Geocentrism, anti-Semitism, and the role of Kate Mulgrew in helping Robert Sungenis to roll back the Enlightenment

Kate Mulgrew is a terrible person.

Not only did she attempt to ruin my favorite television show, by willingly participating in the excerable 1979 mystery series Mrs. Columbo, but she’s now lending her voice to a “documentary” project putting forward the preposterous notion that the sun and planets rotate around the earth. Here with more is a clip from RawStory.com.

A new documentary film, narrated by a former Star Trek actress, promotes the long-ago disproven idea that the sun revolves around the Earth.

“Everything we think we know about our universe is wrong,” says actress Kate Mulgrew as she narrates the trailer for “The Principle.”

The film, which is set to be released sometime this spring, was bankrolled in part by the ultra-conservative and anti-Semitic Robert Sungenis, who maintains the blog “Galileo Was Wrong.”

In addition to Mulgrew, who played Capt. Kathryn Janeway in “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Star Trek: Nemeis,” the film features several scientists, including Michio Kaku, Lawrence Krauss, and Max Tegmart.

In the trailer, the scientists discuss how the Earth’s unique characteristics make it well-suited for life, in comparison to other planets.

But Sungenis himself offers the only real bombshell in the two-minute, 20-second trailer.

“You can go on some websites of NASA to see that they’ve started to take down stuff that might hint to a geocentric universe,” Sungenis says.

About one in four Americans believe in geocentrism, which places the Earth at the center of the universe and the sun, planets, and stars revolving around it…

Sungenis, by the way, is perhaps best known for his work to disprove the “myth” that 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust. He’s also written extensively about our government’s faking of the moon landing, and the fact that NASA is responsible for the world’s crop circles. (“It gets everybody talking about UFOs,” he says. But really, all they are doing is getting our minds off the Bible and Christ by making it look like neither are true.”) Oh, and he also believes that the Jews are responsible for 9-11.

Here’s the trailer for his film, The Principle.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, we know that so-called Young Earth Creationists are out there, spreading the belief that the earth is only 6,000 years old. And we know that there are people who actually believe that humans coexisted with dinosaurs, and that evolution doesn’t exist. So why should it be any surprise to learn that there are people out there who believe that God created the earth at the center of the universe? I suppose we should just be thankful that we haven’t yet regressed to the point where a majority of us once again believe that the earth is flat, and that the sun is a golden chariot driven across the heavens by a god.

As for Mulgrew, I realize that she probably just did this for the money, without looking into the men behind it, but, at some point, I feel as though you have to take responsibility for your actions as an adult. And I’m not inclined to give her a pass for this just because she wanted the paycheck. The anti-science movement taking root in America is very real threat to the future of humanity, and we need to do whatever we can to stop it, even if it means calling out actresses like Mulgrew who we might otherwise respect. I can forgive a celebrity who does an ad for something stupid because he or she wants to make an extra million bucks, but I think you cross a line when you start helping ultra-conservative religious fanatics roll back the Enlightenment.

One last thing, don’t be surprised if there are strange notes left in the comments section that don’t quite made sense. You see, I have a weird history when it comes to Mulgrew, and I expect, by bringing her up today, I may reopen some old wounds.

It all started about six months ago, when I made an offhand comment about her on Facebook. It’s a long story, but let’s just say that some people got the impression that I was calling her ugly, when, in fact, I was just noting my dislike of the short-lived 1979 mystery series in which she starred. (According to my friend Peter Falk, the program was produced by the network against his wishes in order to squeeze a little more revenue from the Columbo franchise during a time when he’d left television to work in film.) Anyway, a photo of Murgrew, in character as the woman she portrays in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black, popped up in my newsfeed one day, and I reposted it with a comment about how no one could ever convince me that my favorite television detective would have married her. And this in turn led to a lot of people accusing me of being superficial, etc. I tried to explain myself, and say that the image had nothing to do with my comment, and I would have said the same thing even if she’d been younger, etc., but it was too late. No one wanted to hear what I had to say. I’d shown myself, in their eyes, to be a man who can’t appreciate the beauty of a mature woman, or whatever, and that was that. (In truth, I’m just an obsessive Columbo fan who believes somewhat strongly that, despite all of his comments to the contrary, he never had a wife at all.) So, if you see a weird mix of comments, some from geocentrists and some from women defending Mulgrew’s beauty, that’s what’s going on.

[Teach the controversy. Buy the shirt.]

update: Mulgrew apparently released a comment on Facebook today. “I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism,” the actress said. “More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused.”