Kate Mulgrew Denounces ‘The Principle,’ But Is The Media Lying About An Intelligent Design Movie?

Kate Mulgrew, who is mostly known for her work on Star Trek: Voyager, has publicly come out and denounced a new documentary called The Principle, which supposedly claims the Earth is the center of the universe as part of an ancient scientific hypothesis called geocentrism. But is the film really about the anthropic principle in relation to Intelligent Design and is the media lying about the real theme in order to dismiss it?

In a related report by The Inquisitr, over the holidays we were treated to an online fight of William Shatner VS Carrie Fisher. Since the latter star won, it’s claimed Star Wars is now officially better than Star Trek. Just don’t tell that to a politician who used Klingon to announce his resignation.

A trailer for the The Principle, as produced by Robert Sungenis, begins with a voiceover from Kate Mulgrew stating: “Everything we think we know about our universe is wrong.” In this case, what the media says is being claimed as wrong is the Copernican model of the solar system, which would turn hundreds of years of scientific work on its head if that were true.

Now that The Principle has been announced to the world, Kate Mulgrew has gone public with how she was duped into narrating it:

“I understand there has been some controversy about my participation in a documentary called THE PRINCIPLE. Let me assure everyone that I completely agree with the eminent physicist Lawrence Krauss, who was himself misrepresented in the film, and who has written a succinct rebuttal in SLATE. I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism. 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.”

The scientist Krauss, who is also featured in the trailer, has also come down hard on the makers of the documentary:

“I have no recollection of being interviewed for such a film, and of course had I known of its premise I would have refused. So, either the producers used clips of me that were in the public domain, or they bought them from other production companies that I may have given some rights to distribute my interviews to, or they may have interviewed me under false pretenses, in which case I probably signed some release. I simply don’t know.”

But are the reports about Kate Mulgrew and what the film is about a complete misrepresentation? So far all the reports on the supposed Mulgrew scandal have latched onto one line in the trailer that briefly mentions geocentrism without giving the full context of the discussion. But the line does mention a conspiracy theory where NASA is supposedly removing any data that is in favor of the geocentrist view.

While the mention of geocentrism is unfortunate, if you actually watch the trailer it seems the film gets its name primarily from the anthropic principle, the idea that the universe was fine-tuned for life. When the YouTube video was posted the description does not even mention geocentrism at all:

“‘The Principle’, destined to become one of the most controversial films of our time, brings before the public eye astonishing results from recent large-scale surveys of our universe — surveys which disclose unexpected evidence of a preferred direction in the cosmos, aligned with our supposedly insignificant Earth.”

Now it’s claimed that Robert Sungenis is a Catholic Holocaust denier who also claims Galileo was wrong, among other things. But his supposed support of geocentrism in this day and age resurrects the real controversies over the Copernican and Ptoleimeic models of the universe. The Ptolemaic system was completely wrong, yet it could be used successfully by ships navigating the seas, though it required many adjustments over the years to make up for its errors. While Galileo rejected the idea of the Earth as the center of the universe, he still believed that the planets moved in perfect circular orbits. In fact, these orbits were elliptical, which is why his resulting data was so skewed and why some in the Catholic church thought he was completely wrong. It was not until Johannes Kepler corrected this mistake that the model actually worked, and even then some people claim Kepler made the sun the center of the solar system based upon mystical astrology beliefs and not observational data.

But I personally doubt that is the point The Principle is trying to make. If you ignore Kate Mulgrew’s denouncement, the film seems to be more along the lines of a cosmological Intelligent Design movie, with the geocentrist mention given meaning only in the overall context of the universe supposedly being created with a purpose for us based upon arguments over cosmological fine tuning. If that’s the case, this would explain why some scientists are already scrambling to denounce it, which is similar to how Richard Dawkins distanced himself from the documentary Expelled after his revealing comments were used to support Intelligent Design.

At the same time, it’s possible Sungenis decided that discussions related to the anthropic principle in cosmology supported his supposed views on geocentrism. If that’s the case, then Mulgrew and Krauss definitely have cause to complain, although I don’t know for certain whether Sungenis is being smeared or if he actually is a full blown geocentrist.

What do you think about the trailer for The Princple? Do you agree with Kate Mulgrew that it misrepresents science?