The position of anti-Darwinians is, ironically, an evolving one. Tennessee infamously banned the teaching of human evolution in public schools, resulting in the John Scopes conviction that was overturned. That law and those like it remained on the books until the Supreme Court struck them down in 1968.

With this defeat, politically-active creationists tried a new tactic of calling for equal time. This is a sound notion when there are genuinely competing ideas, such as what exist in string theory, the makeup of dark matter, and the rate of the universe’s expansion. And creationism fits nicely into comparative religion and philosophy classes. But it lacks the hallmarks of science, as it is unfalsifiable and untestable. Evolution, by contrast, can potentially be falsified every time there is a geologic dig. The field would be turned upside down if a mallard fossil were found alongside fossils of 3-billion-year-old amoebas in the Geologic Column. It can also be tested, which is what’s happening in Richard Lenski’s ongoing e. coli experiment at Michigan State. There are mountains of scientific data relating to evolution and none that pertain to creation. That, along with public school creationism being considered an endorsement of religion, led the Supreme Court to strike down equal time attempts in 1987.

Because that ruling noted Louisiana was attempting to promote a specific religion, creationists rebranded themselves as Intelligent Design advocates. Their new argument was that organisms’ complexity and axiomatic signs of design meant this all had to have been guided by a higher power, but that this could be any god, goddess, or unknown force. This was a disingenuous absurdity that no one believed. The façade was so transparent that the Discovery Institute’s publication outlining this nouveau strategy had Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam on its cover. This attempt to squeeze Genesis through the back door of public schools was shot down by another Supreme Court ruling in 2005.

The next tactic was the fraudulently-named Louisiana Science Education Act, which called for “supplemental” material to be used. This was intended to give ostensible legal cover for teachers who violated the Supreme Court rulings. The act mentioned evolution and climate change as allegedly “controversial ideas.” Climate change was added so that something besides evolution would be mentioned and the law wouldn’t solely reference religion. It also helped that climate change is the other prominent area in which cultural conservatives most soundly reject the science. There is no reason for such laws, as all sides are presented when there is genuine controversy, such as with aforementioned string theory and dark matter.  

This latest gimmick is on shaky legal ground at best, but has yet to be challenged in court. A substantial problem is that organizations like the ACLU or the Freedom From Religion Foundation are usually deemed to have insufficient standing to sue in such cases. A parent or student usually must be the one to do so, and most Louisiana teens and adults are just fine with the Abrahamic god being promoted with tax dollars. To be challenged, there would have to be a parent or student willing to risk the ostracism, abuse, threats, and physical attacks that would likely be foisted upon them.

Creationists also show nimbleness outside the political arena. When On the Origin of Species was first printed, there was apoplectic shock from some members of the religious community. Preachers unleashed a torrent of outrage on this unspeakable blasphemy. How dare there be any challenge to the first chapter of Genesis! God created all animals in their present form and that’s that.

But then biologists began seeing confirmation of Darwin’s ideas. Biological populations were changing over time, they were adapting to their environment, and they were keeping genetic mutations that proved advantageous. This included camouflage, slighter build in birds that allowed for faster migration, and even aesthetic changes that made them more appealing to potential mates. Allele frequencies consistent with genetic mutations and natural selection were documented. Single-cell microorganisms were seen mutating in a manner that increased chances of long-term survival. Biologists became increasingly aware of endemic species and began mapping branches of common descent based on fossil records and comparative biology. Evolution was and continues to be observed. If wanting to see it in action in a Petri dish, click here.

Faced with literally seeing evolution occurring, creationists had four choices. They could mimic R.E.M. and lose their religion. They could dismiss the observed evolution as Satanic trickery, a tact favored by Theodore Shoebat and U.S. Rep. Paul Broun. They could embrace the science but insist that God is its source, which is done by biologist blogger Kelsey Luoma. Or they could concoct a haphazard ad hoc hypothesis that tries to drive a wedge between microevolution and macroevolution. This final option will be our focus for the rest of this post.

The idea is that small changes are acceptable but not big ones. For example, the extinct lizard hylonomus may have adapted to its environment by evolving a more efficient toe pad, but a very long series of such changes could not have led to humans. In fact, creationists draw the line at the lizard’s ancestors ever becoming any other species, though they don’t quite define what that means. Answers in Genesis writes that the ability to breed is probably a defining characteristic, but clarifies that there may be exceptions, so they give themselves cover either way.

In truth, there is no microevolution or macroevolution. There is only evolution, the change in inherited characteristics of biological populations over time. Luoma wrote, “The only difference between micro and macroevolution is scope. When enough micro changes accumulate, a population will eventually lose its ability to interbreed with other members of its species. At this point, we say that macroevolution has occurred. Random mutation and natural selection cause both micro and macro evolution. There are no invisible boundaries that prevent organisms from evolving into new species. It just takes time.”

