Yeah, I remember when I first learned about 'The
Principle'. [off camera] Uh can you just introduce yourself real quick? My name is Dan Olson, I am
the writer and director of 'In Search of a Flat Earth'. I first became aware of 'The Principle'
when I was working on a documentary about flat earth philosophy there was this particular flat
earth channel on YouTube and I was going through all the most watched videos on the channel taking
notes and one of them, this two hour video, had just these long long clips from some other
documentary about Copernicus and Kepler and Brahe and it was actually kind of decent quality
animation and Kate Mulgrew was narrating, and it said on screen, explicitly, used
with permission such-and-such films. And I thought, you know, that's odd. The greatest astronomer of the time, Tico
Brahe, developed a new geocentric model: the earth occupies the center, the planets
orbit the sun, and the sun orbits the earth. You know, YouTube culture being what it is,
it's already unusual for anyone to actually ask permission, let alone on flat earth YouTube.
So right away that told me that something was up. Clearly the people who made this first
video, which was just an anti-science screed on a channel full of flat earth, anti-vax, ancient
alien stuff, clearly all of these people were on the same wavelength. And that's weird. There's not
usually a lot of crossover between random YouTube cranks and the kind of people who are able to get
in touch with Kate Mulgrew's agent. So I prod a bit and it turns out there's a whole buck wild
story behind that. It had actually made a small splash when the film first came out in, I think
it was 2014. You know this, this documentary about how earth is the center of the universe, and the
sun revol- like orbits the earth, and they tricked a bunch of astrophysicists into being in it, and
and Kate Mulgrew was narrating, and there's this whole story behind that, and I just knew that it
was something that I might want to talk about. But then as I was digging a bit deeper I realized
that the executive producer, Robert Sungenis, a man with a doctorate degree from a fake
university effectively interviewed himself in his own movie in order to
make himself look like an expert. And and it was just like that's it
that's it I I have to talk about this now okay first things first the earth is not the
center of the universe i'm putting this at the front because I don't want to have to debunk
every random ass claim the filmmakers toss out as they come up the folks who made
this film are going to make a number of claims that are just wrong. We have in fact
demonstrated that the earth orbits the sun. Stellar parallax was first measured in the
1830s and has only gotten more precise since, and lagrange point satellites behave the way
that they do because we accurately understand how gravity behaves on celestial objects; an
understanding that has enabled us to, for example, detect black holes as in this 23-year time lapse
of s2 orbiting the black hole Sagittarius A. The central claim of the film is that the cosmic
microwave background radiation indicates that the earth is the center of a universal
axis, which is just not actually true. They massage the data to make it look
more significant than it really is, giving the misleading impression
that it's a very precise axis that passes right through the earth, but in
reality it's a lot more vague than that. Bottom line, geocentrism as a model of the cosmos
requires a universe where a series of incredibly consistent physical principles apply to everything
else we can see except us. Now that's exactly what they're trying to imply but as with flat earth
this creates a cascade effect where successively more and more functional predictive science needs
to be discarded in order to make the claim work. You can't just redraw the orbits of the
solar system, you need to claim the earth is gravitationally exceptional. And if earth
is the fulcrum of the universe then the stellar field needs to be moving at absurd speeds in
order to orbit the earth once every 24 hours, speeds that would be detectable and relativistic.
And so you also need to discard relativity and it all just causes a cascade. And, again that
right there is exactly what they're claiming, that they’ve found evidence that should
cause us to toss out relativity and universal gravity and everything we've
discovered based on those principles because it disagrees with their model.
And since that isn't happening they claim there's a conspiracy that's suppressing
the evidence. And now on with the show. In the spring of 2014 a small media storm
kicked up around the trailer for an upcoming documentary written by Rick DeLano, directed by
Katheryne Thomas, and produced by Robert Sungenis. The trailer, narrated by Star Trek
Voyager’s Kate Mulgrew and featuring a number of high profile physicists, including
Lawrence Krassu, Max Tegmark, and Michio Kaku, seemed to be arguing against the
heliocentric model of the solar system. Everything we think we know
about our universe is wrong. You can go on some websites of NASA and
see that they've started to take down stuff that might hint to a geocentric universe.
