Eclipsing reason

Could it be Satan?

So today, Aug. 21, 2017, the various movements of sun, moon, and earth created an alignment such that for a portion of earth, the sun's light was blocked completely or partially. It's kind of a cool phenomenon that doesn't come around very often, so it's understandable that people would be a little excited.

But the religious-minded don't simply see an interesting by-product of celestial mathematics. The eclipse must be a sign for something. The evidence for this: why, people in the Bible thought that eclipses were signs from their god.

Even though the eclipse was predicted a looooong time ago, Anne Graham Lotz (daughter of Billy Graham) thinks it's another sign of god's judgment  and she tacked on some talk about America's sins. "If it is a warning from God, then I think we need to take that seriously and heed it," she writes. If? I'll go with there's no warning, there's no god, just enjoy the eclipse, seriously people.

There's more of this kind of dreck out there: people amazed about the size and distance of the sun and moon so that an eclipse is possible, the eclipse is a sign of Satan... (sigh) I can't go through much more of this.

Humans are really good at making up stuff. We correlate events that have no real connection, mistake our assumptions for truth, and decide we are correct without any real evidence. It's very easy from "I think this happened..." to "This happened..."

It should go without saying that eclipses are not the mysteries they once were. We can calculate the movements of our solar system, and we know with precision when eclipses are going to occur. You can go on timeanddate.com and find out all kinds of interesting celestial events will occur.

At the time people wrote the Bible, there were also interpretations of bird flight patterns, something we don't tend to lend credence to these days. Basically, it seems "god" was somewhere up there in the firmament (keep in mind, the firmament was said to keep out the waters above...), and he would put signs there because it was convenient. Not sure why in the 21st Century we would still think eclipses are anything more than an interesting cosmic geometry.

It's hard, to my mind, to think that an all-powerful, all-knowing god would use easily calculated movements of spheres in space to communicate anything. Complicating the whole thing, there is no agreement about what the event really means. Is it just a sign of light overcoming dark, therefore God overpowering Satan? Is it a sign of his judgment? Is it just to show the fine-tuning of the universe? If your answers don't converge on a common idea, we really can't believe anything, especially because your evidence is "I said so." But, hey, guys, we're totally in the End Times and any day now Jesus is coming back.

I can't believe I am reading such ignorant ramblings in 2017. Without any evidence for a god, there's no reason to think the eclipse is anything more than a fun phenomenon we get to see here from time to time. There's no reason to entertain any "story" by one of these religious yackers looking to remain relevant.