The counter idea started with Frank Marsh in 1941, following his creative interpretation of Hebrew texts. He deduced that God had created “kinds,” a term that neither he nor his likeminded creationists have ever bothered to define. This leaves ample room for interpretation, but as much as I can tell, they base it on appearance and the ability to breed. They also seem to allude to “kind” being very roughly comparable to the biological category of Family. The only steadfast rule is that humans are the only animals allowed to occupy their “kind.” Despite sharing 22 of 23 chromosome pairs with chimpanzees and having an almost identical bone structure to other apes, people get their own category, owing to creationists’ special pleading, desperation, and arrogance.

Marsh called this new pseudoscience field baraminology. Baraminologists have never drawn up a tree or diagram to explain how it works, so it’s a guess which “kind” each animal should be placed in. But it seems to rely mostly on similar features. For example, they would consider all horses to be of one kind, and this would likely include donkeys and zebras. But while these equines might be somewhat similar in appearance to a giraffe and have an even vaguer resemblance to a hippopotamus, it is unlikely that the baraminologist would put these other animals in the same “kind” as horses. That would be getting terrifyingly close to Darwinism.

For 25 years, Marsh had the baraminology field to himself, but it picked up adherents when the idea of fitting 10 million creatures and their 15-month food and water supply on an oversized ship seemed untenable. By saying that each fortunate duo that boarded Noah’s ark is the ancestor of 10,000 different types of animals, the amount of space needed is greatly reduced.

One example of how this works is to put all cats in one kind. This leads to an incredible irony. Folks who mostly reject evolution will enthusiastically embrace a hyper version of it in which two felines who stepped off Noah’s ark 5,000 years ago are the ancestors of all tigers, jaguars, pumas, lions, bobcats, lynxes, ocelots cheetahs, panthers, cougars, saber-toothed cats, and your pet calico Fluffy. While evolution this fast could occur with artificial selection – it did with dogs – applying it to natural selection would require assuming it takes place exponentially faster than it does. It also means ignoring the fossil record and the worldwide distribution of big cats. For instance, it does not explain how panthers would have gotten from Turkey to Brazil.

Some theories have small gaps in them. By contrast, baraminology is a gaping, sucking hole with a tiny amount of theory thrown in. Those who created, expanded, and defended the field have never defined it, quantified it, explained it, nor offered any illustrations, graphs, trees, or publications that would demonstrate how it works or help anyone make sense of it.

At the other end of the spectrum is Dr. Jerry Coyne, biology professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. He says macroevolution is supported by embryonic forms, the fossil record, and “dead genes.”

Mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish are all in their own biologic class, but look so similar before birth that it sometimes takes experts to tell them apart. Also, traits of one animal may be present in the embryonic state of a separate animal, even across classes. For example, human embryos have gill slits that disappear before birth. This implies common ancestry with fish and as the branch split, different traits were either further evolved or became vestigial. In another example, whales have a pelvis remnant that is pointless for aquatic travel but which would have served their land-roving ancestors well.

Besides these clues, there is also the fossil record. Coyne wrote, “We have transitional forms between fish and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles, reptiles and birds, reptiles and mammals, and between early apelike ancestors and modern humans.”

It’s not just a matter of what, the when is also important. Again, per Dr. Coyne: “Those transitional forms just happen to occur at the proper time in the fossil record. Mammal-like reptiles – the transitional forms between reptiles and early mammals – occur in the sediments after reptiles were already around for a while, but before easily-recognizable mammals come on the scene. It’s not just that they look intermediate, but that they lived at the right time for demonstrating a true evolutionary transition.”

Then we have “dead genes,” Coyne’s term for stretches of DNA that don’t produce a product, but are largely identical to working genes in other species. “These are likewise evidence for distant ancestry between ‘kinds,’” Coyne wrote.

Examples he cited included humans having three dead genes for egg-yolk proteins, which are still active in our distant cousins of the reptilian and avian persuasions. In another instance, whales and other cetaceans have hundreds of dead olfactory-receptor genes, which implies a terrestrial origin for these ocean-dwelling mammals. These genes are active in deer and even the most desperate baraminologist would not put Bambi and Willy in the same kind.

Creationists demand being able to see molecules-to-man evolution in real time and when this is not possible, they will declare this a “gotcha” moment. But just as DNA is better evidence than an eyewitness during a trial, we can see macroevolution in the form of transitions between fish and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles, reptiles and mammals, reptiles and birds, and ground-bound mammals and whales.

The attempt to bridge the vastly disparate ideas in Genesis and On the Origin of Species is called theistic evolution. It has few fans among either biologists or creationists, particularly the Young Earth subset. But I would like to acknowledge Luoma, the theistic evolutionist I quoted earlier in the post.