So they set up the satellite and they find out these temperature disturbances throughout
the universe were all pointing to the earth This caught the attention of a bunch
of entertainment industry publications, which led to several of the participants issuing
public denunciations of their role in the film. Lawrence Krauss wrote an article for Slate titled “I Have No Idea How I Ended Up In
That Stupid Geocentrism Documentary” "I have no recollection of being
interviewed for such a film, and of course had I known of its
premise I would have refused. So, either the producers used clips of me that were in
the public domain, or they bought them from other production companies that I may have given some
rights to distribute my interviews to, or they may have interviewed me under false pretenses,
in which case I probably signed some release.” Following Krauss’ lead, Kate Mulgrew
issued a short statement on Facebook “I understand there has been some controversy
about my participation in a documentary called THE PRINCIPLE. Let me assure everyone that I
completely agree with the eminent physicist Lawrence Krauss, who was himself misrepresented in
the film, and who has written a succinct rebuttal in SLATE. I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any
way a proponent of geocentrism. More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis
has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most
certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that
my voice on this trailer may have caused.” The producers fired back against these by posting
a YouTube video, hosted by writer/producer Rick DeLano, titled “Thoughtcrime: the
conspiracy to stop The Principle” Which, you know. Jesus Christ.
Thoughtcrime? Conspiracy? I think that alone gives you a pretty good
snapshot of where these folks are at. In this video that implies they are
the target of a conspiracy they provide what they consider to be discrediting
evidence against Krauss and Mulgrew, and explicitly state that it’s not
about geocentrism, it’s about cosmology. I checked the film thousands and thousands and thousands of time and
there's just nothing about the geos in the film it just isn't it's film about cosmology
it's a film about the Copernican Principle . This is a sentiment he has expressed repeatedly. In an interview with Colin
Lecher at Popular Science “"The film is not about geocentrism,"
DeLano told me flatly. Rather, it's about the Copernican principle
-- Copernicus's idea that the Earth doesn't occupy a cosmically
special place in the universe. “ Okay, first of all, those aren’t mutually
exclusive? Those are nested subjects. Second, is the movie geocentric? Sooort of? Rick’s
wishy-washy “it’s not about geocentrism it’s about cosmology” is actually pretty accurate to the
finished movie in that the film shares that wishy-washy attitude. The film itself is a lot
more non-committal than the trailer implies, being mostly composed of implication and
innuendo rather than offering any actual claims. So what I take away from this is we simply
always need to keep an open mind and listen to all viewpoints and let mother
nature be the one who gets the final word. There's always a revolution coming in science
because science is necessarily provisional it cannot make a final statement because it
doesn't know everything it cannot examine what's going on at the four corners of the universe.
As to how many angels dance on the head of a pin, I think it's still an open question.
You know I could tell you what the future might be but but
it could be something different. There’s not a lot to really sum
up about the documentary itself. The A plot is mostly interviews with a mix
of scientists and crackpot religious zealots, while the B plot is a reasonably accurate animated
summary of the development of the solar model from pre-history to Albert Einstein, just with the
occasional curiosity of how something is framed. And that’s kinda the crux of it: there’s
no screamingly absurd claims. This isn’t Masaru Emoto claiming you can grant water healing
properties by exposing it to positive thoughts. Even when the film gets into
theology it does so in a really tepid, vague way, talking mostly
about faith in the abstract. Ever since the trial of Galileo there has
often been tension if not outright conflict between faith and science. Remarkably
the copernican principle seems to be the ground upon which faith and science are
again at long last approaching one another. As a whole The Principle is an adept example
of a classic form of bad-faith debate, which is the school of Just Asking Questions. It’s a form of debate where you advance
your ideological agenda entirely in the form of questions in order to take
the role of a non-committed bystander who doesn’t believe anything and has
no opinions, but has a lot of concerns. This approach becomes fairly obvious when you listen to the way that Sungenis and
DeLano and Thomas defend the film, focusing mostly on a narrative that The
Principle is “exploring possibilities” and the particular idea that the preemptive critics
of the film were misled by the film’s trailer. okay so they did see the trailer and I
think all these conclusions are being made yeah that's true they're basing it off the trailer
but when you actually watch the film people come back and go that's
not what was in the news Of course that’s all deliberate. The
