8 Totally Batsh*t Things People Actually Believe

8. Geocentrism

In a survey by the National Science Foundation, 25% of the 2,200 Americans surveyed didn't know that the Earth goes round the Sun (before you get too smug, Europeans fared even worse in similar tests). Now, some of this might be plain old ignorance, or even just misreading the question, but there are those out there who genuinely believe that the heliocentric view of the solar system is, at best, wrong and, at worst, some kind of bizarre conspiracy.

These geocentrists believe that the Earth sits stationary at the centre of our solar system, and the sun and other planets orbit around it. The thing is that it is sort of defensible position, inasmuch as the "centre" of anything in an infinite universe is mostly relative. However, there is also no such thing as a "stationary" object in the universe, and the idea of geocentrism just doesn't work with the maths that allows us to send probes and people into space.

The thing is about geocentrism is that, yes, you can kind of make it work, but in order to do this, they've had to come up with unbelievably complicated models for the solar system, just to make the observations fit. When you boil most of the geocentrists' arguments down, you almost always end up at scripture eventually. Despite the fact that at least some Ancient Greeks knew that the Earth goes round the Sun, the debate kicked off big style when Galileo and the Catholic Church fell out about the whole thing (and by "fell out" I mean "systematic harassment and suppression"), and it is this disagreement with scripture that essentially drives the whole, inexplicable debate.

The literalists argue that if the bible was wrong about cosmology, then it can no longer be considered the infallible word of God. Sounds pretty reasonable, until they go on to conclude that this must mean that the science is wrong, the Sun goes around the Earth and the bible stays nice and unimpeachable. So close.