What makes the world go 'round?

– or could it be standing still?

Intelligent people who pay attention to world events despise the “spin.” As we watch current events, we sometimes feel that we are on a carnival ride. Round and round we go, twirling in circles. The only difference between reality and our political/social experience seems to be that unlike a carnival ride, our circles seem to grow wider, and the centrifugal force seems more likely to throw us for a loop as each year goes by. Is it time to get off the ride? Could our monetary, political, scientific and spiritual problems have a common root? Could that root actually be the result of spin?

We are victims of a war between good and evil. Principalities and powers, whatever their source, distort reasoning and seek power over us. A picture of God's view of the importance of this struggle is found in the history of the Tower of Babel. The leaders at Babel were building a symbol of centralized power. God favors decentralization. He wants a personal one-on-one relationship with His people. That was His reason for creating the Earth. God is omnipresent: Satan is not. Satan's influence may seem to be everywhere, but he is limited in his power. That is why his control is weak unless he can exert it through a centralized system. He needs a central organization. Evil favors subjectivism. God is objective. Evil tends to use a haze of misunderstanding, “generally accepted facts,” and unclear thinking protected by human authority to centralize power over society.

An example of “generally accepted fact” is the idea that our Earth is spinning. If Satan is the author of “spin” in current events, what would prevent him from getting people to believe spinning is one of the characteristics of Earth? He wants us to believe Earth is ordinary: nothing special about it. He would be pleased to have us look at the Universe, see spinning all around us, and think we are just like the other physical parts of the scheme. God, on the other hand, sees Earth as special. In God's mind, the Earth need not have the same attributes of other parts of His creation.

To examine this problem, we must agree on one basic principle. There is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil. There is logic and there is muddled thinking. Clear thinkers can be tolerant of confused people, but they are not obligated to accept unclear concepts. Cruelty is outmoded unless you work for Homeland Security. So, I will not be cruel to you. I will not subject you to endless formulae and twist your mind with historical facts. However, I'd like to ask you a few piercing questions. If you know somebody smart enough to answer these questions, I will give up my “silly notions” and go back to believing that the surface of the Earth rotates 24,000 miles per day, or 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. Clearly something rotates, but I believe it is not the Earth.

I have no training or expertise in cosmology. However, I can think, and I trust you are able to think clearly as well. Have you stood outside the Universe? If so, you are qualified to debunk this study. What amazes me is that so many pretentious human beings believe they can speak with authority about where the Universe came from, and they call their wild ideas “science.” The scientific method can seldom be applied to thoughts about the beginning or how heavenly bodies relate to each other. Were cosmologists there when the Universe came into being? If so, they are qualified to speak with authority on the subjects covered here. Is there a “control group” available? Can cosmological models match reality? Will cosmologists subject their theories to falsification through redundancy as required by the scientific method? This writer has no such capability and does not pretend to be correct. I doubt any other person has that ability. What I am doing instead is to ask questions and propose ideas I hope will disturb you.

What do we stand on? Dirt. What do we breathe? Air. The weatherman refers to high pressure and low pressure days. The atmosphere has substance. If you hold your hand out the window of a moving car, air fights against your hand. Have you scooped your hand down into a pile of dirt? Does it offer resistance to your hand? If air resists change and if dirt resists change, is it reasonable to assume that a pile of dirt thrown against the air will be resisted by that air? Can we assume the atmosphere is a separate entity from Earth? It is a generally accepted fact that the atmosphere travels at one with the Earth as Earth rotates. This thought is based upon the idea that inertia affects only the starting and stopping of motion. If that is true, anything you throw out your car window would travel right along with you down the road. Inertia rules that what stands still does not want to move and what is moving does not want to stop. However, there is a mid-state inertial force. A moving object impacting anything not attached to it would continually cause that object to seek release from the motion.