trailer is intentionally provocative. Like, I can’t think of a clearer
example of bad-faith whinging than this. and the trailer of course is a trailer it's
designed to stir up controversy and uh you know we just assumed that we'd get the same treatment
as everybody else which is foolish assumption Rick, You made the trailer. It’s your
trailer for your movie. You don’t get to complain that the trailer misled people
when you’re the person who made the trailer. But this does create a really
entertaining contrast between the movie and all the para-textual
things that the creators put out. So on one hand the director, Katheryn Thomas, claims that the movie is a really even-handed
examination of some cutting-edge science where everyone gets an equal say and it’s left
to the audience to draw their own conclusions And another thing about it was
making sure that it was balanced which of course you know the controversy
came out saying that it wasn't but it's truly you know my I even said when I did
this I said hey listen if we're going to make a film that's one-sided i'm no I don't
want to be involved but if we're gonna if we're gonna let everybody have a seat at
the table and then let you know the audience figure out what they want to do then i'm all in
and so that's that's what you did so beautifully and on the other hand you have
the second trailer for the film science has found evidence that
earth is the center of the universe science has found evidence that god exists
so why do they tell us we are insignificant Not to mention, you know, Robert Sungenis,
the executive producer who has continued to be heavily involved in the promotion of
the film for years following its release, including writing numerous commentary articles
for the official website ThePrincipleMovie.com, wrote an entire book promoting geocentrism
called Galileo Was Wrong; The Church Was Right. Now, you might be wondering if maybe that’s
also just some provocative marketing. Maybe it’s just a way to reel people in for
a discussion of some interesting oddities in data derived from measurements of the
cosmic microwave background radiation? “Chapter 3: Evidence Earth is
in the Center of the Universe” Okay, yeah, that’s pretty unambiguous. And this is the root of it: despite the
superficially non-committal “just asking questions” tone of the film, the intended takeaway
is pretty obvious and is, of course, reinforced by the evidence of how the film has been rhetorically
employed since its release, with the film mostly playing for Christian faith-film audiences
the same new-age spirituality crowd as other pseudoscience and lightly conspiratorial films
like What the Bleep Do We Know and Zeitgeist. Before we go on let’s talk for a bit about
the folks behind it all, because to really understand what The Principle is saying we need
to understand the worldview that it comes from. So, two people we’ve already partially
introduced, writer/producer Rick DeLano and director/editor Katheryne Thomas.
They are the front line filmmakers. Thomas, a music video producer and director turned
documentarian, seems to have fallen in with DeLano by happenstance, and while she claims she
disagrees with Rick about a lot of stuff, the two of them have continued to work together
since, and she vocally defends the film.
If you give an opinion where
a geocentric opinion from once one subject and they go oh no no no you can't
say that you know and if you go oh and like the principle you have multiverse you have string
theory you have all of this and i'm like all of this is controversial and and actually that's
what kind of made me mad whenever I was seeing what when people were attacking the
principle they were only attacking one thing which was the geocentric stuff and I was
like why because there's so many theories in here DeLano is a Catholic fundamentalist and seemingly
a true believer in geocentrism. For years prior to the production of The Principle Rick maintained
a personal blog titled Magisterial Fundies. From the October 2011 launch post of that blog,
Magisterial Fundies: The Soft Opening, Rick states “The Catholic Church has, by the
sovereign decision of God Almighty, been granted a charism to teach the Truth
concerning faith and morals infallibly. [...] I expect to examine precisely those anomalous,
unusual cases where magisterial teaching has either been abandoned or qualified
by subsequent, lower-level teaching. Critical areas will include: 1. The question of whether the Jews
enjoy a separate covenant for salvation (I argue that this notion is damnable heresy). 2. Whether the Church has reversed her
condemnation of Galileo (I argue She hasn't, and I further argue that the utterly astounding new
observations from SDSS and WMAP suggest that this is an extraordinarily powerful instance where the
protection of the Church's teaching on geocentrism is being validated before our eyes by science
itself, four hundred years after the fact).” On top of this, Rick absolutely
conspiratorially minded, tossing out bizarre accusations and claims
as though they’re self-evident. we had no chance with the principle against the
forces that were arraigned against us we were just you know we were targeted for
destruction and absolute and we had the highest grossing single screen opening in america
the weekend that we opened and they wouldn't even hold us over in the theater because we were the
