Category: Science

Recently the Register asked me to review The Principle—a documentary that promotes geocentrism, or the idea that the earth is at the center of the universe.

This film is much smaller than most of those the Register reviews. Indeed, at the time of this writing it has only reported $16,826 at the box office—half of which was made in a single theater on its opening weekend.

But the film is being disproportionately discussed in conservative Catholic circles, so I agreed.

Like any documentary, this one can be looked at more than one way. One perspective concerns the production values and how well it is executed. Another concerns the content of the film and how successfully it argues its case.

In this piece, we will look at how well The Principle works as a documentary film. In a subsequent piece, we will look at its content.

So how does it work cinematically?

It’s not the worst documentary I’ve ever seen.

That would be Overlords of the UFO (1976). You can watch it here. It’s hilarious.

While The Principle is better than Overlords of the UFO in many ways, the two have at least one thing in common, which is that they contain footage of people who were profoundly embarrassed by the film and who subsequently disassociated themselves with the project.

In the case of Overlords of the UFO, physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman was horrified by the film’s use of footage from an interview he gave to a television station, making it appear that he was in support of the loony ideas promoted by the producers.

In the case of The Principle, multiple figures distanced themselves, including physicists Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Julian Barbour, and mathematician George Ellis (see here, for example).

Also disassociating herself from the project was actress Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager), who read the narration for the film (see her comments on her Facebook fan page).

Setting aside the fact that multiple individuals associated with the film feel that they were misled by the producers and misrepresented in the film, how does it hold up cinematically?

Some have said that they were impressed by the production values, and these are not bad.

In addition to the interview segments, a good deal of the film is made up of stock footage and outer space photographs. These days, though, anybody can get some stock footage from Shutterstock and some Hubble telescope images, load them into Final Cut Pro, put pre-existing music under them, and produce montages of the same caliber.

There are some video effects that were produced specially for the film, and many of these do look good.

What looks less good are the two-dimensional animations produced for the film, particularly those depicting historical figures. To produce these, illustrations and photographs of well-known historical figures (Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Albert Einstein, etc.) were redrawn or retouched and then animated in a clunky way that is basically a step above the cutout animations that Terry Gilliam produced for Monty Python.

These animations in The Principle move in ways that are unintentionally comical.

Sometimes, though, the filmmakers attempt comedy with them, but the result is disappointing and, in one case, comes off as juvenile.

This happens in a sequence in which astronomer Edwin Hubble is depicted sitting at a telescope, smoking a pipe. The animation awkwardly leans forward and back, observing distant galaxies. Then the narration indicates that Hubble’s observations were consistent with or suggestive of geocentrism, but he couldn’t accept this fact.

At this point the animation of Hubble gets an absurdly exaggerated expression of shock on its face. It falls over backward in its chair, and the still-smoking pipe spins around in mid air, defying the law of gravity, before it too plummets out of frame.

Classy, guys.

How does the film’s pacing work?

It begins with a general discussion of “the Copernican principle” (the idea that the earth is not the center of the solar system or the universe) and hammers the idea that this theory suggests that there is nothing special about mankind.

It then backs up to give a short history of astronomy and astrophysics and how they moved through different phases, leading up to the present. This segment depicts science and faith initially being in harmony, then diverging, and now possibly moving back together.

In the end it suggests that there are reasons to question (read: reject) the Copernican principle and that science and faith may have a more fruitful encounter than they did following the Galileo incident.

This is the kind of structure that you would expect in a film of this sort, but the timing in the film is problematic. With a run time of about 90 minutes, the film seems simultaneously too short and too long. Many viewers will find it confusing and boring.

It will come across as confusing because it is too short to adequately explain all the concepts it throws at the viewer.

Unless the viewer is a scientist or—at least—someone who reads science books for fun (as I do, including multiple books by Lawrence Krauss and Michio Kaku, both of whom were interviewed for the film), he will have a hard time keeping up with many of the concepts in the film.

Lots of terms get thrown around—either with no definition at all or with a definition so brief that a normal viewer will not be able to absorb and remember it.

Multipoles? Dipoles? Octopoles? Ecliptic? Isotropic? Anisotropies?

These are not terms that will be familiar to most viewers, and if you want the viewer to understand what is being said, you need to slow things down and really explain these terms so that the viewer can grasp and remember them.