There is a rule of physics nobody would deny called “inertia.” When you move a solid against any other substance, surface tension causes inertia to create turbulence. If the Earth moves 1,000 miles per hour at the equator, the air mass we call atmosphere would try to “stay put.” The force exerted against the moving of the Earth's surface would create friction much like that experienced in a hurricane. There would be a consistent wind. Anything standing on the surface of the Earth would be torn up, blown down, flattened to the surface of the Earth or blown along the surface at a rate a little less than the speed of the Earth's spin.

If we can trust the laws of inertia, can we assume that the atmosphere would resist as Earth would swoosh along at five to ten times the speed of a destructive hurricane? If not, why not? If so, tell me why trees are able to stand tall as the speeding surface of Earth tears them against the resistance of air. Tell me how you and I are able to walk down the street without being blown away. Tell me why centrifugal force does not catapult a Mercury automobile, shooting it toward the planet bearing that name.

Movement through air creates wind, and wind is powerful.Years ago our Delano, California, radio station suddenly went silent. The transmitter was two dozen miles from town on a hill more than 2,000 feet above sea level. A 90 mile per hour wind was filling that transmitter with sand. Several inches of sand accumulated in that closed cabinet. As a result, the transmitter had to be discarded. An employee and I drove up the mountain during the storm, but we were blocked by a washed out bridge. As we tried to walk up the steep hill, the wind flattened us to the ground. We had to crawl like frightened buck privates in basic training, flat against the soil of that hill, in order to make it to the top. If the Earth spins at 1,000 miles per hour at the equator, what would keep objects from flying from its surface, when a wind less than a tenth that speed threatened to sail us back to our car? There was no standing up.

If the Earth is spinning at more than ten times the speed that would knock down a standing man, what counter force would allow a person to walk freely on Earth's surface? It seems ridiculous that I was forced to crawl on the ground in a 90 mile per hour wind, but that I can live a normal life -- stand erect – in a condition where the surface of Earth meets the inert atmosphere with stresses between the two impacted by a friction forced upon Earth and air by 1,000 mile per hour tearing.

A scientist from Cornell University was asked about this issue. He replied: “At the equator, the Earth is spinning at 1,000 miles per hour about its axis and moving at 67,000 miles per hour around the Sun. With all this motion, you would expect to feel something, right? Well we don't feel anything because all of the motions are almost completely constant. When you take a really smooth plane or train ride, you don't feel the motion unless the plane/train slows down, speeds up, or hits a bump in the road. So as long as there is constant motion, we don't feel it.” -- Cornell University. http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=665.

Tell that to the people who tried to withstand the constant wind force of Hurricane Katrina. That wind lasted a long time. Those who sought refuge would have told you it “took forever” to die down; yet, they felt it. They were impacted by the force of that wind. Earth movement with five times the force of that hurricane would be felt, and felt – constantly. The Cornell scientist must believe if you move constantly on Interstate 40, you will not feel like you are moving. He suggests if you stay only a minute on a tilt-a-wheel ride, you will feel it, but if you stay on the ride for a week you will not know you are moving. He may be correct about that, as you would have passed out by then. Another contrary view can be found at http://stopthespin.org/why.php. It suggests eventually the speed of spin will result in our being thrown off into space. To quote the unnamed Internet writer, “Consider what happens if you place a coin on the outside of a stopped record and then turn on the record player. Because of centrifugal force, the coin flies off. The Earth's spin is quickening and, similar to the spinning record, all things on the surface of the Earth will soon be flung off.” Can you read those words without laughing out of control? He doesn't believe 1,000 miles per hour tearing between Earth and atmosphere is enough force to create damage. “Just a little more speed and we will fly off into space,” he suggests. Where did he learn logic? If we take centrifugal force seriously, what is there about present conditions that keeps all objects on the 1,000 mile-per-hour Earth from being shot into space? He might reply, “The weight of the gaseous atmosphere does that.” If so, what keeps the atmosphere and Earth from observing inertia? They are subject to tearing at the point where they meet. The Earth would say, “Go, go, go!” The atmosphere would reply, “Stay, stay, stay!” Trees caught in the middle would say, “Splinter and fall.”

