Si Muove

Giordano Bruno's challenge

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved…
~ Mark 16: 15-16, KJV

Jesus taught his disciples to pray, saying, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen.”

Jesus didn’t say “on earth” and heaven is not reached by flying on the Concorde nor by taking a rocketship into orbit. Those places in the sky which you see and can reach with your body are parts of this earthly realm, and even if you are in an aeroplane or dirigible or spaceship you are still “in earth.”

Jesus told his disciples to go into all the world and teach the gospel to every creature. Why didn’t he say “go all over the earth” if he meant to refer only to this planet of the earthly realm? Why didn’t he say to teach the gospel to every person, or every man, or every human, or every man, woman, and child? He said to teach every creature, as if the gospel should be presented to other intelligent beings. Dolphins? Apes? Whales? What about creatures who live on planets that orbit distant stars?

We now strongly suspect that there are about a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. We also now know that there are “exoplanets” or planets that are in orbit around stars other than Sol. I will use the term “star system” most of the time because there is only one Solar system, because Sol is our particular star. (To quote the B-52s, there’s a moon in the sky. We call it the Moon. There’s also a sun in the sky, and we call it Sol which, as you might guess is the Latin word for sun.)

Bruno

Someone who thought that it was important to consider taking the gospel to the stars was Giordano Bruno. And his story is an interesting one, as it set him in opposition to the established church of his era. Much as Jesus was set in opposition to those in power within the Temple in Jerusalem in his day. Which is a comparison to ponder, though I don’t think Bruno was nearly as exceptional in any way compared to Jesus.

Among his other essays, he wrote: “…all those worlds which contain animals and inhabitants no less than can our own earth, since those worlds have no less virtue nor a nature different from that of our earth.” In one book about him that I have in my storage in Ohio, Bruno is quoted as asking whether we should take up the challenge of going out into the universe and bringing the gospel to the inhabitants of those worlds which orbit other stars in God’s creation.

He espoused an heliocentric view of our star system, pointing out the numerous mathematical inconsistencies in the “crystalline spheres” and circular orbits and epicycles of the Ptolemaic tradition. Ptolemy was regarded as authoritative for the same reason as Aristotle, because of his antiquity, not because his maths made any sense.

Indeed, Bruno observed how a ball dropped from a ship-mast crow’s nest fell. He then contrasted this observation with the claims of Aristotle who frankly got it entirely wrong. Wrong too were Aristotle’s claims that a heavier metal ball falls faster when dropped at the same time as a smaller one.

Why was the church so threatened that they burnt Giordano Bruno to death in Anno Domini 1600? Why were they so afraid of him speaking that they attached a wooden vise to his mouth? And why did he say, according to legend, “Si muove” as his last words? Si muove in Italian means “it moves.”

What is “it”? It is the planet on which you are standing. It moves. It moves whether the people around you believe it moves or not. It even moves if some people believe it isn’t spherical at all.

To answer the earlier question, the church went to great lengths to make sure Bruno had not been misunderstood when he made false and heretical statements about Mother Mary and about the Trinity. Bruno’s case was reviewed by the Vatican in 1942 when documents from his case were re-discovered and in 2000 when his case was considered in detail. It was for his religious errors that the Catholic church put him to death, after first hanging him naked and upside down. Bruno was burnt at the stake for not only holding heretical beliefs, but also for teaching them. It is reasonable to say that the use of violence to eliminate opposing views is not an effective tool for changing people’s minds. It was, however, a very longstanding tradition and you can read about it in the Old Testament as well as the new. Elijah slew the priests of Baal.

If you are happy that the Holy Inquisition is no longer active so are many others. However, if you think that the heresies of the freemasons, communists, and demon worshippers should not be challenged or thrust out of decent society, you might want to think that part through. It is true that the Inquisition was a mess, and was tainted by the confiscation of property and the rewarding of false testimony by a share in that property. But if you want monuments to the error of allowing demon worshippers access to political power, look around you. Si eorum mala quaeras opera, circumspice.

Space Scouts

As it happens, we can prove that the planet Earth is spherical in a number of ways. One of them is by observing the shadows that the Earth casts on the Moon when there is a lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse occurs generally when the Moon is full, so it is on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun. Please refer to the graphic in the “Coming Soon” essay that began this ‘stack for reference.

If you have the opportunity to look at a lunar eclipse, you can see that the shadow of the Earth cast onto the surface of the Moon is a curve. You can see a lunar eclipse in the United States in the third month of 2025. And you can learn to look up facts like that one on various search tools, I’m sure, or you wouldn’t have read this far.