First, she  wrote that macroevolution has been observed in three instances involving finches, mice, and flies. In these cases, separate breeds branched off and within a few years, the resultant organisms were incapable of breeding with the original population.

Second, Luoma has a biology degree from a legitimate institution and accepts scientific evidence without first checking to see if it squares with Genesis. She is content to credit God with “perhaps creating and sustaining the process by which new species are created.” This is a superfluous addition that lacks any evidence, but it sure beats science denial. She accepts the science, promotes the science, and calls for only science to be taught in biology class.  

Luoma describes herself as “an evangelical Christian and student of biology who is very interested in resolving the conflict between faith and science.” There is no conflict, as that requires two hostile parties. The assault is unilateral. No scientists or skeptics are trying to force churches to teach Darwin. The only aggression comes from creationists and politicians who try to get their religion and science denial taught in taxpayer-funded schools.

While a literal reading of Genesis cannot comport with biology and astronomy, Luoma would gladly teach biology on Friday, then worship God on Sunday. If creationists would follow her lead, the issue would be resolved.

Answers in Genesis marked its 23rd anniversary last week by listing its all-time accomplishments, which blogger Hemant Mehta noted included no contributions to our understanding of the natural world, no discoveries that advanced science, and no papers published in peer reviewed journals.

While giving nothing to science, AIG founder Ken Ham has given himself some name recognition, first through a “museum” that features humans and dinosaurs interacting, a depiction that misses the mark by 150 million years. Next, he built a park dedicated to the notion that at least two of every creature and their 15-month stock of food, water, and veterinary supplies fit on a boat, where the sanitation, plumbing, maintenance, and curation was managed by eight people. There was also a debate with Bill Nye in which Ham said no science or evidence would ever convince him these ideas were mistaken.

But while Ham is most identified with these creationist credentials, he has a less-known dogma that is far more dangerous if adhered to by the wrong person. For he endorses an extreme anti-psychiatry position that calls for all secular therapy to be supplanted by prayer and Bible study. He is not merely encouraging people to worship, he is saying those with significant mental issues should never seek help outside the church. He declares the Bible the supreme authority on mental issues even though its final chapter was written 1,600 years before the beginning of meaningful psychiatric care.

This position is the result of presuppositionalism, a belief which insists the Bible alone can explain logic, morals, science, reasoning, consciousness, and any other significant  area of life. It rejects any ideas that come from secularism, other religions, liberal or moderate Christianity, and some conservative branches. It is an extreme form of Christian apologetics, as well as being an extreme example of circular reasoning and the genetic fallacy. It allows proponents to claim victory or reject any argument simply because of who made it, and by invoking their interpretation of a specific Bible version.

Ham, along with AIG cohort Ernie Baker and Tempe, Ariz., preacher Steven Anderson are some of the more outspoken anti-psychiatry creationists. Their belief in absolute free will causes them to reject the concept that brain science and neurological processes can be the cause of mental illness. Anderson has declared, “No Christian ought to be on psychiatric medication. Don’t go to a psychiatrist, go get some preaching.”

Any suffering must be the result of sin and rebellion against God, so Ham, Anderson, and Baker dismiss psychiatric treatment as inherently flawed since it is not focused on rejecting sinful nature. No outside factor can be said influence a person’s behavior. It takes the reasonable position of a person being responsible for their actions and twists it into a self-loathing that rejects the scientific evidence for psychiatric conditions. It equates seeking help outside the Bible with not holding one’s self accountable. Baker wrote, “We blame our problems on our experience, but we cannot adopt that view without turning everyone into a victim that fails to take responsibility.”

As Baker, Anderson, and Ham know little about the field beyond it being inherently evil, they regularly confuse and conflate psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists, and also misunderstand terms and definitions. They may call a disorder an illness or a syndrome a condition. They sometimes, by coincidence, criticize unproven and quack treatments, but lump these and genuine treatments under the same Satanic umbrella. Their knowledge is so scant they sometimes refer to the science and research behind psychiatric care as “a philosophy.”

Ham doesn’t normally address this issue publicly, leaving that to his lesser known but equally uncompromising brother, Steve. Steve portrays mental illnesses as matters that will be fixed with prayer, laying on of hands, and singing hymns. He rejects the totality of psychiatric research and the notion of psychiatric conditions because they are part of a “secular worldview.” This, of course, says nothing about the legitimacy of the field and is an unsound reason for dismissing evidence. 

The “secular worldview” ad hominem is one of AIG’s most regular features, and in this case is employed to gloss over the fact that there is no support for their claim that sin is responsible for Asperger’s, Munchausen’s, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. They deny the role of chemical imbalances, unresolved traumas, and genetics in mental health issues, and insist the focus should be on resisting the devil. It is faith healing for psychiatric conditions and in the case of suicidal patients could be just as deadly as treating a congenital heart condition by starting a prayer chain. Conclusions about whether a treatment works depend on clinical trial results, not the Hams’ reading of the King James Version.