subject of a boycott by a political organization Executive producer Robert Sungenis has a doctorate
in Religious Studies from Calamus International University, with the hitch being that Calamus
International University is a defunct, unaccredited distance-learning outfit that
was registered in the Republic of Vanuatu but consisted entirely of a p.o. box
and a secretary service in London. His doctoral work, in religious studies, was overseen mainly by two people,
by a physicist, Robert Bennett, who is also the co-author of Sungenis’ book
“Galileo Was Wrong”, and Dr. Morris Berg. Dr. Berg’s has a Bachelor of Science in
Psychology from the University of East London, and then PhD and DCH degrees in hypnotherapy
from, quote, “overseas universities.” He’s also an accredited past life
healer, registered metaphysician, and an energy EFT master practitioner
certified by the Guild of Energists. okay so let's just have a look at the modern
energy chart this is a pictorial representation of a pattern that exists at least and
I mean at least in all social mammals The Guild of Energists are one of those kind
of really predictable self-help systems that takes a couple reasonable ideas like
“happiness is good” and maps it onto a truly bonkers series of metaphysics, and once
you scratch the surface you realize it’s just The Secret or Prosperity Gospel or The
Power of Positive Thinking, including the same dangerous core belief that good people are
successful, therefore successful people are good. And, of course, it gets a little bit culty
when you get into the parts where the founder, Sylvia Hartmann, starts talking about
“coming out of the energy closet”. This is just completely not surprising at
all. It’s crank magnetism. People with fake credentials get their fake credentials
from other people with fake credentials. There’s an entire ecosystem
of these kinds of grifters, folks with questionable credentials who are
adopting a fundamentally anti-science stance, but do so by claiming that they have the real science.
They are absurdly common in self-help, dieting, and alternative medicine, but, as we see here,
the more mathematical sciences are hardly immune. Okay, so those are just the folks
that Robert Sungenis hangs out with. In addition to his fake degree, Robert
is a TradCath or Traditionalist Catholic, which is a term that we should
dig a little deeper into. In a casual modern use TradCath tends to
just refer to a particularly conservative strain of Catholic thinker, but Robert
is a bit more of a traditional TradCath, which means he errs a lot more towards
the philosophical roots of the term, which is rooted in opposition to the
Second Vatican Council, AKA Vatican II. Held between 1959 and 1965, this was a series
of formal debates within the Catholic church in direct response to a number of
internal and external pressures such as the growing Civil
Rights Movement in America, Women’s Liberation, declining Church attendance,
the evangelical/nondenominational movement, and growing criticism and scrutiny. It was, in
short, an attempt at modernizing the church. These sessions resulted in a number of
substantial changes to church operations, general policy, logistical changes, and official redefinition of the relationship
between the church and various social groups. Among the more obvious and dramatic
changes were that it became formally permitted for Mass to be administered
in a language that wasn’t Latin, and encouraged a greater emphasis on
lay-participation rather than strict clerical dispensation. This means, one, getting general
congregants more involved in weekly services and, two, actually performing Mass in the
language that the congregation speaks. This is also when the church formally changed
its opinion on the death of Jesus, stating “True, the Jewish authorities and those
who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His
passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against
the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be
presented as rejected or accursed by God.” So they no longer held all Jews categorically
responsible for the death of Jesus. Which they previously had for hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds of years. I guess better late than never. The last change I want to mention was the church
pivoting its view on non-Catholic Christian denominations, reverting the anti-Reformation
Council of Trent, viewing protestants and the Eastern Orthodox tradition specifically as
“separated brethren” rather than heretics. This is a subtle but important policy change
because it effectively signaled that the various traditionalist denominations shared common
political interests and it would be more important to cooperate on those fronts
than hold onto old sectarian grudges, but in doing so the church ceded its
absolute stance of supreme authority. So this is complicated. Vatican II is, in some
regards, progressive, but only as progressive as needed to retain membership and improve political
relations with other conservative organizations. So imagine the kind of person
who thinks it was going too far. Now, in all fairness Sungenis has stated in a 2005
article for Catholic paper The New Oxford Review: “we must accept Vatican II as a legitimate
ecumenical council, without dogmatic error, and designed for the good of the Church.