A writer at http://www.phy6.org/stargaze/Sframes3.htm was asked: “What would happen here on Earth if the world stopped turning on its axis? What repercussions would we experience?” Here is the writer's answer: “. . . everything on the surface of Earth would still continue its motion, and you and I would be flying through space (not through the air, since the air would share the same motion) at about the speed of sound. H.G. Wells thought about this one first. Read his short story The Man who could Work Miracles. Of course the oceans also would slosh over and flood everything, unless restrained by the same miracle. Any attempt to include real forces that stop the Earth (no miracle) would involve forces so big that the Earth would probably break up, though gravity would ultimately pull it together again.”

That article shows respect for the power of the laws of inertia. In the context of the Earth stopping, if it does rotate, certainly we must agree that there would be catastrophic damage by all “things” on the surface of the Earth continuing to move. But inertial forces work both ways. If an object is moving, it wants to keep moving. If an object is at rest it does not want to move. So, let's assume the surface of the Earth is moving at 1,000 miles per hour. The air “resting” on the Earth will not want to move. It will complain and say, “By inertia, I resist. I shall stay where I am.” Imagine the wind that would generate. Then, explain how it is possible that the Earth rotates on its axis. Nevertheless, the author suggests that air and Earth are a unity, rotating together as though a block of wood spinning on a lathe would not reject water dropped on it; but the water would be rejected. It would splash back in the craftsman's face.

Try this experiment. Have a friend hold a basketball between the index fingers of each hand. Practice spinning that ball. Then gently place an ant on the surface of the basketball, and spin the ball as fast as you can. Imagine what it would be like within the brain of that ant to experience the centrifugal force of that spin. What about the force of 1,000 mile per hour rotation upon the waters of the oceans? Are we to believe the laws of inertia are canceled by oceanic mass? The spin of the Earth would exert an almost incalculable thrust upon the oceans, causing a wall of water to rush west and deposit a continual tsunami upon the unfortunate communities on any eastern coast of any continent.

Just as wind is powerful so is “commonly accepted thought.” Like a salmon struggling upstream to its spawning ground, let us fight against the force of “accepted fact.” Imagine a river flowing at 100 miles per hour. Would a boat in that raging stream use as much fuel navigating downstream as it would to make its way upstream? Imagine a boat could fight the current, it would have to move 200 miles per hour in order to land upstream an hour after it left home. Going downstream, if the boat is moving through water at a hundred miles per hour, an hour later wouldn't it be 200 miles down stream? A river consists of liquid. Air is a gas. Both water and air exert friction.

A boat has to counter the friction of the water. An aircraft must work its way through the friction of air. “Common knowledge” indicates the Earth rotates completely at the rate of about one full revolution per 24 hours. Because the Earth is 24,000 miles in circumference, it must be assumed that the Earth's position, in relationship with our solar system, changes at the rate of a quarter mile per second. The question is: does the Earth move or is the galaxy moving? If we assume the Earth is moving (unless inertia does not apply), an airplane flying from New York to Los Angeles would fly against the motion of the Earth, if it is the Earth that moves. It would mean that for every 1,000 miles the airplane flies high in the atmosphere (not quite free of the friction of air), the Earth would be moving at roughly 1,000 miles in the same direction.

Let's make this easier to understand. For every 500 miles the plane makes its way west, the Earth would cancel that progress and the end result would be that the airplane would arrive 500 miles east of its starting point. Thus, an airplane flying west would have to fly 2,000 miles an hour in order to land an hour later 1,000 miles west of New York City. Turn that around. Given the Earth rotating, an airplane flying east from Los Angeles should progress 1,000 miles in an hour if it simply gets up in the air and suspends itself there. Obviously, this does not happen. Why?