The film doesn’t do that, and so significant sections of the film will come across as confusing and impossible to follow for the normal viewer.

It’s not that they don’t make an effort to explain some of the terms. In fact, there is a goofy holographic-computer-interface-dictionary-lady-who-speaks-with-an-apparent-British-accent who pops up occasionally to define a term for us, but it is not enough for a viewer not already familiar with the jargon used in the film.

With significant sections of the film being unintelligible to a typical viewer and with the film at 90 minutes running time, many will feel parts of it boring.

Thus, in a way, the film seems too long.

It either needed to cut these sections and deliver a shorter, more intelligible film, or it needed to expand its length—explain the concepts involved—and become a more intelligible miniseries.

Artistically, judged simply as an example of documentary filmmaking, The Principle might get * * 1/2 stars out of five.

In the next post, we will look at the content of The Principle and how well it stands up.

 
Creationism, Evolutionism, and Intelligent Design are three of the major positions on the question of how we got here.

What’s the difference between these positions?

That seemingly straightforward question proves surprisingly controversial.

Let’s take a look at it . . .

 

The Basic Question

The basic question at issue in the contemporary origins debate is whether or not the world was created.

It could be tempting to simply put participants in the discussion into two groups—creationists and evolutionists—and leave it at that.

Some on both sides of the issue would like to do exactly that.

In fact, some of the people who most readily identify themselves as creationists or evolutionists often speak as if these are the only two options.

 

Name Calling

Some creationists dismiss everyone who doesn’t hold their view as an “evolutionist” (using this term in a negative sense).

Some evolutionists dismiss everyone who thinks that the world was created as a “creationist” (using this term in a negative sense).

When this happens, the two camps are using prejudicial language. They’re calling each other names, and that doesn’t advance the discussion.

They’re also distorting the issue, because there are clearly middle positions on this question. In fact, there’s a spectrum of them.

 

The Spectrum

It’s possible to divide up that spectrum in different ways. In fact, it’s possible to divide it into a mind-numbing array of fine-tuned categories.

That gets unwieldy, though, and it seems that, today, most participants in the origins discussion would say that they advocate one of four major positions:

• Creationism
• Intelligent Design
• Theistic Evolution
• Atheistic Evolution

How can we describe these positions?

 

Creationism

KEEP READING.

St. Paul tells us:

“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21-22).

Does this mean that there was no death–of any kind–before the Fall of Man?

Would that mean that no animals, plants, or microbes died?

What about animals that are carnivores?

Were lions vegetarians? How about alligators? Or sharks?

Let’s take a look at the subject . . .

 

A Key Concept

To set the stage, I need to introduce a key concept: entropy.

Entropy is a very important concept in the sciences. Put simply, entropy is the tendency of things to run down or break down over time.

Systems that are subject to entropy tend to dissipate energy and lose organization over time.

Entropy is the reason why the stars shine, and it’s the reason that you get hungry.

As stars burn their fuel, the heat and light they produce spreads out into the universe. It dissipates.

If stars weren’t subject to entropy then all the energy they generate wouldn’t dissipate. It would stay bundled up in the star.

As your body burns fuel (food), you dissipate energy, too–partly in the form of body heat. That’s why you need to eat, to replenish your body’s fuel.

If you weren’t subject to entropy, your energy would never flag, and you wouldn’t need to eat.

Now here’s the thing . . .

 

The Whole Material Universe Is Entropic

The entire physical universe, so far as we can tell, is entropic, or subject to entropy.

All material systems run down or break down over time.

A seeming, partial exception is life. Living things, in some respects, seem to gather energy and create organization.

Thus some have tried to define life in terms of a kind of weird anti-entropy.

But the exception is, at best, partial, because all living things die. Ultimately, entropy overcomes every living organism.

So what about death before the Fall?

And what about our prospects for immortality after the General Resurrection?

 

St. Thomas Aquinas on Material Things

Although the term “entropy” hadn’t been coined in his day, St. Thomas Aquinas recognized that it was the tendency of all material things to break down over time.

In his day, they referred to this as the tendency of material things to “corrupt” and to the idea that material things are “corruptible.”

It’s the same basic insight people have today; they just used different language to express it.

Given that man has a material body, how does Aquinas explain the idea that death entered the world through sin?

