Scientists/Actress Say They Were 'Tricked' Into Geocentric Universe Movie 642
EwanPalmer (2536690) writes "Three scientists and Star Trek actress Kate Mulgrew say they were duped into appearing in a controversial documentary which claims the Earth is the center of the Universe. The Principle, a film which describes itself as 'destined to become one of the most controversial films of our time', argues the long-debunked theory of geocentrism – where the earth is the center of the Universe and the Sun resolves around it – is true and Nasa has tried to cover it up. The film features the narration of actress Mulgrew, who played the part of captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek Voyager, as well as three prominent scientists."
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:1, Insightful)
The bible does not disagree with reality. Certain religious interpretation of religious concepts disagree with reality. It has been over two decades since the Vatican officially apologized for that particular incident, without the Pope renouncing God or the bible.
Rather than claim there is a fundemental conflict between religion and science, it would be more correct to say that there are some assholes who find modern times too confusing to keep up, and thus try to bring everyone back.
At least, that's the case for creationism. In this particular case, it might just be attention whoring.
Shachar
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:2, Insightful)
fuck, man! the bible disagrees WITH ITSELF. have you not read it? google 'bible errancy' and you'll find more inconsistencies than you'll ever want to see.
really a piece of shit for writing and 'ethics'. do this and you should be stoned to death. do that and you should be killed. god gets pissed off at his own creations and decided to go all murderous on them, then decided to forgive them for following his wishes!
such bullshit.
no thinking person can read that and keep a straight face.
no thinking person would even try to compare this book of fiction with scientific concepts.
Re:Mulgrew is an airhead (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the first time this has happened (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that if I was the lawyer for Mulgrew I'd be pointing out the same thing. Star Trek might not be 'good science', but it's at least progressive in it's views(on science). Actors in it are expected to know at least a little.
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
without the Pope renouncing God or the bible
nuns could run bald through Vatican halls, pregnant, pleading Immaculate Conception; and they'd still not renounce god or the bible.
never let them see you sweat. even if they don't believe their own BS, they won't ever admit it. bad for 'business'.
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Curious, where does it say the earth is the center of the universe in the Bible?
Oh, probably around Genesis 1:1.
Actually, the whole chapter. It says much about the creation of the earth, and very little about the creation of any other celestial object. In other words, Genesis Chapter 1 is geocentric.
Re:Mulgrew is an airhead (Score:4, Insightful)
People have an inherent bias to trust successful people. Celebrities are the ultimate successful people. For a good example, see how many people trusted Jenny McCarthy when she started her campaign saying vaccines cause autism. She's a model, actress and television host with no medical or scientific education or qualifications at all - but she is also rich and famous, so a lot of people believed her.
Re:Mulgrew is an airhead (Score:4, Insightful)
She spent the entire series in a skin-tight suit. She was added to be the object of fans lust, the writers didn't even try to pretend otherwise.
Re:Mulgrew is an airhead (Score:4, Insightful)
Script: "People used to believe that Earth is at the center of the universe. According to them, god made it so."
Final Cut: "Earth is at the center of the universe. God made it so."
Seems very easy, especially if you get to write the script from which they read.
Re:Not the first time this has happened (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, Ben Stein's pile of crap Expelled. The scientists interviewed (including Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers) were outright lied to about the nature of the film, then had their interviews deceptively cut and edited. It's in the nature of religious apologists to lie.
Re:Mulgrew is an airhead (Score:5, Insightful)
That is technically three things.
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:4, Insightful)
The bible does not disagree with reality.
Let's start with talking snakes.
An apple filled with knowledge.
Everybody is related to Adam and Eve, and completely inbred.
Two of every animal fit into a single boat, and none of them ate each other.
All the animals are inbred, back to the ark.
The bible does not disagree with reality.
Really?
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Draw it on a globe.
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:5, Insightful)
...are you being serious?
I have to wonder how the folks here got through middle school lit if terms like "sun rises" and "earth's foundations" are presenting problems for them.
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth noting that the Ecclesiastes verse is not in the context of astronomy, but rather highlighting the relative impermanence of human works. Humans and their ambitions come and go, but the days keep coming and the wind keeps blowing.
There's no reason to think it isn't referring to the apparent position of the sun, relative to an Earth-bound observer.
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:2, Insightful)
I like how people defend this stupid bullshit by saying that it's not meant to be taken literally. Guess what? Even if it's not meant to be taken literally, it's still just as retarded as ever.