Steve Ham further claims that mental health professionals call sins disorders so they can dismiss personal responsibility. Let’s consider two examples. First, he  claims Intermittent Explosive Disorder gives cover to emotionally abusive parents. In reality, the Mayo Clinic identifies this disorder as repeated, aggressive, and violent behavior that is completely out of proportion with what is justified for the situation. Treating it requires therapy and medication, not just trying harder to embrace biblical mandates about being slow to anger.

Another example is Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which Ham claims is just another label for disobedient children. But the Mayo describes this disorder as behavior associated with functional impairment that lingers for at least six months, and which features frequent and consistent temper tantrums, resentment, and vindictiveness. It goes well beyond the occasional childhood hissy fit and is not merely the result of sparing the rod and spoiling the child.

Still, Ham claims such psychiatric conditions are “rooted in sinful thoughts and behaviors.” So skeptic blogger Emil Elafsson performed a PubMed search, looking for papers that referenced both psychiatric disorders and sin. The more than 20 million papers published returned no results. So when Ham makes such claims, he is supported by zero research or scientific validation. 

By contrast, consider one example of how psychiatry works, as cited by Elaffson. He highlighted a University of Maryland study that revealed the role of neurotransmitters in causing anxiety. Because of this research and clinical trials, scientists and psychiatrists know which medications would be effective in treating anxiety by targeting specific neurotransmitters. Rather than suggesting this medication, Ham would have the suffering patient pray about their sloth and seek forgiveness for gluttony. 

Meanwhile, Baker tried to describe mainstream treatments for mental conditions with this straw man: “One therapist diagnoses low self-esteem and says you need to feel better about yourself. Another explains that your brain chemicals are out of balance and the wiring needs help to fire properly. Yet another says that you have all the symptoms of repressed memories.”

In actuality, treatments of mental conditions are largely uniform, the result of the scientific progress that Baker and Ham criticize. Elfafsson pointed out that low self-esteem is not a psychiatric diagnosis and, at most, would be a symptom. Also, the notion of repressed memories has long been considered a pseudoscience and would not be suggested by a reputable psychiatrist. Baker continues his psychiatric devaluation with, “The Bible reveals the root of all human problems: sin’s effects on the soul.” Like Ham, he cites no studies affirming this, nor does he offer any mechanism for how this might be tested.

He attempts to dismiss the entire field by writing, “The secular psychologies do not allow for an inherent sin nature, so it is hard to imagine how they could stumble upon the right treatment.”  He accidentally got this one right. “Stumble upon” would indicate occurring by happenstance, so psychologists would indeed be unlikely to stumble upon a cure, which is the result of deliberating seeking it. This happens through clinical trials, research, publication, peer review, and discovering medications and treatments.

Baker asserted that the cause of mental issues is made clear in his interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and that the only cure is Jesus (who it should be noted is conspicuously missing from these chapters). But this solution would fail to account for the clinical trials, cognitive behavior therapy, and medications that have proven successful without invoking Middle Eastern messiahs. 

A large set of skulls that look like they could have belonged to the Saturday Night Live coneheads was found several decades ago in South America. There are three competing versions for their origin, one each for fans of Cosmos, Ancient Aliens, and Benny Hinn.

The isthmus of common ground between the three camps is that Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello discovered a few hundred mummies in the Paracas region in 1928. Fascinating as archeology can be, it usually holds little interest among non-practitioners, but these finds attracted more notice because of the greatly elongated skulls of some of the mummies. Anthropologist and geneticist Jennifer Raff explained that “many ancient societies in North and South America practiced cultural modification to the crania of their infants, resulting in distinctive skull shapes in the adult population.”

There is strong historical and archeological evidence for this, but about 80 years after the find, some creative explanations were finagled. One claimed that the skulls did not belong to homo sapiens but rather to alien-human hybrids. An alternate position to this alternate position was that the skulls were instead a confirmation of a few cryptic lines in the Old Testament.

Arguing for the hybrid angle, David Childress and Brien Foerster wrote the cumbersome-titled The Enigma of Cranial Deformation: Elongated Skulls of the Ancients. They suggested the skulls came from a highly-distinctive breed of creatures, a position they based mostly on a statement from 19^th Century physician John James von Tschudi. He is quoted as saying he had seen a third-trimester fetus with a head as long as an adult’s.

But archeology blogger Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews investigated this and discovered this to be the result of either confusion or obfuscation on the authors’ part. The quoted doctor was referring to a cranium whose enlargement was much less pronounced than the mummified skulls that Tello unearthed. Tschudi was trying to find evidence for his hypothesis that there was a lost Andean people whose distinctions included slightly elongated skulls. An engraving of the baby showed it not in utero, but wearing a kilt while sitting in a position consistent with Andean mummies.