Now, what sort of shape casts a curved shadow? Well, a ball or a coin. But if the Earth is a flat disc then when the sun is on the other side, wouldn’t it sometimes cast a shape that isn’t a curve, but a line? I’m sure the flat earthers have some deeply complex explanation. (One gentleman I met in Utah insisted that there are 5 suns in the sky, which I believe is a strong indication that he has multiplied entities unnecessarily. William of Ockham would be amused.)

How far away is the Moon? And how big around is the Earth? And by the way, how far away is the sun? Well, a guy named Aristarchus of Samos had answers to these questions. I wrote about those answers and exactly how you can go about performing the same sort of experiments he used to get his answers, in a book that nobody ever buys, because it’s free. The Space Scouts Field Manual Parody is available in pdf at my friend Bad Quaker Ben Stone’s web site. But I would like to revise it, expand it a great deal, and publish it with illustrations. And I’ve found a couple of illustrators who have expressed interest in the project.

Why would I want to do that? And why would you want to help me? Because we need something to pull people in as we demolish the systems of tyranny and oppression that have been attempting to enslave us. Sure, take away the floggings and morale will improve.

But also tell people that there are fortunes waiting to be had. England built a navy that was the envy of the world because everyone in England was a part of a ‘seafaring nation,’ from coal miners in Newcastle to linen weavers in Birmingham to ephemeris writers in Greenwich. Young boys who got beaten too often by wicked parents or step-parents would “run away to the sea.” Which was not exactly wise, given the floggings and the other mottos of the navy. (“Rum, buggery, and the lash will keep them in line,” for example.)

What if we were to build a spacefaring civilisation to establish communities beyond Earth? What if that spacefaring civilisation provided opportunities for young people to “run away to the stars”? What if the future were vibrant and interesting and fun once again? Like it was in the science fiction novels of my youth.

Let’s Talk Planets

One of the planets that you might want to think about is Venus. Now, it is a very hot place with a very dense atmosphere, so living on its surface would be unpleasant and brief. However, one reason to think about Venus is: it has phases, just like the Moon.

Why is that important? Well, it is compelling evidence that Venus is orbiting the sun and is not in orbit around the Earth. Mercury also shows phases. These two planets, Venus and Mercury, are interior to Earth’s orbits, which is why they have phases. The planets that are further out than Earth, including Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, do not show phases when seen from Earth - because they cannot, given their position in relation to the Earth and to the Sun. You can work out the geometry if you like, and as always, if you have questions, the comments are wide open.

These are the planets in our neighbourhood, with the exception of Pluto which was downgraded because Neil deGrasse Tyson didn’t like the colour of Clyde Tombaugh’s skin or something (in my opinion). Anyway, there was a vote on it, which has got to be the most asinine way to establish anything in science. Pluto was cast out allegedly because it hasn’t “cleared its orbit,” but the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit called and they have questions. lol

Let’s also look at some of the potentially habitable or “Earth-like” planets within twelve hundred (1,200) or so light years.

How many exoplanets have been found so far with the various space telescopes and by other means? “As of 7 December 2023, there are 5,557 confirmed exoplanets in 4,132 planetary systems, with 941 systems having more than one planet. Most of these were discovered by the Kepler space telescope.” Cite.

Well, that’s pretty exciting! Why are we sitting around this one planet fighting over who gets to run the place? There’s thousands of planets in thousands of star systems and those are just the ones close enough for us to make a solid confirmation of a planetary body.

(Did you know that some planets were found orbiting other stars just from the way they perturbed the apparent motion of those nearby stars in the sky? Yep. Parallax is a cool thing friends. You can look it up.)

Long Journey to the Stars

I propose that we found a Decentralised Space Scouting Society. Let’s train a few generations of space scouts and send some of them out into space. Why not? It’s a fun project, ought to be great for vastly improving: standards of living, engineering, mathematics, astronomy, technology, and exobiology (SOLEMATES) all over the planet. And while we’re about it, we can continue the mission Jesus gave us to go into all the world God created, into all the known universe, and bring the good news: that God sent His son to purchase for us the rewards of eternal salvation. And all who believe may be baptised in water and in the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?” ~ GK Chesterton

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If you’d like to join the Decentralised Space Scouting Society please let me know in the comments, or send $8 by CashApp to $afterdarkpub and include the message “Space Scouts” with your email address. Feel free to contact me at jim {at} eldarcapital.com for further discussion. We’ll work out crypto addresses and build a web site soon.

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I found a few other really good essays to bring over from Indomitus.net so I’ll be adding more posts this week. It’s been a very good week for me. Things are really starting to take shape. Praise God. God’s will be done. Amen.