You Mean Galileo was Wrong?

I've just come across a group called Catholic Apologetics International, a very, very conservative Catholic organization founded by Robert Sungenis. How conservative? How about so conservative that they think Pope John Paul was wrong to apologize to Galileo and admit that the earth revolves around the sun? Yes, they are genuine geocentrists. Needless to say, they are also young earth creationists. I'm a little stunned to see this sort of thing from Catholics. The creationist/geocentrist movement in the US has been almost exclusively Protestant in makeup, with the geocentrists being primarily Calvinists. The Catholic Church long ago reconciled with evolutionary theory, long before Pope John Paul II wrote his famous letter testifying to the validity of evolution in 1996. I would venture to say, in fact, that you will find that most Catholic schools do a better job of teaching about evolution than most public schools in America.

The webpage declares:

CAI is totally dependent on support from our generous Catholic supporters. Our Apostolate is directed at supporting the work of Catholic Apologist, Robert Sungenis, to propagate and defend the Catholic faith. There are no paid staff here at CAI and all funds are pumped into supporting Robert, his family, and the apostolate.

Yet, a small portion of those funds appears to have been set aside for yet another monetary challenge:

CAI will write a check for $1,000 to the first person who can prove that the earth revolves around the sun. (If you lose, then we ask that you make a donation to the apostolate of CAI). Obviously, we at CAI don't think anyone CAN prove it, and thus we can offer such a generous reward. In fact, we may up the ante in the near future.

This challenge is quite similar to the challenges offered by JoMo and Kent Hovind that I discussed a few weeks ago. But I particularly like the last part:

You can submit your "proofs" to our e-mail address cairomeo@aol.com. We will then offer a response. Both your "proof" and our response will be posted on the CAI science page at our website. If you do not want your actual name listed, we will change your name, but your contents will be posted. If you do not want either your name or your contents posted, then you are not eligible for a reply from CAI nor the $1,000 reward. CAI will be the sole judge of whether you have successfully proven your case. But since CAI is built on its reputation of honesty and truthfulness, rest assured that if you do indeed prove your case, you will be rewarded the money.

I couldn't have said it better myself if I was a used car salesman.

As might be expected from a geocentrist, Robert Sungenis' arguments against evolution are pretty much the standard claptrap of out of context quotations and false statements. Heck, he even pulls out the old D.M.S. Watson "quote" and the old "Karl Marx dedicated Das Kapital to Darwin" chestnut. On the young earth creationist stupidity scale, I'll give it about 800 millihovinds.

Tags

More like this

The True.Origins website - a ripoff of the Talk.Origins Archive that I'm involved with - has posted an article about "debate dodgers". This is something that is quite common in creationist circles - make a ridiculous "challenge" to their opponents and then crow about how cowardly those heathen…
Nearly ten years ago I started a book on Creationist misuse of intellectual history. I never finished it, which is probably for the best. The file is unfortunately MIA and all I have remaining was a section that I turned into a talk that I gave at ASU in 1999. Over the next few days, I'll be…
Edward T. Oakes may be a good teacher of theology at St. Mary of the Lake, but he is a lousy historian of Darwinism. Witness the following statement from his review of Richard Weikart's work, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany: Spencer might well have been…
Last night, Christopher L. Colegrove left a comment after a post I wrote last week about the Worldnutdaily pimping a book that claims that the pyramids around the world were built by the Nephilim, the demonic giants mentioned in Genesis. Here is his comment in full: I think the book gets at…