Foerster somehow managed to convince a museum employee to let him borrow some of the remains, and he claims to have had the human tissue dated through DNA analysis, which Fitzpatrick-Matthews says cannot be done. At any rate, this supposed testing involved no examination by anthropologists, archeologists, or biologists, and no input from natural history museums or university research teams.

Instead of a peer-reviewed journal, his findings were announced in a Facebook post quoting an anonymous geneticist. This secretive scientist said the discovery revealed an entirely new breed of creature, not quite human or ape, nor even related to any known Earthly being. There is no animal that accounts for the totality of a Phylum, yet this is what Foerster’s mystery man (or woman or alien hybrid) was asserting. These creatures were also said to be cursed with the inability to breed with any other animal, with the resultant inbreeding leading to their extinction. Exclusive inbreeding among a small population might doom a species. But saying it took place in this case represents piggybacking on legitimate science by shoehorning in an unsubstantiated ad hoc explanation instead of finding one through sound research.

Skeptic leader Sharon Hill outlined further problems with Foerster’s approach. “Science doesn’t work by social media,” she said. “Peer review is a critical part of science and the Paracas skull proponents have taken a shortcut that completely undermines their credibility. Appealing to the public’s interest in this cultural practice we see as bizarre – skull deformation – instead of publishing the data for peer-review examination is not going to be acceptable to the scientific community. Peer review exists to point out the problems that were missed by investigators.”

Additionally, ancientaliensdebunked.com noted that the scant information offered in the Facebook post revealed nothing about which skull was tested, what method was used to extract the DNA, how contamination was avoided, or how results could be replicated.

Meanwhile, there are those who prefer a supernatural explanation to an extraterrestrial one. The Nephilim are referenced in Genesis as being the offspring of “sons of God” and “daughters of men.” These vague terms lend themselves to many interpretations and these have included Foerster-friendly space aliens, fallen angels, giants, and descendants of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth.  

The Biblical descriptions seem to suggest the Nephilim were the result of sexual encounters between demigods and young women. This is obviously unattractive to adherents of a religion based on unbending monotheism, so these verses are mostly ignored by evangelicals and Catholics. Even the uber-apologist Answers in Genesis can merely hem and haw its way through a non-explanation before concluding, “No one really knows what it means.”

Well that’s pretty boring. A more exciting deduction is that the Nephilim were about 36 feet tall, with six of those feet in the neck, sporting bony arms and massive torsos that were supported by three thick legs. That’s the interpretation of various sources, including Alex Jones’ infamous InfoWars site, which praised the Foerster announcement as “another example of scientific evidence piling up that the Nephilim actually lived.”

L.A. Marzulli expounded on this idea in his book Nephilim: Hybrids, Chimeras, and Strange Demonic Creatures.

Raff noted a series of blunders Foerster committed but which Marzulli ignored. This included failing “to sequence his own DNA, and that of the archaeologists, biological anthropologists, and anyone else who may have handled the remains, in order to rule out that any results might be inadvertent contamination from them.”

Overlooking such blunders enables Marzulli to announce to his credulous audience that the DNA “is not from an autochthonous Native American maternal lineage” and that it “fits the timeline of the diaspora from the Levant of Promised Land perfectly.” In his tale, the Nephilim traveled from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, then to Barbados, and onto Peru. In short, he extrapolated one unsubstantiated DNA sample into a tribe of giants with funny heads trekking and sailing from the Middle East to the Andes while leaving no trace of their journey.

As to skeptics like myself, Hill, and Raff, Marzulli wrote, “They’ll come up with every excuse imaginable in order to keep the evidence from the public.”

This claim of repression is typical of pseudoscientists and is the opposite of what we are doing. We want to see the results and to determine how they were obtained. We want to ensure the evidence is complete and can be revealed as either accurate or mistaken.

In doing this, Fitzpatrick-Matthews outlined reasons to believe the skulls belonged to neither transient behemoths nor intergalactic sightseers. Some of his main points were: 1. The mummies were wrapped in embroidered wool consistent with South American textiles. 2. They were positioned in a manner associated with Andean mummies who enjoyed exalted status during life. 3. Their resting places were adorned with ceramics specific to the region. 4. The tradition and method of producing the conical-shaped skulls is well documented.

For retorts, Nephilim-believer Michael Snyder pointed to Goliath as proof of giants, while the alien-hybrid enthusiasts at thegreaterpicture.com argued that “the humanoid-reptilian species Anunnaki have long skulls.”

Of the many anti-science ideas afloat today, perhaps the most egomaniacal is the geocentric one, which requires a belief that the universe literally revolves around you.  

To show this is the incentive for holding such a position, I offer this quote from scipturecatholic.com: “If the earth is indeed the center, then God is trying to tell us that we are special to him. We are unique.”

