PLURALITY OF WORLDS

ZETETIC COSMOGONY:
OR
Conclusive Evidence
THAT THE WORLD IS NOT A
ROTATING—REVOLVING—GLOBE,
BUT
A STATIONARY PLANE CIRCLE.
By Thomas Winship
1899

 start here

(Post 26/47)

PLURALITY OF WORLDS.

Sir David Brewster, in his "More Worlds than One," says:

"It was not till the form and size and motions of the earth were known and till the condition of the other planets was found to be the same, that analogy compelled us to believe that THESE PLANETS MUST BE INHABITED LIKE OUR OWN..." "The doctrine was maintained by almost all the distinguished astronomers and writers who have flourished SINCE THE TRUE FIGURE OF THE EARTH WAS DETERMINED . . . . ." "Under these circumstances the scientific world has been greatly surprised at the appearance of a work entitled 'Of a Plurality of Worlds,' the object of which, like that of Maxwell, is to prove that our earth is the only inhabited world in the universe, while its direct tendency is to ridicule and bring into contempt the grand discoveries in sidereal astronomy by which the last century has been distinguished."

In "Sun, Moon, and Stars," by A. Giberne, page 10, the following is found:

"Just as our sun is a star, and stars are suns, so our earth or world is a planet, and planets are worlds." "The planets are worlds, more or less like the world we live in."

And in his "History of the Conflict between Religion and Science," Dr. Draper tells us that:

"If each of the countless myriads of stars was a sun surrounded by revolving globes, peopled with responsible beings like ourselves; if we had fallen so easily and had been redeemed at so stupendous a price as the death of the Son of God, how was it with them? Of them were there none who had fallen or might fall like us? Where, then, for them, could a Saviour be found?"

IF the world be the globe of popular belief; IF the sun be a million and a half times the size of the earth-globe and about 100,000,000 miles distant from it; IF the stars are worlds and suns, distant many millions of miles and vastly larger than even our own sun; IF the earth was a piece of molten rock shot off from the sun; IF the moon was a piece fractured off from the earth; THEN it is a very proper question to ask, "Are these mighty globes in space Inhabited?" If so, are their inhabitants of a higher or lower order than the inhabitants of this globe?

Sir D. Brewster says that the plurality of worlds rests upon a few simple facts, and the foregoing are said to be some of these facts; but it was not till the form and size and motions of the earth were known that ANALOGY compelled the belief that the planets must be inhabited worlds like ours.

I have already shown that those who believe modem astronomy, and, by consequence, the plurality of worlds, are of all men most ignorant as to the shape of the world they live on; that it has none of the terrific motions attributed to it; and that, unlike celestial bodies, it is a terrestrial structure, a stationary plane.

The following quotation from "A Treatise on Astronomy," by E. Henderson, L.L.D., F.R.A.S., shows that the whole of this supposed analogy is based upon conjectures, and must therefore be rejected.

"The great probability is that every star is a SUN far surpassing ours in magnitude and splendour; they all shine by their own native light. . . . . . What a most powerful SUN that little star Vega must be, when it is 53,977 times larger than our sun. . . . . . The stars thus being SUPPOSED to be suns it is EXTREMELY PROBABLE that they are the centres of other systems of worlds, round which may revolve a numerous retinue of planets and satellites. Therefore, there must be a plurality of suns, A PLURALITY OF WORLDS."

The plurality of worlds, therefore, is based on assumptions so contrary to known possibilities, that the "grand idea" must be thrown into the waste-paper basket.

The supposed great distance of the sun from the earth is the main cause of the delusions of the learned as to the so-called worlds above us being inhabited.

This distance is based on a fictitious idea, that of the revolution of the earth round the sun; which I have already shown to be unconditionally false. The sun is a small body of light and near the earth, therefore all the star distances are wrong, their sizes and all other suppositions.

The plurality of worlds is only the logical sequence of belief in the earth being a rapidly revolving globe. But this has been shown to be ridiculous in the extreme. Evidence, apart from any theory has been presented which entirely nullifies such an assumption, and renders it absurd; showing that such an unnatural idea has not a vestige of natural fact to support it. The grand doctrine of the plurality of worlds, therefore, like all the other grand doctrines of modern astronomy, must be consigned to oblivion. When it can be shown that this world is a globe and by what known principle the inhabitants can hang on to the swinging ball, like the house fly crawls along the ceiling, it will be quite time enough to talk about the plurality of worlds.