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Friday, December 6, 2024 - 09:34 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

While the case for Biblical geocentrism, is better than that for a Flat Earth, geocentrics tend to make some of the same mistakes that flat earthers make, the big one is assuming that the word earth always refers to the planet Earth despite the fact that God personally calls the dry land earth.

Genesis 1:10, And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

What this indicates is that unless the context of its usage indicates otherwise the word “earth” refers only to dry land. Now sometimes the context will indicate that it refers to dirt or even the entire planet, but dry land is the default meaning.

Another common mistake egocentrics make is assuming that descriptions of motion in the Bible are absolute, despite the fact that motion is entirely relative. For example, if I see a car going by me at 55 miles an hour an occupant of the car sees me going by at 55 miles an hour in the opposite direction. In this case, most of the verses used to support geocentrism are simply describing what is happening from the perspective of an observer on the earth. In fact, the only actual difference between geocentrism and heliocentrism is a choice of coordinate systems. Naturally, when doing calculations involving planetary orbits a heliocentric model is easier to work with than a geocentric one.

Job 38: 14, It is turned as clay to the seal, and they stand as a garment.

Here's a verse they referred to the rotation of the Earth. It particularly makes sense when the word “earth” is seen as referring to dry land. This makes the analogy of the earth being turned as clay a perfect fit to the rotation of the planet Earth.

They often tend to fail to understand that in some cases, particularly the book of revelations, the Bible is describing an event from an observational perspective here on earth and not necessarily from a scientific perspective. For example, revelation describes a mountain being cast into the sea, this sounds a lot like an asteroid impact described in non-scientific terminology. This differs from those that claim their Genesis is a metaphor is that you are still taking the description in the Bible as accurate, but just using words that would have been available when the text was actually written.

Ultimately once you realize that all that motion is relative, the question of geocentrism versus heliocentrism pretty much goes away. This is because they are both just choices of a frame of reference. Now it is true that when dealing with the solar system a heliocentric frame of reference is the easiest to work with. However, when calculating the orbit of a satellite around the earth or a trajectory to the moon and back a geocentric reference frame Is the simplest. By the way, it is just as legitimate under the proper circumstances to use a lunar-centric model, a Martin-centric model, and so on. This is not an argument against absolute truth, but simply recognition that what is being described in the Bible verses used by geocentric is simply describing where is Being described from the standpoint of an observer on Earth, something that makes sense when that is someone's perspective that most of your readers are going to have.

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