The website then dismisses contrary evidence with this straw man: “This is why the atheists and agnostics want so badly to disprove geocentrism, because if they can do that, they can argue that there is no God. They want to argue that there is no God because they don’t want to be accountable to him.”

Of course, one could argue that there is no god without bringing up geocentrism, just like one could argue for helicocentrism without asserting it proves there is no god. So without addressing the existence of any deities, we will examine the substantial proof of helicocentrism.

First, the other view. The egotism addressed earlier is, of course, unrelated to whether the sun and its planets orbit Earth, but this position requires suspending what we know about astronomy and physics. Almost all adherents are a subset of Catholics, for whom the Bible and papal dictates are preferable to observation, research, and confirmation. A tiny number of Orthodox Jews and even fewer Muslims also embrace the cause.

I occasionally see digs from fundamentalists that scientists (especially Darwin) are held in such high regard by the pro-science crowd that they are secular saints whose dogma must never be questioned. In truth, Darwin’s ideas have been added to, subtracted from, and refined as more evidence has been gathered since On the  Origin of Species was published. That’s how science works and the development of the heliocentric model is an excellent example of this.

While Ptolemy considered the universe geocentric, he deduced that astronomical bodies were moving, and he came up with the idea of planets being in motion around Earth. In order to account for Mars’ seeming retrograde motion, his model incorporated the Red Planet’s trajectory as having a large circle and a second smaller circle on which it moved.  

About 1,400 years later, Copernicus suggested a heliocentric model where Earth is one of several planets circling about the sun. This accounted for retrograde motion, but was inconsistent with the observed position of the planets. Kepler solved that problem when he hypothesized that planets have an elliptical orbit, and subsequent observations supported this.

The invention of the telescope allowed Galileo to collect strong evidence of helicocentrism, such as noticing that Jovian moons were orbiting Jupiter rather than Earth. Newton further solidified the idea by developing a model for gravity that included planets with elliptical orbits.

This systematic, fact-based approach is far more admirable than the stance of groups such as Catholic Apologists International, whose leader, Robert Sungenis, wrote, “The geocentric cosmological view of the universe is in accordance with the literal, infallible, and inspired Word of God which, according to Pope Leo XIII, is inerrant in all matters.”

A literal reading would also require denying the existence of earthquakes, as Psalm 105:5 reads, “Thou didst set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be shaken.”

I am unconcerned with a man’s faith, but when he tries to cram into the scientific arena, I respond with counterproofs.

Proofs such as Venusian phases. Venus and the sun could not both orbit Earth and move farther away from each other. Yet Venus appears lighter or darker (and larger or smaller) depending on its phase. In the heliocentric model Venus is largest when it’s closest to Earth and smallest when it’s on the other side of the Sun, and this is consistent with what astronomers observe.  

Let’s continue the stroll through our galactic neighborhood and hit Neptune. If all astronomical bodies were rotating around Earth, then everything more than 2.5 billion miles away would need to exceed warp speed to complete its orbit within 24 hours. The fact that the eighth planet is unable to do so is a fatal blow to geocentrism. Meanwhile, Jupiter and Saturn would need to approach the speed of light to complete a daily orbit, meaning they would be demonstrating relativistic length contraction. Their observed shape would resemble the side of a quarter rather than the coin when looking at George Washington’s profile.

Then there is the Coriolis Effect, which affects satellites, missiles, and long range artillery shells. When the Germans attacked Paris from 75 miles away in World War I, they took the Coriolis Effect into account. This effect exists only because we are on a rotating planet. Someone looking at Earth from space would see objects tending to move in straight lines but being pulled into curving paths by Earth’s gravity.

Also, If Earth moves, the stars should appear to shift in position. A man identified online only as Mr. Emmanuel earned my great sympathy by debating Sungenis, and told him, “Just as a person walking into the rain sees raindrops hitting at a slant, moving with respect to starlight causes the starlight to appear to come at an angle to its true path. If light starts from 300,000 kilometers away, it will take one second to reach Earth. In one second, Earth moves 30 kilometers in its orbit. So the starlight will hit 30 kilometers from its original aiming point.” In what passed for Sungenis’ retort, he chirped, “You’re just parroting someone else without understanding what is being said.” Even if it was parroted and not understood, that wouldn’t impact it being true.

Emmanuel also noted that geocentrism violates the laws of physics. There are no known cases of massive objects circling around lighter ones. The conservation of momentum requires that when one object circles another, the center of mass of that system must remain fixed. When one object is much larger than the other, like the earth and moon or the sun and earth, the center of mass is within the larger object.

It won’t take long to present the other side because there really isn’t one. Unlike Youth Earth Creationists, Flat Earthers, and moon landing deniers, geocentrists seldom mess with sprinkling in a calculus term or attempting to confuse visitors with winding essays. They mostly limits themselves to quoting Bible verses and attacking nonbelievers. For instance, the Kolbe Center’s main plank is that helicocentrism is a moral failing. It never explains why, and even if Earth whirling around its star were somehow ethically bankrupt, that would have no bearing on whether it’s happening.

