John Médaille loses interest, after giving an interesting answer (real sequel III)

1) New blog on the kid : Chris Ferrara the Conspirator, 2) HGL's F.B. writings : Debate with John Médaille on Geocentrism, 3) Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Getting Back to Tom Trinko on Geocentric Satellites and Some Other Things, Especially Whether Literal Belief is Protestant, 4) With David Palm and Sungenis, 5) With David Palm, Sungenis, Robert Bennet and Rick DeLano, 6) Christopher Ferrara Bumps In And I Get Angry, 7) Aftermath of the Quarrel, 8) Diatribe with Robert Bennett (Two Teas), 9) HGL's F.B. writings : Continuing Debate with Mark Stahlman and John Médaille and Others (sequel I), 10) Continuing Debate with Mark Stahlman and John Médaille and Others (sequel II), 11) Where I Get a Dislike to Mark Stahlman , 12) John Médaille loses interest, after giving an interesting answer (real sequel III)

Hans-Georg Lundahl
(also on previous post)

John Médaille (if Mark Stahlman will excuse me), you said you were a surveyor, right?

What exact angle is the least you are measuring and using for trigonometry (btw, what use are tables of sunrise and sunset to surveyors, just curious)? Is it like 5°, or 1° or an arc minute or an arc second, or what is it?

The principles are of course you need for distance, of the six measures of a rather oblong triangle, three, whereof at least one distance. Even if it be the shortest one. So, usually, one short distance and two angles directly (i e close to right angle, but with slight inclination toward middle) to measure a considerably longer distance.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
(after previous post)

John Médaille, I have now blocked Mark Stahlman, feel free to come back to polite debate, if you like.

What he did was not debate, was not polite, was not peaceful.

My question to you as to a surveyor stands : what is the exact angle at which you can no longer measure it and use it to determine a distance?

When two near parallels meet way over there in:

• 5°
• 1°
• 1 arc minute
  or
• 1 arc second?

Because, it has a somewhat curious bearing on astronomic subject.

John Médaille

I have no idea what you are talking about. Sun shots or star shots are used to find North, not to measure distance. But then, it's been nearly half a century since I ran a survey.

I don't friend people because I agree with everything they say; I don't block people because we disagree.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I do block people because they get very troublesome. Which he got.

I was not asking if you agreed with everything he considers, but "his outlook" - meaning obviously the parts like "debating is your version of violence" and so on.

OK, sunset and sunrise are then one thing, used to find North. Figures.

The OTHER question was, the ANGLES you use to find distances, how large are the minimal "far angles"?

Can you - whatever distance you have on your side - pick out 1 arc second or for that matter even twenty arc seconds at the far angle? Or is that too small to measure?

John Médaille

I don't know the point of this, but angles can be measured in arbitrarily small increments, depending on the instrumentation.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, what kind of instrumentation does it take to measure one 3600:dth part of one degree?

And, have you used such a thing in the terrain, or have you used larger angles?

MO

I have not followed this debate, but isn't it in the end a question of free choice to choose for a geocentric worldview? Goethe preferred natural perception (not through microscopes of teloscopes) as superior perception above perception done with instruments for the simple reason that natural perception leads to natural understanding whereby human standards in all sorts of ways are not crushed by the results of mechanic or otherwise enhanced forms of perception. For example he knew the earth was round, though in human perception it is flat. we cannot sense the earth as a round flying object.

We did choose the heliocentric view as scientifically superior or more 'true' than the geocentric, but I don't think we have realized which great consequences that has for the way we look a the human being, at our human dignity.

I said somewhere earlier here that ever since science shifted from goecentrism to heliocentrism, the morals shifted from God-centered to ego-centered (in a very Newtonian action-reaction process) I suspect that shift took place as a way to reinstall the centre of gravity back into the human being but in a very wicked way, which made us poorer, shallower and less civilized, less responsible and more 'godless' people. So I can understand people who feel attracted to geocentrism, they just should not defend that view with scientific arguments, just like creationists do.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"isn't it in the end a question of free choice to choose for a geocentric worldview?"

I can see two ways of reasoning through the question thoroughly:

• you believe your eyes as long as they are not disproven (flat earth is disproven by geography), and then you go by observations to Tychonian Geocentrism and from there to acknowledge there is a God and there are angels;
• or you believe ONLY your eyes, therefore deny God and angels, therefore consider Tychonian orbits impossible, therefore consider Geocentrism impossible and deny it in favour of for instance Newtonian Heliocentrism.

So in a way it is a free choise, in a way it isn't.

"Goethe preferred natural perception (not through microscopes of teloscopes) as superior perception above perception done with instruments for the simple reason that natural perception leads to natural understanding whereby human standards in all sorts of ways are not crushed by the results of mechanic or otherwise enhanced forms of perception."

I consider natural perception one step closer to being sure of what one sees.

Which is a somewhat other stance.

Meaning for instance I consider seeing Earth and Heaven from Earth as seven billion or nearly do more sure than seeing them from the Moon.

If I have to choose between the view nearly all of us have and the view that Armstrong at least purportedly had of Earth turning (and no, I think going into the reasons for some skepsis are another debate) I take the one God providentially gave the millions.

"For example he knew the earth was round, though in human perception it is flat."

Not if perception is varied enough.

"We did choose the heliocentric view as scientifically superior or more 'true' than the geocentric,"

Who, "we"? I do not.

"So I can understand people who feel attracted to geocentrism, they just should not defend that view with scientific arguments, just like creationists do."

What's wrong with creationism?

