I have not watched The Privileged Planet, but I like the title. As I understand it, the film explores, in astronomical categories, the so-called Anthropic Principle; the idea that the universe looks tailor made for man. This fits in perfectly with the idea of geocentricity: God has put the Earth at the center physically, but it lies at the center of his attention–and affections–spiritually. Privileged indeed!

Many recent discoveries confirm the geocentric thesis. For example, the Cosmic Microwave Background is perfectly “isotropic”–it looks the same from all directions. The simplest and most natural explanation of this amazing phenomenon is that we really ARE at the center–a conclusion that Hubble despised, and which he tried to escape by embracing the incomprehensible (and irrational) idea of spatial curvature.

Or again, from measuring their “qunatized” red-shifts in every direction, scientists are now forced to admit that quasars and galaxies seem to be situated on concentric shells, shells orbiting (you guessed it) the Earth.

A look at the history of science suggests that the Galileo affair was, in fact, the crucial turning point, when western man abandoned the authority and perspicuity of Scripture in favor of autonomous human reason. The resulting crisis in cosmology paved the way for the deadly doctrine of cosmic evolution and the apostasy of the western intelligentsia from its moorings in the Word of God. The bitter fruit of this is plain for all with eyes to see it.

Perhaps, then, the best way forward is to go back–back to the Copernican crossroads, where we abandoned the cosmological treasures of the Word of God for the empty speculations of sinful man.

I recently watched “The Privileged Planet”, which proposes the theory that it is exactly Earth’s apparent “remote, unimportant” place in the universe that both enables life and makes observation of the universe possible. For example, if we were located within a spiral arm of our galaxy rather than in a relatively unpopulated region, we would have been destroyed by radiation from supernovae long ago, and we could not see much further than a few lightyears because of the density of stellar dust and nearby stars.

The Bible does not teach that God created the orderly universe through a Big Bang followed by eons of cosmic evolution, as this film suggests. Nor does it represent the Earth as a planet orbiting the Sun, or the Sun as orbiting the center of the Milky Way–the testimony of the secular textbooks notwithstanding.

Rather, Genesis teaches that God created the Earth first, stationary, and in the center. Then, on the fourth day, he created the heavenly bodies, all of which revolve–servant-like–around the Earth.

For a sterling scientific defense of the geocentric cosmology of the Bible, see Philip Stott’s excellent book, Vital Questions, and Robert Sungenis’ recent tome, Galileo Was Wrong. My own effort to describe defend biblical cosmology is entitled In Search of the Beginning (Pleasant Word) (www.clr4u.org).

It is good to know that our Lord upholds the universe by the word of his power. However, it is better to know why and how he created it as he did. If this short film awakens a Berean spirit in even one Christian, moving him to see if the Scriptures really do support the cosmological speculations of anti-biblical modern science, then only will it have have served us well.