Appendix B: Fixed or Established?
Some people reject the Bible as outdated and unscientific because they think it says that the Earth was created about 6 000 years ago. We have explained very carefully that this opinion is a misreading of the Genesis creation narrative. Another famous misreading is the idea that the Bible says that the Earth does not move.
We know that the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the Sun, but ancient people did not know that the Earth moves. The motion is very smooth and steady, imperceptible to an untrained observer. For this reason people thought for thousands of years that the Earth was fixed, immovable, and the heavenly bodies revolved around it. Copernicus offered a contrary view as a mere theory, but Galileo recklessly championed the idea that the Earth moves.[i] The chief proponents of the fixed-Earth theory were actually followers of Aristotle, but they got their Pope and the Holy Office involved in their controversy with Galileo. They brought out verses in the Psalms that supposedly say that the Earth is fixed in place and cannot be moved.
[i] Hummel, Charles E., Chapter 5, “Galileo: Science and Theology,” The Galileo Connection (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1986), pp. 103–125.
We know that the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the Sun, but ancient people did not know that the Earth moves. The motion is very smooth and steady, imperceptible to an untrained observer. For this reason people thought for thousands of years that the Earth was fixed, immovable, and the heavenly bodies revolved around it. Copernicus offered a contrary view as a mere theory, but Galileo recklessly championed the idea that the Earth moves.[i] The chief proponents of the fixed-Earth theory were actually followers of Aristotle, but they got their Pope and the Holy Office involved in their controversy with Galileo. They brought out verses in the Psalms that supposedly say that the Earth is fixed in place and cannot be moved.
[i] Hummel, Charles E., Chapter 5, “Galileo: Science and Theology,” The Galileo Connection (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1986), pp. 103–125.
The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved (Psalm 93:1).
Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.” The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity (Psalm 96:10).
The Hebrew word translated cannot be moved is מוט mowt, in the niphal or passive imperfect. It means: “shall not be shaken, moved, or overthrown.” The same word applies to people or mountains.
[The wicked man] says to himself, “Nothing will shake me; I’ll always be happy and never have trouble” (Psalm 10:6).
Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever (Psalm 125:1).
People can certainly be moved, and earthquakes can shake mountains. The psalmist does not say that the world is immobile but that nothing we can do can overthrow it. Likewise, the modern translation cited above does not say that the world is firmly fixed in place but that the world is firmly established. The Hebrew word is כּון kuwn. Elsewhere the same word applies to the Sun, the Moon, and the stars.
The day is yours, and yours also the night; you established the sun and moon (Psalm 74:16).
[David’s dynasty] will be established for ever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky (Psalm 89:37).
… I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place (Psalm 8:3).
Established or set in place does not mean fixed and immobile. Anyone with seeing eyes can confirm that every night the Moon is among a new group of stars. Galileo’s accusers knew that the Moon moves. They could have deduced that the Bible does not contradict the idea that the Earth moves. They should have been fair with Galileo, but they were not. Clearly they were out to condemn Galileo, and their motives beclouded their Bible interpretation.
Claudius Ptolemaeus (also known as Ptolemy, Alexandrian astronomer, after 83–161) developed a model of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars, all revolving around the Earth. Nicolaus Copernicus (Polish astronomer, 1473–1543) developed the theory that the Earth goes around the Sun. He replaced the geocentric Ptolemaic system with the heliocentric system 90 years before the Catholics condemned Galileo. A Lutheran pastor named Andreas Osiander (German theologian, 1498–1552) helped to publish De Revolutionibus orbium caelestium (About the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) in a Lutheran press in the year of Copernicus’ death, 1543. The Copernican theory might never have found wide acceptance at the time, because there was deadly opposition. Osiander found a way to mitigate the confrontation with the traditionalists. It was probably he who wrote an anonymous preface to the work of Copernicus. In it the book only claimed to present a new hypothesis. The author of the preface admitted that reason and mathematics were insufficient to distinguish between different theories regarding the relative motions of the planets and Sun. An author with a hawkish attitude would immediately have pointed out that observation is able to distinguish between the theories, and that observation was on the side of his favorite theory. Osiander didn’t do that. He showed how the traditionalists explained the apparent retrograde motion of Venus at superior conjunction with an epicycle. Then he pointed out that the epicycle would make the light from Venus four times as intense and the subtended solid angle sixteen times greater, at aphelion (farthest excursion from the Sun) than at perihelion (closest approach to the Sun). Without then making much of this clear observational proof that Venus does not move in epicycles, Osiander returned to the position that the new theory was only offered as a hypothesis that has certain computational advantages for the calculation in advance of the position of Venus in the sky at certain dates.