 

Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death!

Aquinas’s basic answer is that, because man’s body is material, it would have a natural tendency to run down and break down–to “corrupt”–over time.

Thus, in that sense, death is natural to man.

The human body will eventually die . . . unless something stops that from happening.

Nature can be supported and elevated by grace, though, and so it is within the power of God’s omnipotence to prevent death.

And God chose to do this. He gave man the grace needed to avoid dying, but we lost this grace through the Fall.

Aquinas writes:

Now God, who is the author of man, is all-powerful, wherefore when He first made man, He conferred on him the favor of being exempt from the necessity resulting from such a matter: which favor, however, was withdrawn through the sin of our first parents.

Accordingly death is both natural on account of a condition attaching to matter, and penal on account of the loss of the divine favor preserving man from death [Summa Theologiae, II-II:164:1 ad 1; cf. I:97:1].

This also explains how we will be immortal after the General Resurrection: After the General Resurrection, God will restore to us the grace needed to prevent our bodies from breaking down over time.

Indeed, he will do far more than that.

 

What About the Animals?

Hypothetically, God could have done the same thing for the animals (and all other life forms) that he did for us: He could have made them initially immune to death and then removed this grace when man fell.

But did he?

Aquinas doesn’t think so.

He writes:

In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals.

But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man’s sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon.

Nor does Bede’s gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some.

Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals [Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2].

Aquinas thus holds that it was not all death that entered the world through man’s sin, but human death.

In his view, animals could and did kill and eat each other before the Fall.

Can we do anything to test this view?

 

Good Morning, Starshine

You have to be careful looking to Genesis with an eye toward mining scientific ideas out of it.

The purpose of the creation accounts in Genesis is to present the work of the Creator in a religious and theological way rather than in a scientific way.

Above all, this [creation] text has a religious and theological importance. It doesn’t contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm or positive contributions of substantial interest [General Audience, Jan. 29, 1986].

But it is worth noting that, even on a highly literalist reading, Genesis does envision the pre-Fall universe in a way that suggest the existence of death for non-humans.

First, there is the fact that the sun and the stars are shining before the Fall.

Second, there is the fact that God gives Adam and Eve permission to eat the various fruits found in the Garden of Eden (except for one). Thus, Adam and Eve needed food.

Both of these facts indicate that the pre-Fall universe was subject to entropy.

Living things in the pre-Fall universe would have had the same tendency to run down, break down, and die–unless supported by God’s grace, as in the case of man.

 

Death Visits the Plant Kingdom

We can go even further, though, because of God’s permission to eat fruit.

That means death. Specifically, the death of the fruit’s flesh (and its seeds, if those get chewed up, too).

The fruit’s flesh (and its seeds) are alive. They’re made of living cells.

The seeds are even little fruit embryos, which makes them independent organisms.

Of course, they aren’t human.

They aren’t rational beings, so they don’t have rights or a right to life, and it’s okay to eat them.

But they do die when we eat and digest them.

The same thing is true of other plant matter we eat.

 

Dinosaur Death Before the Fall?

The subjection of the pre-Fall universe to entropy and the existence of plant death before the Fall have significant implications for the question of animal death.

We know from these that, because of entropy, every living organism (including animals) would die unless supported by grace.

We also do not have any indication that life forms other than man had access to the grace needed for immortality (the tree of life). Nothing is said about them eating from it.

And we know, because of the permission to eat plants, that some living things did die, either on the level of cells (as in the case of a fruit’s flesh) or on the case of an organism (in the case of a seed).

Absent any particular reason to group animals with humans rather than plants, one would naturally expect animals to have died prior to the Fall as well.

That includes dinosaurs.

This conclusion seems reinforced by the fact that some of them are carnivores.

And it seems abundantly reinforced by the fossil record.

Given what we now know, it looks like Aquinas was right: It was human death, not all death, that is the result of the Fall of Man.

 

Back to St. Paul

This seems to be what St. Paul had in mind in the passage we began with.

Note that he spoke in terms of human death and resurrection–of death and resurrection coming to those who are “in Adam” and “in Christ” (“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive”).

The Christian faith does not envision animals fitting those descriptions.

St. Paul himself thus seems to be speaking of human death entering the world.

The same is true of the parallel passage in Romans 5:

Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned [Rom. 5:12].