The end of the world as we know it

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we're all gonna die.

Sorry if that's kind of a downer of a way to start your morning.  But it's best to face facts, you know?

Some time in the next week, according to multiple sources, god is going to play a game of cosmic Whack-a-Mole with the Earth.  Never mind that none of those sources have any apparent understanding of astronomy, nor necessarily even contact with reality.  Just believe 'em anyway, because what do those cocky fancy-pants scientists know, anyway?

First we have Pastor John Hagee, whose motto is "Jesus accepts MasterCard."  This guy has made a career out of passing along the cheerful message that god thinks we're all sinners and we're doomed to the fiery furnace and the only way to escape our (well deserved) fate is if we make a generous donation to John Hagee Ministries so that John Hagee can purchase another Yacht for Christ.  (Why Christ needs a yacht remains to be seen.  Didn't the dude walk on water?)

This time, though, god is serious, and he's going to show us how pissed he is at our iniquity through an unequivocal sign: a lunar eclipse this Sunday.  Or, as Hagee likes to put it, a "blood moon."  Because the moon turns kind of red during an eclipse, which means blood.  And god and prophecy and hell and all the rest, so you damn well better give generously, or else.

Is it just me, or does Pastor Hagee look really... happy about the whole thing?  You get the impression that here's a guy who is just thrilled that Rivers Will Run Red With The Blood Of Unbelievers.  After all, the unbelievers don't donate to John Hagee Ministries, so fuck 'em, right?

But it isn't just Hagee saying that we're in trouble.  A lot of folks down in Costa Rica are up in arms over the appearance a couple of days ago of a weird cloud, because there's obviously no other explanation for this other than the imminent end of the world.

Eladio Solano, meteorologist at Costa Rica's National Meteorological Institute, said the phenomenon is rare but perfectly natural.  The iridescence, he says, is caused by the refraction of light through high ice crystals in the atmosphere, and has happened before without the world ending.  But what does he know?  He's just a scientist.  We all know it's better to get your information from superstition based on a Bronze-Age understanding of the universe.

Then we have the fact that the physicists over at CERN are firing up the Large Hadron Collider today, and the rumor has started that they're trying to "recreate the Big Bang."  The result will be that the new Bang will rip the current universe apart from the inside out.  And/or create a black hole.  Either way, we're pretty much fucked.

Because that's what all scientists are after, right?  When they're not busy distracting you from the actual meaning of weird clouds over Costa Rica, they're plotting to destroy the world.  Why else would they have gone into science?

And if that wasn't enough to ruin your morning, add to that the fact that Mercury goes into retrograde starting on Thursday.  And this means that all hell is going to break loose on Earth, even though (1) it's only an apparent backwards movement because of the relative motion of Mercury as seen from Earth, (2) the movement of a planet against a backdrop of impossibly distant stars has zero to do with anything happening down here, and (3) Mercury goes into retrograde three times every year, and the world hasn't ended any of those times.

But never mind all that logic and rationality stuff.  This time it's gonna happen.  Blood moons + weird clouds + LHC + Mercury retrograde = really bad shit.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that.

In fact, it's better if you're not a scientist at all.

Signs in the skies

This Friday is the Vernal Equinox, known colloquially as the "First Day of Spring," a designation we here in upstate New York find grimly amusing, given that we can still get snow in mid-May.  Be that as it may, the day does seem like a turning point, a Day of Significance, a step toward shorter nights and warmer weather.

This year, it's also the day some of us will get to see another landmark natural phenomenon: a total solar eclipse.  Unfortunately, it will only be visible in areas even further north than I am.  The path of totality will spiral counterclockwise from the southern tip of Greenland, heading between Iceland and Scotland, passing over the Faeroe Islands and Svalbard, and finally ending near the North Pole.

[image courtesy of photographer Luc Viatour and the Creative Commons]

And there's nothing like a coincidence to get the apocalyptoids babbling away like mad.  Over at the hyper-religious wacko website World Net Daily, we find out that this is a sign of the End Times.  How many signs that The End Is Near does this make, now?  I haven't kept track.  Probably better that I didn't waste my time counting, because they keep coming even though the Earth is showing no sign of ending.