The preface enabled Copernicus’ book to escape for years the Index of prohibited books. Essentially the preface says, “Nobody is really saying that the Earth goes around the Sun. It is just easier to calculate the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets if one uses the theoretical idea that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun. Of course, the calculations fit the observations very nicely.”
Such wisdom is needed today in a current confrontation between science and religion. What is gained by twitting religious people about scientific data regarding the age of the universe? The American Physical Society has a commission concerned with public acceptance and appreciation of physics, yet others in the Society have taken it upon themselves to “answer” creationists. There is a large body of belief among the general public that the Genesis account of creation is literally true. Centuries of scientific study have not kept people from admiring the beauty and poetry of Moses’ narrative. Some people hope to win friends for their cause by offending the religious beliefs of others. The friends they win will be few if the majority holds those religious beliefs.
Copernicus had all the planets in circular orbits, probably with epicycles that were also circular, as corrections. It was Johannes Kepler (German astronomer and natural philosopher, 1571–1630) who deduced from the data of Tycho Brahe (Danish astronomer, 1564–1601) the law that planets sweep out equal areas in equal times. The area swept out is the area between two lines radiating from the Sun, bounded on the outside by the planet’s orbit. The two lines are lines from the Sun to the planet when the planet is in the starting and later in the ending position. This law holds true for a circular orbit when the planet moves with constant orbital speed. But it also holds true for an elliptical orbit with the Sun at one of the two foci of the ellipse. Today this fact is well known, but Newton had to invent calculus to derive the orbit from Kepler’s law. Newton tried for many years to fit the planetary data into circular orbits before giving up and trying elliptical orbits. All the planetary orbits in the solar system are elliptical. Saturn’s is the closest to a circle. There is no physical law governing the location of the empty focus of the ellipse, and in fact the empty foci are scattered in different directions around the Sun.
Halley’s Comet is in a long, thin elliptical orbit with the closest approach to the Sun within the Earth’s orbit, but the farthest point from the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. When the comet is close to the Sun the Sun’s gravity is strong and makes the comet move fast. It comes into sight near the orbit of Jupiter, whips around the Sun in a matter of months, and drops out of sight as it passes Jupiter again. Then it spends 74 years in the deep freeze between Jupiter and Pluto before coming back. The area Halley’s Comet sweeps out most of the time is bounded by long lines, and in several months it moves only a short distance along its orbit. When close to the Sun the lines are short, so the path around the orbit from appearance to disappearance must be long to sweep out the same area in the same time interval.
Even though Martin Luther (German theologian and religious reformer, 1483–1546), explicitly rejected Copernicus, he created an atmosphere in which conventional interpretations of old texts could be challenged. That is the atmosphere in which science thrives. Several of the southern states of Europe, those that border on the Mediterranean, notably Spain, France, and Italy, reacted to the Reformation with the Inquisition, which spread to Central and South America. Galileo had the extreme bad luck to be born in the south. His was one of the few bright scientific southern lights in the development of physics. In the north we may trace the development of celestial mechanics and modern physics through Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Newton; and the post-revolutionary, post-Catholic Pierre-Simon Laplace (French astronomer and mathematician, 1749–1827).
Pope Urban VIII condemned Galileo in 1633. Later the Pope commuted the sentence to house arrest for the rest of his life, because Galileo recanted. Galileo lived only 8 more years. Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005) was elected pope on 16 October 1978. Soon after his installation as Pope John Paul II, he ordered the Holy Office (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) to give Galileo a retrial. The Holy Office took 13 years to carry out this order. On 31 October 1992 they acquitted Galileo, after 359 years of house arrest. Even if Galileo had been able to appeal his case immediately to those who judged him in the new trial, he would have died in house arrest before acquittal.
Medieval people were wrong about many things. They were just as wrong about science as they were about interpreting the Bible. Nothing is gained by holding the errors of the past against the people of the present. Let’s simply go on, and find ways of coming together instead of rejecting people out of hand for their world view.
Claudius Ptolemaeus (also known as Ptolemy, Alexandrian astronomer, after 83–161) developed a model of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars, all revolving around the Earth. Nicolaus Copernicus (Polish astronomer, 1473–1543) developed the theory that the Earth goes around the Sun. He replaced the geocentric Ptolemaic system with the heliocentric system 90 years before the Catholics condemned Galileo. A Lutheran pastor named Andreas Osiander (German theologian, 1498–1552) helped to publish De Revolutionibus orbium caelestium (About the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) in a Lutheran press in the year of Copernicus’ death, 1543. The Copernican theory might never have found wide acceptance at the time, because there was deadly opposition. Osiander found a way to mitigate the confrontation with the traditionalists. It was probably he who wrote an anonymous preface to the work of Copernicus. In it the book only claimed to present a new hypothesis. The author of the preface admitted that reason and mathematics were insufficient to distinguish between different theories regarding the relative motions of the planets and Sun. An author with a hawkish attitude would immediately have pointed out that observation is able to distinguish between the theories, and that observation was on the side of his favorite theory. Osiander didn’t do that. He showed how the traditionalists explained the apparent retrograde motion of Venus at superior conjunction with an epicycle. Then he pointed out that the epicycle would make the light from Venus four times as intense and the subtended solid angle sixteen times greater, at aphelion (farthest excursion from the Sun) than at perihelion (closest approach to the Sun). Without then making much of this clear observational proof that Venus does not move in epicycles, Osiander returned to the position that the new theory was only offered as a hypothesis that has certain computational advantages for the calculation in advance of the position of Venus in the sky at certain dates.