John Médaille, if you bump in, do take the angle question too, it starts to become burningly relevant!

bump in as in "bump in" it being your wall, of course!

John Médaille

MO, those are very shrewd observations. The problem of course is always the domain of the observations. Geocentrism is "natural," but only if one is standing on the Earth. It is not beyond human capability to imagine standing someplace else. You would not see the same thing. The problem is not with the "science" of heliocentrism (or even with the pseudo-science of geocentrism), but with the narratives that accompany both. The fact that the earth revolves around the Sun says nothing about the centrality of man to the cosmos, unless one insists on interpreting it that way. Insofar as geocentrism tries to affirm its own narrative of the centrality if man by maintaining the centrality of the earth, it actually reinforces the scientific narrative and provides the means to negate its own narrative. After all, if the centrality of man depends on the centrality of the earth, then disproving one disproves the other. And the heliocentrists make the stronger case.If my own view of the centrality of man to creation depended on the centrality of the earth, I would be forced to abandon it.

For a surveyor, the earth is "flat" for any survey of, say, less than 20 kilometers. That is, there is no need to correct for curvature.

Hans-Georg, why don't you just tell me where you are going with this measurement question? And what do you mean my "bump in"?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I am sorry for the "bump in" word choice.

If I meant anything it was rather that you had been absent a bit, so I should have said "bump back in" or "bump in again".

For a surveyor, you said, Earth is flat for any survey less than 20 km.

That means that to a surveyor two vertical poles thirty metres apart (meeting at 1 arc second in centre of Earth) or even six hundred metres apart (meeting at 20 arc seconds in centre of Earth) are, thought not actually so, virtually parallel.

Now, 1 arc second > largest parallax angle.
20 arc seconds < than the "annual aberration" angle.

Are you still confident these angles can be hundred percent sure measured?

Well, there is this thing with the question, that when you look at "closest" star, you also look at largest "parallax" angle.

Meaning alpha Centauri which is supposedly "only 4 light years away" shows a parallax angle around 0.75 arc seconds (in centre of Earth an angle like that would lead to two verticals less than 30 metres apart on the surface).

As Kent Hovind said on the debate of "distant starlight problem" for a young Earth, it is a "very skinny triangle".

However, suppose the angles are after all accurately measured.

Then, so is the NEGATIVE parallax of 63 Ophiuchi.

"Uncertain negative parallax measurements of –0.77 ± 0.40 mas"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/63_Ophiuchi

If the measure is correct, it means the negative parallax of 63 Ophiuchi, or any negative parallax, cannot really be a parallax at all, but rather a proper movement.

That is why the scientists say "uncertain negative parallax measures".

If they admitted the measures as certain, it would scientifically ruin all of modern cosmology, since the obvious possibilities are two, none of which concords with it:

• stars don't have parallax but a proper movement done in time with the sun, i e annually, bt not necessarily same direction and not necessarily same distance, i e we can make no distance measures and get no proof for heliocentrism from such "parallax";
• it is really parallax, all parallax is indeed positive, a negative parallax measure is just a relatively smaller parallax than the mean one, so, reducing -0.77 arc seconds to zero (positive parallax at infinite distance) and that to some kind of positive x (since infinite distance cannot exist and light could never reach us over an infinite distance), the measured parallax of zero is really 0.77 arc seconds more than x, the measured parallax of 0.75 arc seconds above zero is really 0.75 arc seconds above a pseudozero which is at least 0.77 + x positive parallax, and the real positive parallax of alpha Centauri would be twice as great, that means the real distance would be only two light years (at most) instead of four.

Now, it is true that other methods exist to measure distances to stars than parallax measures. Long before we get to claims like "13.5 billion light years away", we get to very other methods indeed.

As a surveyor you are much better fitted than I to know how tiny parallax 13.5 billion light years would be, if the measure had been parallactic. But anyway, too tiny to measure, that is for sure.

But the point of all these other measures (including but not limited to distance measure by red shift - ! I am not making this up!) build on the distance measures via parallax measure.

So, collapse parallax measures as a distance measure (and geostasis makes that very radically, unless you arbitrarily posit that all stars are centred on sun and make same annual journey in space as Sun), you have collapsed all the other distance measures too (outside solar system, that is).

And by doing so, as I realised nearly fourteen years ago, Geocentrism does away with "distant starlight problem" for, not a young earth, but a young universe.

And Christ said "from the beginning of creation, God created them man and woman" (Mark 10:6 - would to God all Protestants citing this for YEC were also against divorce and remarriage!)

" Geocentrism is "natural," but only if one is standing on the Earth."

The observers to whose observations we do have access are those standing on Earth, with very few exceptions.

"It is not beyond human capability to imagine standing someplace else."

I can imagine standing in Heavenly Jerusalem and looking down through a river of moving stars onto an Earth which stands still, for instance.

But I suppose you meant sth else?

"The fact that the earth revolves around the Sun says nothing about the centrality of man to the cosmos, unless one insists on interpreting it that way."

Have I for my part all through this debate ever made that an issue?

"Insofar as geocentrism tries to affirm its own narrative of the centrality if man by maintaining the centrality of the earth, it actually reinforces the scientific narrative and provides the means to negate its own narrative."

Insofar as - which mine does not, which the Medieval one did not - and also insofar as heliocentrism is scientific.

I'd like to hear the words of an old surveyor on my observations on "parallax".

Hans-Georg Lundahl

John Médaille, did you lose interest or are you working sth through before answering?

John Médaille

I've lost interest. I've seen this all before and I am not impressed.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Noted.

And in a sense requited.