was essentially no different than the previously proposed ether.
One of Einstein’s most vociferous critics was scientist Hebert Dingle. He came up with a simple criticism of Special Relativity which no one has been able to adequately answer:
According to the theory, if you have two exactly similar clocks, A and B, and one is moving with respect to the other, they must work at different rates, i.e., one works more slowly than the other. But the theory also requires that you cannot distinguish which clock is the “moving” one; it is equally true to say that A rests while B moves and that B rests while A moves. The question therefore arises: how does one determine, consistently with the theory, which clock works the more slowly? Unless this question is answerable, the theory unavoidably requires that A works more slowly than B and B more slowly than A – which it requires no super-intelligence to see is impossible. Now, clearly, a theory that requires an impossibility cannot be true, and scientific integrity requires, therefore, either the question just posed shall be answered, or else that the theory shall be acknowledged to be false.
A good deal of other scientific evidence for geocentrism is presented such as the spherical distribution of gamma-ray bursts, quasars, x-ray bursts, and galaxies around a central Earth. The typical arguments for an orbiting, rotating Earth – such as the Foucault pendulum and the Coriolis force – are refuted.
The chapter on the revelations of Blessed Hildegard von Bingen is worth the cost of the book itself. She was given visions concerning the firmament and its rotation, the motion of the Sun and planets, the cause of the seasons, the cause of gravity, the effect of the stars on our weather and more.
This book demonstrates that any coherent theory of the operation of the universe needs a fixed point of reference. There is no scientific proof against a stationary Earth and much evidence to support it. After examining the experiments to test the movement of the Earth, Hendrik Lorentz, one of Einstein’s contemporaries, admitted: “Briefly, everything occurs as if the Earth were at rest…” The Bible, the Church and Blessed Hildegard all say that the Earth is motionless at the center of the universe. There is no reason to doubt it.
The hardcopy book has no index, but the text on the CD-ROM can be searched. The only negative things that I can say about the book are that it contains some typos, and the Table of Contents does not always accurately reflect the correct page numbers. You do, however, need to be a determined reader to get through it all.
Galileo Was Wrong is well worth the cost and the time invested in reading. No other book presents the amount of evidence that this one does that a geocentric world-view is scientifically valid. Reading it has convinced me that a return to geocentrism is necessary for a return to sanity in this world.
Eric Bermingham
May 29, 2007
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