The preface enabled Copernicus’ book to escape for years the Index of prohibited books. Essentially the preface says, “Nobody is really saying that the Earth goes around the Sun. It is just easier to calculate the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets if one uses the theoretical idea that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun. Of course, the calculations fit the observations very nicely.”
Such wisdom is needed today in a current confrontation between science and religion. What is gained by twitting religious people about scientific data regarding the age of the universe? The American Physical Society has a commission concerned with public acceptance and appreciation of physics, yet others in the Society have taken it upon themselves to “answer” creationists. There is a large body of belief among the general public that the Genesis account of creation is literally true. Centuries of scientific study have not kept people from admiring the beauty and poetry of Moses’ narrative. Some people hope to win friends for their cause by offending the religious beliefs of others. The friends they win will be few if the majority holds those religious beliefs.
Copernicus had all the planets in circular orbits, probably with epicycles that were also circular, as corrections. It was Johannes Kepler (German astronomer and natural philosopher, 1571–1630) who deduced from the data of Tycho Brahe (Danish astronomer, 1564–1601) the law that planets sweep out equal areas in equal times. The area swept out is the area between two lines radiating from the Sun, bounded on the outside by the planet’s orbit. The two lines are lines from the Sun to the planet when the planet is in the starting and later in the ending position. This law holds true for a circular orbit when the planet moves with constant orbital speed. But it also holds true for an elliptical orbit with the Sun at one of the two foci of the ellipse. Today this fact is well known, but Newton had to invent calculus to derive the orbit from Kepler’s law. Newton tried for many years to fit the planetary data into circular orbits before giving up and trying elliptical orbits. All the planetary orbits in the solar system are elliptical. Saturn’s is the closest to a circle. There is no physical law governing the location of the empty focus of the ellipse, and in fact the empty foci are scattered in different directions around the Sun.
Halley’s Comet is in a long, thin elliptical orbit with the closest approach to the Sun within the Earth’s orbit, but the farthest point from the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. When the comet is close to the Sun the Sun’s gravity is strong and makes the comet move fast. It comes into sight near the orbit of Jupiter, whips around the Sun in a matter of months, and drops out of sight as it passes Jupiter again. Then it spends 74 years in the deep freeze between Jupiter and Pluto before coming back. The area Halley’s Comet sweeps out most of the time is bounded by long lines, and in several months it moves only a short distance along its orbit. When close to the Sun the lines are short, so the path around the orbit from appearance to disappearance must be long to sweep out the same area in the same time interval.
Even though Martin Luther (German theologian and religious reformer, 1483–1546), explicitly rejected Copernicus, he created an atmosphere in which conventional interpretations of old texts could be challenged. That is the atmosphere in which science thrives. Several of the southern states of Europe, those that border on the Mediterranean, notably Spain, France, and Italy, reacted to the Reformation with the Inquisition, which spread to Central and South America. Galileo had the extreme bad luck to be born in the south. His was one of the few bright scientific southern lights in the development of physics. In the north we may trace the development of celestial mechanics and modern physics through Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Newton; and the post-revolutionary, post-Catholic Pierre-Simon Laplace (French astronomer and mathematician, 1749–1827).
Pope Urban VIII condemned Galileo in 1633. Later the Pope commuted the sentence to house arrest for the rest of his life, because Galileo recanted. Galileo lived only 8 more years. Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005) was elected pope on 16 October 1978. Soon after his installation as Pope John Paul II, he ordered the Holy Office (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) to give Galileo a retrial. The Holy Office took 13 years to carry out this order. On 31 October 1992 they acquitted Galileo, after 359 years of house arrest. Even if Galileo had been able to appeal his case immediately to those who judged him in the new trial, he would have died in house arrest before acquittal.
Medieval people were wrong about many things. They were just as wrong about science as they were about interpreting the Bible. Nothing is gained by holding the errors of the past against the people of the present. Let’s simply go on, and find ways of coming together instead of rejecting people out of hand for their world view.