Re: geocentrism

GRMorton@aol.com
Fri, 6 Oct 1995 23:24:33 -0400

John Turnbull wrote:
>>5) I suspect there may be an increase in geocentricity in the YEC
community. Russel Humphreys has written a book recently titled _Starlight and
Time_. Russ has proposed an intriguing explanation of how it is possible for
us to observe stars billions of light years away on an earth not more than a
few tens of thousands of years old. Russ has revived an earlier cosmology
that was considered and later abandoned in favor of our current model. The
current cosmology is NOT an infinite Cartesian space with a uniform
distribution of stars everywhere. The current cosmology is a finite
non-Euclidean universe which Einstein modeled using Riemannian field tensors
. In short, these tensors mathematically describe gravitational distortions
in
space. Earlier applications of general relativity to model the universe lead
Einstein et. al. to conclude that there are two meaningful models of our
universe. One is finite and bounded the other is finite and unbounded. In
the finite-and-bounded approach, one would not expect to see a uniform
distribution of stars in all directions (assuming stars are more or less
uniformly distributed throughout) unless one were at or near the geometric
center of the universe. If one were near one end of the universe, the stars
towards that edge would be less dense than in the opposite direction. The
other model is that the universe is finite and unbounded and that we are all
on the surface of a 3 dimensional space expanding in 4-space. In this model,
stars would look reasonably uniform in all directions regardless of where one
observes because light from stars on the other end of the universe would
curve all the way around in reach us from the other side. <<

It has been a long time since I looked at GR.What is the technical name for
Russ's view? I would like to look at it a bit. Most of my GR books don't
deal in preferred frame theories.

John wrote:
>>So here is my question: Let us assume for the sake of argument that
Russell Humphreys' model stands the test of time and offers a viable
alternative. It is reasonable to see why non-theists would reject the
finite-and-bounded for anti-anthropocentric biases, but should Christians
also reject it for the same philosophical reasons, and why? There may very
well be a choice in anthropocentric/anti-anthropocentric models, but there
doesn't,
at present, seem to be any choice of accepting an anthropic universe.
I therefore, don't see the anti-anthropocentric view being empirically
convincing.<<

If Russ's view really doesn't contradict observational data, then I for one
would have no problem with such a view of relativity. But to be quite
technical here, what Russ has proposed in not a geocentric universe, but a
heliocentric one (or maybe a galactocentric one). The motion of the earth
around the sun prevents the earth from occupying the exact center such a
universe. The motion of the sun around the galaxy prevents the sun from
occupying the exact center of such a universe and the motion of the galaxy in
the local cluster prevents the galaxy from occupying the preferred center
exactly. I am not sure exactly how this helps other than that we are in the
neighborhood of the center and will be for a long time.

glenn