Is it possible that Earth is special? Might it be here for a special purpose? Could it be the nucleus of the Universe? If Earth is standing still, not spinning, and if the spinning symmetry of heavenly bodies is due to their movement, not Earth's, would scientists who send up astronauts need to change their forumulae to calculate locations in space? Would they need a different set of calculations to plan the return of space capsules? Or, if it is true that NASA already operates on the fixed Earth presumption, why do science teachers continue to teach otherwise?

Some common beliefs are factual. Others are not. The strange thing about human nature is that those who are most adamant about their open mindedness (those most dependent on the scientific method), are usually those who often will not discuss views that differ from what they were taught in grade school.

Think about it. Can it be that the Polish scholar Copernicus was wrong? The Ptolemaic explanation of the motions of the planets remained the accepted wisdom until Copernicus proposed a heliocentric view in 1543. Can it be that the Earth does not orbit around the sun? Can it be that Claudius Ptolemaeus, who lived from 83 to 161 AD, had it figured out correctly? Ptolemy's system is more accurate than the Copernican view. The heliocentric formulation did not improve on Ptolemy's until Kepler's Laws were added. Can it be that Darwin would never have been able to support his evolutionary theories without the Copernican model? Is it possible that Marx, who credited Darwin for his success in establishing the Communist view of the world, would never have succeeded in that task if Darwin had not put forward his views? Can it be that the struggles of secularism against Biblical views of society and government would long ago have failed if we just got it straight and kept it straight?

In any discourse, one would seem to be a fool to discard such a suggested hypothesis based only upon the pre-judgment of "commonly accepted thought." If you want to learn more about this view, read the work of Marshall Hall at www.fixedEarth.com. I have checked his credentials. His academic training and life experience should make you stand at attention, though his presentation is unusual and complex. Study his reasoning. He claims that NASA uses a non-moving Earth (no orbit and no rotation) inside its modeling to calculate the most precise data for missions to the moon and Mars.

David Icke has this to say: “Marshall Hall starts off by mentioning that all NASA calculations which should deliver the highest accuracy are based on a non-moving Earth! To interpret this view and collected data from the Universe, one needs to know its reference point, i.e. the position, speed, orbit and axis rotation speed of the Earth. Marshall Hall simply claims proof that the Earth has no rotation around its axis.” (Review by David Icke).

I have countless questions in this article. Born in 1931, I am old enough not to care how ridiculous you believe I am in suggesting that the Earth is standing still. But you might be a lot better off if you give this issue a fresh openminded look. The Biblical view of the Universe just happens to support Ptolemy, not Copernicus. The Bible teaches that God sees the Earth as His special creation. We know hardly anything about God's position, His power, His pre-Earth existence, so we are wise to give authority to His Word, to trust the Bible, and to recognize that when Colossians 1:17 says, “... by him all things consist,” God has to be the one and only trustworthy source of information.

Imagine that you are the Lord, the Creator of the Universe, and your people always get it wrong. You give them a book of directions, and that book among other truths, declares:

Joshua 10:13 “... the sun stood still.”.
1Samuel 2:8 “... the pillars of the Earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them.”
1Chronicles 16:30 “... Fear before him, all the Earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.”
Job 26:7 “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the Earth upon nothing.”
Psalm 19:1, 4-6 “ The heavens declare the glory of God ... In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun ... His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit [orbit]unto the ends of it:”
Psalm 78:69 “... he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the Earth which he hath established forever.”
Psalm 93:1 "The ... world also is established, that it cannot be moved.”
Psalm 96:10 “... the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved.”
Psalm 102:25 “Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the Earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.”
Psalm 104:5 “Who laid the foundations of the Earth, that it should not be removed forever.”
Psalm 104:19 “He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.”
Ecclesiastes 1:5 “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hastens to his place where he arose.”
Isaiah 40:22 “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the Earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent ...”
Habakkuk 3:11 “The sun and the moon stood still in their habitation.”
John 17:24 “Father, I will that they also ... be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”
Hebrews 1:10 “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the Earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:”