In reality, 95 percent of its words are unproblematic. If the other five percent is
interpreted in the light of tradition rather than liberalism and neo-Modernism, we shouldn’t have
too much problem ironing out any difficulties.” So he doesn’t reject it categorically, or even
have much complaint with the vast majority of the actual contents. What he does have problems
with is that issue of supreme authority. “Just when we needed a strong hand to
remind us of our moral obligations in the midst of a world gone crazy with the
lust for power (e.g., World Wars I and II), and a world either contemplating or actually
indulging in some of its worst sins (e.g., contraception, abortion, divorce,
promiscuity, homosexuality), the prelates of Vatican II more or less forgot
why the traditional Church, through her regimen of strong laws and purifying disciplines,
insisted on keeping tight reins on her people. [...] This is why liberalism will never work on this
earth. Its utopian ideals ignore the fact that deep within man there is a sin problem that
simply won’t go away by wishful thinking.” Keep in mind that when he says “liberalism”
in this context he’s talking about, like, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. He means democracy. He’s saying
democracy will never work. So one of the main things that
people praise Vatican 2 for, creating sanctioned room within the
Church for liberation theology and thus the likes of Óscar Romero, that’s
the stuff he really takes issue with. This brings me to one of Robert Sungenis’ other
friends, and fellow The Principle participant, Martin Selbrede. I’m gonna warn you, this guy is
a huge piece of garbage with some truly repugnant beliefs. This gets a bit heavy. This is Martin Selbrede, a geocentrist
and theologian. He has advocated for a geocentric model for years, both
within fundamentalist Christian circles as a companion to creationism, and externally
in debates with the actual scientific community. Martin is the vice president
of the Chalcedon Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist think tank
dedicated to lobbying for laws that conform to their interpretation of Biblical laws.
This manifests, practically, in two forms. The first of these is a
specific form of libertariansim that philosophically is opposed to
large nation states but in the short term manifests in the push for extremely
permissive homeschooling standards which, I mean, Martin here is in a documentary arguing
that the earth is the centre of the universe, so you can probably imagine what the curriculum
looks like, and an opposition to, like, anti-descrimintion laws that prevent employers
from, like, firing people for being trans. The second is an explicit push for returning
things to the “natural order”, enshrining Christian supremacy, and eliminating
the separation of Church and State. Now, a number of people have posited that
this extreme position means the Chalcedon Foundation supports policies like the death
penalty as a punishment for homosexuality, and, indeed, the Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Chalcedon Foundation as a
hate group for exactly that reason. In response to these accusations the
Chalcedon Foundation plays a little rhetorical game where they
deflect by repeatedly saying they support Biblical law. It’s a way of
pretending to deny something without denying it, but it’s also a way of confirming something
without having to actually say it out loud. Selbrede, in a 2007 article titled Answering
Tough Questions About Christian Reconstruction, frames it like this: “Decade after decade, as a nation grows more
Biblically consistent, and an ever-increasing percentage of its population regards the law
of God as the proper standard for morality, it is likely the resulting social pressures (now
so successfully applied via our current culture of political correctness) would gradually revert
back in favor of Biblical moral expectations, causing most Biblically illicit
conduct to seek more private venues (beyond the reach of eyewitnesses to
the act) well before any such Biblical laws became transcribed into civil law. The
idea of some kind of wholesale slaughter of, say, homosexuals, is a total fabrication resting
on a fragmentary, piecemeal, unsystematized approach to Biblical law. Biblical law deals with
concrete acts observed by qualified eyewitnesses.” translated: he does support the
state-sanctioned murder of homosexuals, but only as long as it's systematized.
And he claims it wouldn't matter anyway, you wouldn't actually get that many
executions, because all of the overt social hostility towards homosexuality would
drive all of the gays back into the closet long before you could even make homosexuality
illegal let alone a capital offense. Remember that libertarianism? Yeah, they
oppose large nation states like the USA because they believe that large nations
will inevitably be multicultural, purely as a consequence of encompassing large
numbers of people across large geographic areas, which provides the opportunity for the
minority cultures to find common cause, unite, and push for their
interests. Thus smaller, local Christian hegemons are better equipped to enforce
Biblical law and keep the underclass suppressed. Fun stuff. These guys are the philosophical core of
The Principle, and the rest of the film is structured to make it look like all these
scientists really secretly agree with them. Can I just say that this setup for Lawrence
Krauss interview, with this green edge light, it’s hideous? I get the intent, but it looks
gross and no one else is lit like that. Anyway. One of the reasons why I wanted to talk about
The Principle is because the film itself isn’t entirely incompetent. It’s a pretty good
example of how the narrative language of documentary can be utilized rhetorically.