And if it's not meant to be taken literally, then why do idiots buy into *any* of it? Why not just become atheists and admit it's all a fairy tale, since it's obviously rife with stories that aren't literal. Many times, when science advances, the religious move the goal posts and start claiming that the parts of their books they took literally before weren't meant to be taken literally. It's pathetic. Just give it up already.
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Biblical authors were simply advanced in their understanding of proper measurement technique [wikipedia.org].
Re:where is the controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with sane Christians, (like sane Atheists, Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Hindus, and pretty much any group you can think of) is they tend not to shout that loudly. That doesn't imply that they don't exist, or even that they may not be the majority.
If someone shouts too loudly, my suggestion is to ignore them, they will likely eventually go away.
Re:Not the first time this has happened (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not ST had "good science" or what their moral, ethical or scientific views were is completely irrelevant.
Even whether the actors in it cared or even agreed with those views is irrelevant if the actor knowingly agreed to do the job anyway.
The producers deliberately lied to the actor.
The point is that the actor was scammed into appearing in a movie they would not have done had the producers been honest about their intentions.
Re:Not the first time this has happened (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It's one thing to appear in a work of fiction (e.g. Star Trek) when you know up front that this is what it is, and it's not being presented as anything else. It's an entirely different thing when you're told the work is one thing, but it's then presented as something else--and even more different if you're edited or overdubbed in a misleading fashion.
This is insane, but I'll happily join in (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no description of the earth's foundations (and I'm sorry, but the original text is NOT the King's English anyway). For all we know, this "foundation" could be a reference to the orbit the Earth is set upon and a statement that the Earth cannot be moved from that foundation (not be moved by the readers, anyway). There's LITERALLY nothing there describing the "foundation" - not size, not shape, not composition, nothing. It's also true that land is often referred to as Earth, so it could even be a reference to that what supports dry land above the Earth's molten core. You can actually choose to take the Bible totally literally (even with a talking serpent) and still see that it is NOT an engineering or astrophysics text book with cutaway drawings, dimensions, etc. The texts (taken literally or metaphorically) simply lack details... and that's just FINE. Nobody complains when Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawkingwrites a book that lacks every little detail about the universe. I see no ammunition here for arguing pro/con this bit of scripture.
As for the sun, allow me to point out that we all (of all, and no, religions) use these expressions. Even those of us who fully understand celestial mechanics involved still say to our kids "be home by sunset" or "we'll be having dinner when the sun goes down" rather than "be home by the time this spot on the Earth's surface has rotated sufficiently away from the sun that it is no longer visible" or some other such nonsense. This is about as silly as when Bill Nye tried to slam the Bible as anti-science because it has a verse that refers to the moon as a light (and HE points out that it's not a source of light, just reflecting sunlight). Apparently in Mr. Nye's world, couples do not go out for a romantic stroll in the "moonlight", nobody goes for a "moonlight" swim, etc. The man's an idiot.
What it all really comes down to is something every person working Guidance and Navigation at the Johnson Space Center is quite familiar with: "Frame of Reference". If you set your frame of reference to the center of the sun, then everything (including all the other galaxies) goes around the sun. If you set your frame of reference to the center of the Earth, then everything, including the sun and the rest of the universe, goes around the Earth (and this is a common frame of reference used in orbital spaceflight). You could set your frame of reference to the center of the moon, or the ISS in Low Earth Orbit, or any other arbitrary point in space. It's all relative (in the basic geometric sense rather than the Einstein sense). Taking a Bible verse about sunrise and sunset an using it to claim that the book is wrong, would be like running down the street denouncing every person who speaks of sunrise or sunset - sheer lunacy. The biggest joke of all in this argument about taking the Bible "literally" is that most of those (both for and against the Bible) who claim to be taking it "literally" are actually NOT; they're almost always projecting lots of junk onto it that is plainly (literally?) NOT there.
Allow me to propose a simple rule-of-thumb for Bible readers (both "the faithful" and the skeptics) as follows: Do not criticize it any differently than you criticize every other book (i.e. use consistent standards) and do not take individual sentences out-of-context from ANY book. Bible "verses" are just sentences and they were NOT numbered in the original text (the numbers were added to aid in navigating the text). If person A gets to use individual Bible sentences, person B gets to use individual sentences from any other book. If person A gets to heap his own interpretations onto the clear text of the Bible, then person B gets to do likewise with other books.