These references suggest that a trusting, openminded reading of God's Word would lead a clear thinker to see the Earth as on a foundation, as firmly fixed as though it were built on pillars in its habitation, not to move or to be moved, yet “hung on nothing,” which could be a human understanding of the tension created by magnetic gravitational forces established under the protective tent of heaven. When Joshua needed extra time to fight his battle, he did not pray for the Earth to stop rotating. That would have been a “smooth move” as it would have sent the opposition army flying. Of course, Joshua's soldiers would have suffered the same fate. Instead, he prayed for the sun to stand still. And it did, just as every day the sun “goes down” and hurries to come back to “where he arose,” following an orbital path. Secular scientists have confirmed Joshua's long day actually happened. Bible believers will rest in the faith expressed by Jeremiah 32:17, “Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the Earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee,” along with the 27th verse of that chapter, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?” For detailed information expanding this evidence I recommend http://www.thepeacock.com/Miscellaneous/Does%20the%20Earth%20MOVE.doc created by Ray Swangkee. You could spend many days mining the depths of what he presents.

Imagine how our Creator must feel. His people twist facts and though Ptolemy put the right “spin” on it, in harmony with scripture, Copernicus, worked up his mathematical model, simpler than Ptolemy's, but differing from the Biblical report. According to Marshall Hall, “It nullified observation-backed science, reversed the direction of the moon, established a heliocentric assumption upon which ... [the] paradigm with its billions of years of evolutionism could replace Bible creationism and then replace the God of that Creation with a purely naturalistic/atheistic explanation ... just so long as it isn't ... Biblical.” From there, the unBiblical viewpoint paved the way for the distorted thinking of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Marx, Engles, Keynes and all who would use unclear reasoning to escape dependence upon and accountability to our loving Creator.

What would you think if you observed all this from our Creator's point of view? Would it make you overjoyed with your creation? How about what the Creator must think to see even His most dedicated servants “swallow whole” the wrong view of what He has clearly explained? Some scholars, even scholars who accept Biblical inspiration, believe in spite of the fact the Bible is without error in the original languages and is verbally inspired, nevertheless it sometimes uses “language of appearance,” giving the reader the right to change the meaning to fit the Earth-is-spinning theory. However, Professor Hanson (Tychonian Billetin, S.89, Page 21) responds: “... it is evident that geocentricity [a non-moving Earth] and the inerrant preservation of the Scriptures are intertwined.” (Quote provided by Marshall Hall.)

There are problems with the Earth-stands-still viewpoint. Those who believe the Earth stands still do not deny that rotation is an observable fact. They observe that our solar system rotates around our Earth, and that other bodies in our galaxy rotate in harmony with that pattern, with the far reaches of the Universe being not so far out that their “travel” would require unattainable speeds through space. At this point any sort of speculation is fair, as no observer can hope to break the bonds of our galaxy, but I have wondered if what we see as lights in the night sky, having taken so long to get here could be mere vestiges of long-gone galaxies. There is no use generating headaches over that issue as it is past finding out. However, it is clear that if our solar system rotates around us, the inertial “tearing” would impact the upper atmosphere, where the mass is insignificant and the impact would be minimized.

Anyone who believes in a fixed Earth view will face objections like Foucault's Pendulum, geosynchronous satellites, eclipse phenomena and others. It appears, however, that for every objection I have learned about, there is clear evidence that neutralizzes the objection. The result is that we can scientifically establish the Bible's repeated teaching that it is the sun that moves and not the Earth. Here are a few objections I found in my research. I have placed my suggested answers to the objections in italics.

1.Foucault's pendulum demonstrates the rotation of the Earth; without such rotation there is no reason for the pendulum to rotate its plane of swing. I cannot answer this objection with authority, but my reading includes the allegation that there is a device at the ceiling attachment of the fulcrum that causes its continual motion. Of course, that would mean the device is fraudulent. A pendulum hanging free against a moving Earth should not swing. It would hang stationary a few degrees away from center, with the weight favoring the source of movement. Tie a string to a baseball. Then, hold the top of the string while the ball flows free as you drive down the road. The ball may bobble because of turbulence, but it will not act like a pendulum. Apparently the Foucaul experiment seeks to suggest the Earth is turning first one way on its axis and then another.

