CMI on Church Fathers and Geocentrism or Geostasis

I had earlier given an answer to CMI's "refuting absolute geocentrism".*

It was mainly an answer on the scientific points. Here is an answer to the Patristic point, which they began to state like this:

The Church Fathers : However, it is not quite fair for modern geocentrists to quote the early Church Fathers in support. The few Church Fathers who discussed the issue were geocentrists. However, it is not quite fair for modern geocentrists to quote the early Church Fathers in support.

The following four reasons will be given separately and answered each in turn:

CMI

First,

all the pagans of their day also supported geocentrism, so the Church Fathers just reflected common sense, common contemporary scientific ideas, or common use of language. They were hardly making a principled theological opposition to geokineticism.

HGL

All the Pagans, Jews and Church Fathers. Lower down, CMI discusses whether Geokinetism or Heliocentrism was reflecting Pagan errors.

Copernicus had one passing mention of Hermes among other ancient writings: ... If this is a problem, then what about the Apostle Paul quoting pagan poets with approval: Aratus (Acts 17:28), Menander (1 Corinthians 15:33), and Epimenides (Titus 1:12)?

In other words, just agreeing with a Pagan who on some theoogically important point is in error, does not make you in error, if what you are agreeing with is different from a Pagan theological error. We need to disagree with Uranus born from Gaea, we do not need to disagree with Ulysses coming home to Penelope.

Reflecting common sense is not a bad thing.

According to Council of Trent, the unanimity of Church Fathers is enough to be a theologically principled point in itself.

CMI

Second,

they were influenced by the faulty translation of the raqia’ in the available Greek and Latin translations.

HGL

Why would they be that?

Why would the Bible be inerrantly available to only Hebrews in this time?

Were all Church Fathers discussing geocentrism also discussing raqia / stereoma / firmamentum?

How many of the ones who discussed both were drawing explicit conclusions from this?

If they weren't, even if the translations stereoma and firmamentum were faulty (not granted** on my part), why would this be relevant for their geostatic views?

CMI

Third,

their geocentrism was Ptolemaic Geocentrism, while modern geocentrists actually hold the Tychonian (or Tychonic) hybrid geo-heliocentrist view (see below). Since no Church Father held this modern view, how can one quote them in support?

HGL

Ptolemaic Geocentrism is only the case for the ones who held a Greek world view, those who considered or who have been thought to consider the Earth Flat certainly preferred a Hebrew one (if not OT, at least emerging in early Talmudic times) which is incompatible with Ptolemaic Geocentrism.

Furthermore, key sentences are indeed common to both or all three systems.

Like Sun actually moving each day around Earth.

CMI

Fourth,

the first genuinely intellectual challenge to absolute geocentrism came from devout adherents to a broadly biblical world view.

HGL

Galileo was aware of how his view could conflict with certain passages in Joshua and Psalms, if only because St Robert Bellarmine pointed them out.

He had before being summoned to defend his book written to Christine of Tuscany:

Hence I think that I may reasonably conclude that whenever the Bible has occasion to speak of any physical conclusion (especially those which are very abstruse and hard to understand), the rule has been observed of avoiding confusion in the minds of the common people which would render them contumacious toward the higher mysteries. Now the Bible, merely to condescend to popular capacity, has not hesitated to obscure some very important pronouncements, attributing to God himself some qualities extremely remote from (and even contrary to) His essence. Who, then, would positively declare that this principle has been set aside, and the Bible has confined itself rigorously to the bare and restricted sense of its words, when speaking but casually of the earth, of water, of the sun, or of any other created thing? Especially in view of the fact that these things in no way concern the primary purpose of the sacred writings, which is the service of God and the salvation of souls—matters infinitely beyond the comprehension of the common people.

This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is in­exorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature's actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible. Perhaps this is what Tertullian meant by these words: “We conclude that God is known first through Nature, and then again, more particularly, by doctrine; by Nature in His works, and by doctrine in His revealed word.” (5)

Letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany
http://www.inters.org/galilei-madame-christina-Lorraine

So, he was a proponent of NOMa, Non-Overlapping Magisteria.

It seemed he could not defend his position without it.

CMI rightly condemns NOMa.

Also, the article does not involve any discussion of Distant Starlight problem, to which Geocentrism and less important distances is a very elementary problem solver, if available. One commenter brought it up and Robert Carter redirected him to the Chapter 5 of The Creation Answers Book, which very correctly refutes the "starlight created in transit" by reference to novas, but then tries to solve the problem by relativity.

Which is if available at all at least a very much less direct and elementary answer than smaller (not really small, except compared to God) universe and this implying one step in cosmic distance ladder being wrong, and the step in cosmic distance ladder involving parallax as distance measure by presuming heliocentrism is a fair candidate.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Rogation Tuesday
28.V.2019

* Why the Universe does not revolve around the Earth
Refuting absolute geocentrism
by Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati Published 12 February 2015; last update 24 April 2019
https://creation.com/refuting-absolute-geocentrism

** Raqia is derived from raqa meaning stamp, spread out by stamping, so while one can say it refers to an expanded object, it also refers to a "hammered" one. If things are hammered to stay firmly together, "firmament" is as as good an idea as "expanse". I checked in Strong.