Re:Mirror image (Score:5, Insightful)
>but the pedophilia, brutal killings, etc. are all spot on.
Perhaps - but hardly unique - exactly the same things were happening as standard fair in Europe among Christians at the same time. Hell Christianity would keep it up for at least the next 400 years - average marriage age for women didn't go past 16 until the early 20th century and age-of-consent laws weren't passed anywhere until well after that.
So whether it's true or not- it says absolutely NOTHING about Islam. There is nothing in there about Muhammed that wasn't also true of Richard the Lionhearted.
Re:Mirror image (Score:4, Insightful)
>The obvious problem (unless you are one of those Muslims who think that anything that has ever been done by a non-Muslim at any time in history should be permitted for Muslims today) is that Muslims are still carrying out brutal attacks, raping women, etc today. Just ask the Hindus in Pakistan about the 'religion of peace'.
Christians are still doing that today as well. Ask the non-Christians in Nigeria, Sudan and Algiers a little about the religion of universal-brotherly-love.
Hell even in Europe you still see atrocities committed by people fueled by their Christian beliefs. Remember the Olso shootings a few years ago ? Man grabbed a gun and shot 12 kids because they were liberals and as a Christian he believed he ought to fight (literally) against liberalism !
You can't judge a religion on the actions of extremists. I live in a majority Muslim city - and I have never experienced any violence from a Muslim, indeed they are the most law-abiding demographic in this city.
Re:Mirror image (Score:5, Insightful)
None of the 35 million Muslims in my city have ever celebrated an atrocity, none of their priests have ever encouraged anybody to do the same. In fact - you walk into a Muslim owned shop here you will see signs on the walls that say things like:
I
Shall
Love
All
Mankind
Encouraging each other to live in peace with the non-muslim community here ( which is only slightly smaller at around 30 million the vast majority of whom are protestant Christians and who have their shops decorated with signs that spread the same message in the name of Jesus instead) - these communities live among each other, with each other, in perfect peace and harmony - both are convinced that the other's religion is wrong but neither group thinks violence is justified or allowed and in fact both groups spend most of their time trying to convert the other by competing over who can do the most charity for the poor population of the city !
The deadliest religious atrocity we have are pot luck dinners ! The worst problem we face is that these two religions are VERY happy to cooperate on the things they agree on - which means a constant stream of political jockeying against our laws allowing gay marriage and legal abortions which is funded and attended by both groups. A current law banning corporal punishment is being vehemently opposed by religious leaders- FROM BOTH religions, working TOGETHER.
These aren't good things to be doing -but it's interesting that they are quite happy to put aside their differences and lobby collectively for the things they agree on (even when those things are wrong).
I LIVE among the proof of how wrong you are.
The only thing I can conclude from your Islamophobia is that you don't actually, personally, KNOW a single Muslim. Not really *know*.
Like all discrimination - Islamophobia can ONLY exist in ignorance.
Re:Something which I do not understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple experiment: Blow up a balloon half way but do not tie it off, just pinch the end. This represents the universe. Now take a marker and put dots all over the surface of the balloon. These represent stars, planets, everything. Now start blowing into the balloon again to simulate the universe's continued expansion. You'll notice that all the dots are moving away from each other on all sides. No dot is getting closer to any other dot. This would also be true if you could somehow place dots inside the space of the balloon; and while it would remain true for a dot in the very center of the balloon, it also remains true for every other dot.
So seeing everything moving away from us does not require us to be at the center. We're just another dot...a pale blue one.
Re:Not the first time this has happened (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not the first time this has happened (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that struck me most was how Wesley had trouble getting a slot in the Academy despite being a Wunderkind. In a "post scarcity" world, they should have made more spots for recruits like that. Anyone interested in Starfleet should have been accommodated. Built more ships. Added a new wing to the Academy. Whatever.
The situation with Bashir and Bashir's dad also seemed a bit appalling. Clearly there's still an underclass that's shat upon in the 24th century. The Utopian rhetoric didn't change that.
Any Earth colony was a clear indication that there were people fed up with how things were run back on Euro-Earth.
Re:Ready the Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
Which would hold unless Mulgrew had parts/work. Oh wait, she does! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org]
And I'm sure that she is being well paid in a timely manner by the most ethical industry in the world [techdirt.com] so she will never have to worry about not having a steady income.