The Geocentrism Conference

As a Protestant apologist back in the day I focused a lot of my energy on Catholicism. I read a lot of Catholic material, including books by Roman Catholic apologists. One series is by a guy named Robert Sungenis. He wrote these enormous books, on the order of 600 pages. I read every bit of Not By Scripture Alone and Not By Faith Alone. For the later I even took notes and outlined the arguments.

These books by Sungenis came with the endorsement of just about every prominent Catholic apologist. Little did they know when they offered those endorsements that Robert Sungenis in fact was a geocentrist. Well after going to print these things came to light. Whoops! That's embarrassing. I bet they wish they could get those endorsements back. He's still at it. In November he'll be involved in the First Annual Catholic Conference on Geocentrism. Galileo was wrong. The Church was right.

You ever think about how you would go about defending heliocentrism? It's kind of interesting to consider. I was all plugged in to the debates on the discussion boards at this time. Sungenis offered something like $1000 to anybody that could disprove geocentrism. I broke out my physics textbook and sent him something related to geosynchronous satellites. I think he sent some nonsense in reply about how there is some sort of counter balancing force that holds the satellites in equilibrium at their present altitude. Seriously.

The person that in my mind really earned the $1000 was Gary Hoge, who wrote a few articles I really enjoyed that you can find here. Thanks to Dave Armstrong for helping me track this down.

Of course it's easy to make fun of Sungenis, but once again a part of me can't help but admire him in the same way I partly admire James White or a YEC. These people hold positions that they know will open them up to contempt. Rightly in my view. They could take the easy way out, but they don't. Did the Pope in his official capacity teach geocentrism? Yeah, he did. Most Catholics try and spin the problems away. Sungenis won't do that. He will embrace papal infallibility in this uncomfortable instance rather than the standard apologetic method wherein unpreferred papal utterances die the death of a thousand qualifications. I imagine Catholic apologists look down their noses at Sungenis but from my perspective they have no right to.