Because the entire foundation of the film is to make a discredited idea seem
not just plausible, but supported. But to do that you need to launder a few things. So this is how you scrub the ideas. You don’t
say “we’re making a movie proving that the earth is the center of the universe.” You say “we’re
making a movie about changes in our understanding of the Copernican principle” or “we’re making a
movie about the history and future of cosmology.” there's just nothing about the
geos in the film it just isn't it's film about cosmology it's a film
about the copernican principle It’s not wrong. You haven’t lied. You’ve just omitted a conclusion that you know
participants will disagree with. You don’t do a total hack job where you
cut up what people are saying to make them say the opposite of what they meant. I noticed she was sitting on her
sweet can I grab her sweet can oh You use framing and juxtaposition, the
Kuleshov effect, to manufacture consensus. You take two scientists, and in between them
you sandwich a guy with a fake doctorate who wrote a book called “Galileo Was
Wrong”. Technically speaking you don’t take any of the three out of context,
you aren’t lifting razor thin sound bites, but all three are energized, excited, and,
seemingly, in agreement with each other. This is a fine line, you haven’t made
anyone say something they didn’t, you’ve just created the appearance that they
support ideas that they don’t. It’s a form of misrepresentation that’s exhausting to litigate,
and honestly isn’t worth it beyond, like, writing an op ed or putting out some mean tweets. What’s interesting to me is that the filmmakers
have a narrative that they’re trying to work, and have continued to work
even after the film’s release. One of the things the film suggests with a wink and a nudge is the outline of a conspiracy
that is actively suppressing this information. All they have to do to shut up geocentrist is to
run this experiment upon the moon and see what's going to happen and all of physics collapses
with that experiment I think there's a reason not to put the experiment on the moon
albert einstein himself said that if michelson morley is wrong
then relativity is wrong It implies that all these scientists really
do agree that the prevailing evidence suggests a geocentric world, but they can’t speak plainly because they would be ostracized from the
scientific community, lose their jobs, lose access to grant money, and generally
throw a huge wrench into their own lives. if one day god comes down from above
and says look these two great theories relativity and the quantum theory are wrong
what would I say first of all I would say oh my god all my published works are wrong
I mean i'll have to look for another job This also let’s the filmmakers frame
themselves as doing the interviewees a favour by leaving it as innuendo, and that, in turn, builds a sense of intrigue, that this is a view
that’s so taboo we dare not even say its name. We've clearly touched a nerve we're clearly
questioning something that some very powerful people are uncomfortable
having questions that's absolutely Also can we talk for a moment
about the absurdity of a bunch of catholics claiming that their cosmological model
is being suppressed by some nebulous group? So, after the trailer for the film comes out
a number of the participants issue statements basically saying they had no idea what the
scope of the project was, they were presented out of context, they don’t remember being
interviewed for a pro-geocentric documentary, and Krauss suggested that maybe they bought the
footage of his interview from another production. The filmmakers counter by posting
a response video to YouTube, and this is where they continue that
little sleight of hand trick from earlier. In the response video they include
extended clips of some interviews, some behind the scenes footage, and
a copy of Krauss’ image release form. lawrence krauss signed a release
form here it is yeah there's been all the releases 400 news articles saying
that it doesn't exist yet that last one is a real trick in presenting the image release
forms they're submitting evidence for one thing and implying it's evidence of another see the
signed release does prove that kraus signed a release with stellar motion pictures incorporated
but it doesn't prove that the interviewers were forthright with the underlying motives of the
production there's been a lot of all the releases 400 news articles saying that it doesn't exist
yes it exists let's show it real quick yes it does tell him that we're going to be seeking out
controversial it's the same release everybody else everybody can yeah your lawyers made it up
there's no multiple releases it's very clear nothing in this bog standard release says this
movie is going to be anti-copernican anti-galilean pro-geo-centric that informed consent is merely
implied and again Rick is highly susceptible to conspiratorial thinking so he just leaves it
assumed as though it's self-evidently obvious that there's an organized conspiracy to stop them
he had no chance with the principle against the forces that were arrayed against us we were just
funny enough by posting all this stuff in the thought crime follow-up video they actually give
us a really good insight into how you go about tricking a bunch of physicists into being in a
