Seems the good folk at the Ptolemaic Institute got their britches in a bunch over the recent Nightline expose, which reported that there was no actual controversy among reputable astronomers as to whether the sun revolves around the earth, or vice versa.Nightline's main point appears to be that there really isn't any scientific controversy over Copernicanism and intelligent epicycles. How do they know this? They checked with several Copernicanists, who told them so!
OK, I confess. I made it up, kind of. BUT -- and like my own, it's a huge one -- I challenge anyone to show me how my parodic extrapolation (not a good band name, unlike, say, Disembodied Anus) fails in the slightest iota of parallelism, except that the Catholic church was among the last earthly entities to accept "Copernicanism."
via Pharyngula (oughta be a street in Rome, no?)
Late Update: Swift himself would've had trouble satirizing these folk; it turns out they're out there, only they call themselves the Association for Biblical Astronomy (originally the Tychonian Society, though -- pretty close to Ptolemy, doncha think?) From their manifesto:
All scientific endeavor which does not accept this revelation from on high [ie, ...his* infallible, preserved word, the Holy Bible] without any reservations, literary, philosophical or whatever, we reject as already condemned in its unfounded first assumptions.
Quoth the Lord to the scientist (at least according to these bozos): Who you gonna believe, My good Book or your lyin' eyes, ears, other senses, and power of reason?
* HEY, wait a minute! Shouldn't that be His infallible etc? Now let's see who's going to roast eternally.
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