Similarly, fixedearth.com’s contributions to astronomy are summed up in this unsubstantiated assertion/ad hominem: “Earth is not rotating nor is it going around the sun. The universe is not one ten-trillionth the size we are told. The Bible teaches that Earth is stationary and immovable at the center of a small universe, with the sun, moon, and stars going around it every day. Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as science.”

It also claims that true science supports biblical teaching. So if something seems to support the Bible, they consider it science, neatly completing this affirming the consequent fallacy. Fixedearth.com also throws in doses of anti-Semitism and manages to blame evolution for obesity, UFOs, and Madonna.

There are many more examples but they’re all the same. Sungenis will infrequently throw some mathematics into his argument, but mostly answers science with scripture, a personal attack, or both. When Emmanuel outlined arguments such as those addressed here, and cited astronomers as his sources, Sungeies, responded with, “It’s amazing to me how you can follow these atheists. If I were you, I would take a good hard look into my soul and find out where my allegiances really are.”

Like our planet does to the sun, geocentrists keep going round and round.

Last week’s end of the world came on Friday during a Black Moon. The second new moon in a calendar month is normally referred to as blue moon, but the color was changed by wannabe seers to make for a more sinister satellite.

Various tweets, blogs, and vlogs predicted end was coming Friday, with most saying it would mark the return of Jesus. Never addressed was why a manmade concept like a month would be relevant to a god deciding when to destroy his creation. As to why this second full moon of this month as opposed to any previous one would be the catalyst was mostly unexplained, though some tried to tie it in to the Jewish feast of trumpets, which began three days after the Black Moon.

As in previous Christian-themed astronomical doomsdays, the key Bible verses were in Luke, chapter 21: “There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations. Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and looking after those things which are coming on the earth.” With words this vague, one can create any meaning. It never outlines what the signs are, what they mean, or how to recognize them. Additionally, the verses establish no timeline, so believers can claim they have validity 1,900 years after being written.

Doomsayers point to disparate events such as beheadings, earthquakes, marriage between other than one man and one woman, and a Hindu giving the opening Congressional prayer as signs that Jesus is about to return. Yet decapitations, natural disasters, polygamy, and Hinduism all predate the birth of Jesus.

Christians who declare that the end is near must ignore the Bible verse that says only God knows the end date. They are willing to commit this blasphemy because they find it exciting to think they are living close to the end and it makes them feel in the know to interpret current events thusly. Best of all, it means everlasting bliss is tantalizingly close. Some keep it vague (“The end is approaching”), some are more specific (“Jesus will return in our lifetimes”), and some like Harold Camping set a date.

These are all representatives of the dominant variety of apocalyptic thinkers – the religious – while other persons subscribe to a pseudoscientific line of cataclysmic thought.

Since most religions don’t have an equivalent of Revelation, most faith-based doomsdays have a Christian flavor, though not always. One blogger calculated that the Black Moon coincided with the Greek goddess Hecate’s visit to Earth, which he said takes place every 200 years. During her latest stop, she was to mate with a demon, with the offspring’s fate being to devour our planet.

Overall, the Black Moon predictions drew little attention, but doomsday warnings are regular features on our extant world. The most well-known of recent years came from Camping and readers of the Mayan calendar, but there have been similar predictions for centuries.

Few persons making these cataclysmic predictions are fearful. It’s the end of the world as they know it and they feel fine. This is because they think the impending doom validates their religion and will transport them to a higher plain for eternity. That’s how Marshall Applewhite got Heaven’s Gate members to overdose on barbiturate-laced chocolate pudding in order that their souls would levitate to a spaceship being shielded by the Hale-Bopp comet. Though not lethal like Applewhite’s prediction, John Hagee makes end of the world prognostications at least a biennial event. And Pat Robertson predicted world judgement by the end of 1982.

These predictions excite those making them, and most of us can relate to some degree. Be it the plausible The Day After or the glut of TV zombies today, it’s fascinating to be given a window to cataclysm. Watching a program about an asteroid slamming into Earth and the aftermath, we get to be among the survivors. The story of life on Earth is amazing, but without an ending the tale seems incomplete. For most persons, doomsday in entertainment form is enough, but others long for it to be real. In some cases, the desire is so strong that even failed predictions won’t dim their enthusiasm.