geocentric documentary in an extended clip of max tegmark being interviewed by DeLano they show
us the kinds of questions that they were asking also keep in mind that this footage is being
presented to support the argument that Rick DeLano did not disguise the subject or intent of the film
let me read a quote another quote from professor krauss yeah and just get and then we can move on
from this particular aspect because the centrality of earth and the customer microwave background
is a fascinating yeah it could be a mistake it could be a glitch but there are other elements
that are pointing in the same direction now kraus says professor cross says when you look
at the cmb map you see that the structure that is observed is in fact in fact in a weird way
correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun is this copernicus coming back
to haunt us that's crazy we're looking out at the whole universe there's no way
there should be a correlation of structure with our emotion of the earth around the sun
the plane of the earth and the sun the ecliptic that would say we are truly the center of the
universe would you agree with that assessment okay so there's a couple things happening here
first of all that question was 162 words long it's a lot of rambling it's a lot of overlapping
ideas and then the core of it is framed not as a question from the filmmakers but as an opportunity
to respond to something professor krauss said let me read a quote another quote from professor kraus
see there's a big big difference between asking someone if earth is the center of the universe and
asking them to reply to a colleague the second is a lot more likely to get a much more diplomatic
measured response where they don't openly disagree but instead suggests that you know maybe they were
just talking really fast and didn't word their ideas the best or maybe the data has some nuance
that's difficult to explain or are there some additional controls that need to be implemented
into testing would you agree with that assessment i don't think that this is telling us that earth
is in any way the center of the universe and that kind of overly cautious response is how you get
the kind of replies that you can use to construct consensus if you just give a listen I think it'll
make it quite clear that we were very upfront about what we were talking about documentary
operates off the assumption of good faith we go into a documentary willing to believe that
the filmmakers are communicating at the very least the essence of the truth a lot of these editing
techniques or even just techniques in general are really conventional like juxtaposing several
speakers in sequence it's a very normal way to communicate consensus and it's not misleading
if the three people agreeing with each other actually agree with each other it's not bad form
to ask participants to respond to statements made by other participants it's a very normal thing
to do as you're building the narrative of the documentary and is a very normal way to go about
getting clear focused answers when illustrating disagreements on a subject in that regard
the principle is an excellent cautionary tale a reminder to always keep in the back of your head
the documentary will never be the entire story okay so I think the outstanding question here is
why geocentrism delino has been blogging about the idea for years sungenis has written multiple books
and tracks trying to push the geocentric model martin cellbreed has been arguing for geocentrism
since the 90s heck robert has even gone to flat earth conferences to argue that they're wrong
about the shape of the earth but write about its position in the universe the topic of this debate
is biblical cosmology what does the bible have to say about the shape and nature of the earth
and its place in the cosmos they are trying to be the thin end of the wedge both in the sense
of creating the appearance of wide support for their ideas and in the sense that the subsequent
ideas that naturally follow from the conclusions presented in the principle lead directly into
their trad cath dominionist theology quick aside mainstream biblical scholars largely agree that
the biblical cosmology is neither heliocentric nor geocentric but is poetic with cosmological
statements being metaphors meant to communicate spiritual ideas ancient people had stories and
theater and understood the idea of myth and legend ancient audiences would have understood phrases
like the pillars of the earth as poetic metaphor and would find it weird if you insisted that it
needed to be literal because moses wrote genesis chapter one he wrote it around 1400 bc and he was
inspired by god to do so and inspired means that it's inerrant and it tells us the exact truth of
what went on so the task for the scholar is not to undermine the text and wish it away as if it never
existed his task is to see what does this mean and how does it apply to what I know today the train
of thought is that geocentrism proves not just a biblical universe but one of rigid hierarchy a
phrase that the film repeatedly fixates on is the idea that the earth isn't in any specially favored
or central location the copernican principle named after nicholas copernicus states that the earth is