2.A non-rotating Earth would require the outer planets and the stars to be moving at excessive (translight?) speeds. Measurements of relative motion between the Earth and the nearer planets indicate that the other planets are not moving fast enough for the Earth to be stationary. This observation seems valid providing the distances to heavenly bodies have been calculated correctly. Could those calculations be mistaken? To learn for sure, you would have to project yourself outside the Universe. Cosmology requires humility, a gift of faith.

3.Differences in escape velocity at the poles vs the equator wouldn't exist on a non-rotating planet. Similarly, satellites in geostationary orbit would be motionless over a non-rotating planet, and would simply fall down. There are obviously rotational forces involved. It would be our solar system rotating, though: not the Earth. Those satellites that do not travel around the Earth are stationary, fixed in position, with no need for engines to adjust their positions. They “stay put.” How do they do that if the Earth is constantly moving beneath them?

4.The Coriolis effect would not exist on a stationary Earth. This is not necessarily true, in that the rotational and gravitational forces of the solar system could be working on the “down the drain” directional pattern, just as we observe.

5.Earthquakes, including those induced by placing explosives in geological fault-lines, can produce measurable changes in the Earth's rotation. If the Earth is in fact stationary, this would mean that events on Earth can instantaneously affect the motions of stars many many light-years away. If a blast on Earth can seem to affect our relationship with our solar system “friends” who is to say what the cause of the observable change might be? If the “rotational pattern” changes could it be that the blast simply moved the Earth a nudge in respect to our relationship with other bodies in our solar system?

6.The orbit of the Earth around the sun is used as a baseline for measuring distance to stars using the parallax method - if the Earth was stationary this ought not to be possible. I cannot address this issue. But it would seem that as long as there is rotation, it would really not matter whether it is the Earth that is rotating or our galaxy around the Earth. If outer space is affected by some sort of rotation why is it that the North Star does not become the South Star, or East or West or Central Star? Instead, it maintains its position in space as related to Earth.

7.The relative frequency of shooting stars before/after midnight indicates that the Earth is both rotating and moving through space. We must agree that there is rotation. The issue is what is rotating, the Earth, or the solar system around Earth? The observational result would be the same.

8.The red shift measured in stars' spectra changes in an annual cycle; if the Earth is not circling the sun, then stars must be constantly accelerating/decelerating in something akin to a 'Mexican wave'. I will let you figure out this one. If you figure it out, you will find the answer relates to “rotation – yes;” but “Earth rotates – no.”

Why does this matter? Secularism and all-that-is-evil in terms of today's education system is rooted in the theory (spelled r-e-l-i-g-i-o-n) of Evolution. Evil political thought in recent centuries was inspired by Marx. Marx claimed inspiration from Darwin's theory. Darwin claimed theories that would be impossible except under the acceptance of Copernican theories. Biblical authority is of little significance unless it bears the characteristic of its Author: it must be trust worthy in its infinite display of knowledge about the subjects with which it deals or it cannot be trusted in terms of any subject, including the promise of salvation and eternal life.

The omnipotent Creator gives us the power to choose. He did not make robots. We can choose to be His companions, or we can choose to shun Him. We can choose to obey Him, but having made this choice, if we are realistic, we will choose to welcome His Grace expressed in the sacrificial death of our Savior on the Cross. We can choose Copernicus over Ptolemy, We can choose science, secular humanism, communism or the Koran over the Bible. We have little power, but we do have the power of choice. We can choose to accept the Biblical description of Earth and the Universe, or we can choose to believe the guesses of cosmological speculators. The choice is yours. You may embrace the spin, or you may get off the carnival ride and live in humility and trust our loving God.