In fact, when those predicted days end up being apocalypse-free, most followers stay on board the Crazy Train. This is due to extreme cases of cognitive dissonance. They refuse to accept that the time and energy they put into prepping for it was wasted. They cannot deal with the thought of having given away their money and possessions in vain. So the redouble and might say their piety saved the world from judgement. That’s what Dorothy Martin and her followers declared in 1954. Others accept their messiah’s assurance that it was merely a minor miscalculation. After his fire-from-the-sky guarantee fizzled, Camping changed the date to a few months later. Camping died shortly thereafter from non-sky inferno causes, and his protégé Chris McCann did another recalculation and arrived at Oct. 7, 2015.

Similarly, when the Mayan apocalypse didn’t happen, believers reinterpreted the date as June 4, 2016. This was the same experience of William Miller and his followers. He had guaranteed the end of the world as 1843, then had to adjust to 1844. Camping and Miller could have said their original calculation was off by 100 years and prevented a second public failing while keeping the parishioners and their money. But persons with their mindsets are unable to do that. It has to be in their lifetimes or it loses value to them. I have come across hundreds of end of the world predictions and have never seen one that would take place after the prognosticator’s probable lifespan.

Very few predictions of our planets demise center on notions such as the all-time tsunami, Earth’s core bubbling up, or even the plausible nuclear war. Most come from above, either a vengeful god or a rouge planet, or for maximum impact, a rouge planet launched by a vengeful god.

People have always been drawn to celestial bodies for their sense of wonder. In 1502, Jamaicans refused to let Christopher Columbus come ashore. He knew an eclipse was coming and told the natives to comply with his demands or his god would take away the moon. When this seemingly happened, the natives were alarmed, and not merely because they had a displeased deity on their quivering hands. The moon was central to their lives, being the focus of festivals and determining the planting and harvesting seasons. With it gone, their lives would be turned upside down and might even come to an end. Columbus told them he would supplicate to his god on their behalf if they would agree to his demands. Of course, they agreed.  

The moon can still be a source of wonder, as we can marvel at men having been there, or might erroneously consider a full one to be a cause of loony behavior. To some, eclipses, meteors, and star showers can seem to have supernatural overtones, usually detrimental ones. And of all the portents of doom, none is more complete or compelling than the one that ends it all. Most of these doomsdays have a religious bent, but some prefer a science fiction approach.

A 1997 book by Richard Noone laboriously titled, “5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster,” predicted a worldwide extinction by freezing. According to Noone, the Antarctic ice mass would be three miles thick by the titular date, by which time the planets would be aligned in the heavens. Not sure what that means, nor would I be any more likely to understand it after pouring over Noone’s 350 pages of detailed diagrams and extensive explications. The book is still available for purchase, way cheap.

Noone’s idea has flittered, but one of the most enduring SciFi suggestions for how Earth will end centers on it being targeted by a ninth Solar System planet, Niburu. This comes mostly from Nancy Lieder, the only Earthing in contact with aliens from Zeta Reticuli. Through her brain implant, they told her Niburu had gone rouge and was going to throw Earth off its orbit, giving inhabitants either a fiery or icy death, depending on which way we are hurtled. This was to take place in 2003. When this failed to materialize, she received a second, corrected message, but won’t give this date because world governments would declare martial law and imprison us all in cities. Why would lifetime banishment in Seattle be so bad? Because the countryside will offer salvation for some reason or other. At any rate, Niburu is said to be four times Earth’s size, meaning it would be visible, perhaps to the naked eye and certainly to telescopes. When this was pointed out, a hasty ad hoc rationalization was trotted out that it had been hidden behind the sun for all these years, a geometric impossibility.

There are an assortment of doomsdays that center on the alignment of celestial bodies doing damage, but the only bodies whose gravity significantly impact Earth are the sun and moon. Bodies will always align in certain ways, but all are unrelated to Earthly oblivion. By contrast, the flipping of Earth’s poles does take place, but won’t kill anyone, not even the penguins. It takes place over thousands of years and is not an immediate occurrence, and so is no threat.

By far the most well-known of the SciFi hypotheses was Y2K. The supposed inability of computers to differentiate 2000 from 1900 was to be the cause of calamity, from crashing airliners all the way to self-launching nuclear missiles. In the end, the most harmful result was the rare ATM malfunction. This was especially inconvenient to the families who had run low on cash after making food, supply, and shotgun runs as part of their Y2K drills.

The most ironic thing about this desire for doom from the religions and pseudoscientific is that there are genuine scientific reasons to suspect a horrific ending. Earth could be swallowed by the sun, or it might end earlier than that. UK astrobiologist Jack O’Malley-James predicts that environmental changes will lead to the extinction of all Earthly inhabitants within 3 billion years. He says oceans will evaporate and the last organisms left will be microbes in the few water enclaves on what is otherwise a massive, uninhabitable sand dune.

His ideas are based on scientific models, observation, data, and inference, so they hold little interest for the likes of Hagee, Camping, Lieder, and Noone. But an even bigger reason for their indifference is because this doomsday takes place in a distant future. They may not think the world revolves around them, but they do think that the end of the world does.