not in any specially favored or central location so how could we possibly be significant but
i've really completely changed my mind and now I actually think we're very significant and so
at the end of the day the question remains are we significant or just a cosmic accident to get away
from that copernican principle and the notion that man means nothing from just a meaningless molecule
to a human being that's in a special location for presumably a special purpose the earth is a very
special place no two ways about it so why do they tell us we are insignificant they really chafe
against this phrase they really don't like the idea that something might be abstract or relative
they're absolutists and they want to impose that absolutism on the universe itself their entire
idea is that earth needs to be located somewhere special in order to be meaningful it's the same
kind of thinking that says important people are born in important places and important places are
important for metaphysical reasons rome is not important because of the people who live there but
the people are important because they come from rome to illustrate this DeLano has a very strange
hypothetical that he uses to try and express his existential anxiety now think about this for
a second if you believe that there is no actual standard by which you can say something is
solid and not moving and at rest and a basis for which to make measurements well you're
going to have another kind of civilization a hundred years ago you know if I would have
said to you jay that's your reality dude you would have called the psycho ward I mean
what do you mean that's your reality dude I am sure alex that at some point in your life
you have encountered someone who has said to you at some point under some set of
circumstances something along the lines of dude that's your reality right you've heard that
right yeah but you're not getting to the point of what i'm talking about this is a man who seems
to fully believe that the existence of multiple universes would lead to a total breakdown in
society as nothing would be knowable and thus you would no longer be able to hold anyone
to account for anything they did because like what is anything man of course this is all
ultimately just cultural. DeLano, Sungenis, and Selbrede are terrified of The Other. They believe
that they are of a superior type of person and are rightfully owed dominion over
sinners degenerates and lesser people if the earth is in a fixed position dominant
over the sun and stars then god put it there and gave it that prominence and if god put the
earth in place then god also put the church in place and likewise gave it position and dominance
and authority but you know they're wrong they're a bunch of dumb asses with fake degrees they
bought from their hypnotherapist friends all right hit me uh the earth gay the moon lesbian
mercury straight venus come on bye obvi mars also buy but almost exclusively dates men jupiter
asked he'll say straight but he also sleeps with everything and I mean you know um you know I
think it's important that we give people space the galilean moons pan polycule uh except
callisto who is monogamous with ganymede saturn straight but a huge ally ever
since titan came out of the closet neptune straight trans man married to
the sea uranus so ace that she doesn't understand the question and wishes
everyone who would just stop asking
Honestly, that was such a trip.
Kinda sad he did not spend more time dealing with his anti democratic screed. This reminds me a lot of Integralists. A tradcath movement mostly dedicated to revive Aristocracy and Monarchism. Who have even brushed up against the Church itself because it simps for Oligarchs so hard that they goes against Papal rules. Like the Integralist laywers(Dan Walden, a Catholic contributor to Current Affairs goes into this) who support torture against church teachings because they are totalitarian authoritarians who hate everone who are not slaves to the elite. And the bullshit about "Utopian" "Liberalism" because people are "sinful" which convinently does not include the elites. Since they are in reactionary Catholic theachings sinless demigods. Exept the pope, the only infallible guy in theology, which is actually fallible.
Unlike the Aristocrats the movement served/Serves(even if the Aristocracy does not even exist anymore/never existed in that form in many countries the movement exist in). Because when it comes to a battle between the Church and the Throne, they always choose the Throne. Even when it is against the Church and the Republic against a Throne that does not even exist anymore(I am not even Catholic but these guys get me fired up simply).
Edit: Splitting a wall of text into paragraphs.
I love Folding Ideas 💞
From the last two minutes or so:
I just wanted to put this somewhere because it's gold.
I knew I recognized the guy from the thumbnail lol.
For once it's someone who tricks Krauss and not the other way around.
I've never really seen anyone ask this question but in a way isn't the earth actually the center of the universe (I know, not the solar system) but the observable universe.
I have seen East Orthodox twitter accounts claiming that "Space is Fake", not sure if they are joking.
Small nitpick: liberation theology is still considered heretical in the church regardless of Vatican II.