But they don't let a little thing like a 0% success rate slow them down at all.  "The North Pole can’t really be called the territory of any particular nation or people," [Root Source Ltd.'s co-founder Bob] O’Dell said.  "This is likely a message from God to the entire world."  The article puts a particular emphasis on the fact that this confluence of events only happens once every 100,000 years, which is kind of funny because World Net Daily keeps telling us that the Earth is (1) only 6,000 years old, and (2) is going to end soon, so you'd think that they wouldn't worry much about the timing of the event either way.

But they go on to tell us how significant this all is anyhow:

Pastor Mark Biltz, author of “Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs,” sees a heavenly warning in the consequences of the eclipse, especially for the northern Europeans, who will be most affected. 

In an exclusive interview with WND, Biltz explained, “In Jewish tradition, a total solar eclipse is a warning to the Gentiles and a sign of judgment on the nations. When we look at where the darkness will be, it will be in northern European countries like England and Sweden where we see the rise of Islam and anti-Israel sentiment. Europeans especially should take heed.” 

Biltz also sees significance in the timing of the solar eclipse. 

“An event of this magnitude at the very beginning of the religious new year demands attention. As the Bible tells us, there will be signs in the heavens on the feast days, and this is a very significant sign on a critical day.

Given that the "very significant sign" is mostly going to be visible to polar bears, you have to wonder who god was trying to send a message to.  But He Works In Mysterious Ways, and all that sort of stuff.

And of course, it's not the only sign we're going to be given this year.  There's also the whole "blood moon" thing, better known to sane people as a "lunar eclipse:"

"Only a few weeks after this total solar eclipse, there with be a blood moon over Passover," [Biltz] said. "If the total solar eclipse is a sign to the gentiles, this will be a sign to the Jewish people.

"This comes at a time when American aid for Israel has become an important political issue in the United States. But Israelis know they cannot put their survival in the hands of one who wishes their demise."

So there you are, then.  Two celestial omens and a pot shot at President Obama, all in the same article.

What makes me wonder even more about this worldview, however, is how they can think eclipses are a portent in the first place.  We now can predict eclipses centuries into the future; they occur regularly, often several a year (although extended total solar eclipses are less common).  They're no more mysterious than all three of a clock's hands landing simultaneously on the 12 twice a day.

So the whole apocalyptic prophecy thing implies that if god wanted to, he could make the eclipses happen on a different day, that somehow the timing is a warning of imminent catastrophe, not a purely mechanical outcome of the movements of the Earth and Moon.  Or is it the other way around, that god is required to begin the End Times right after Friday's solar eclipse, that he's been sitting up there twiddling his thumbs until the planets all align?

Either way, it seems like they're implying that god doesn't have much choice in the matter, that either (1) he couldn't make the eclipse occur on a different day even if he wanted to, or (2) he is being forced to bring the world to an end by the position of some random astronomical objects.  Which kind of makes you question how almighty these people think he is.

Of course, I realize that this is not about logic.  It's about putting the fear of the lord into the hearts of the true believers.  And it's also about money; the main promoter of the whole "blood moon" thing is our old pal John Hagee, the multi-millionaire pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.  Shut off your brains and open your pocketbooks, that's Reverend Hagee's motto.

So anyway.  Don't cancel your plans for April, because I'm pretty damn sure that the solar eclipse isn't warning us of anything but the fact that the Moon goes around the Earth and sometimes blocks the light from the Sun, which we knew anyway.  And the Spring Equinox isn't about anything but axial tilt and the Earth going around the Sun, which most of us also knew, and which will eventually bring warmer weather even to the "four-season climates" like upstate New York.  I hear that this year, summer is scheduled for the second Thursday in July.  I can't wait.

Blood moons and End Times

I would have thought that most of us knew enough science, and had discarded enough superstition, to be past the "Look For Portents In The Sky" approach to knowledge.

Apparently I'm wrong.

The next couple of years are going to be unusual in having four total lunar eclipses, the first of which happened two days ago.  (Subsequent ones will occur in October 2014, April 2015, and September 2015.)  Which is quite spectacular and cool, although I must protest to the Weather Gods (speaking of indulging in superstition) for sending upstate New York cloudy weather a couple of nights ago, obscuring our view of the first in the "tetrad."

[image courtesy of photographer Alfredo Garcia and the Wikimedia Commons]

So far, only something of interest to astronomy buffs.  But then someone nicknamed them "blood moons," because of the deep red color the Moon assumes during a total lunar eclipse, and that was enough to get the loons going full-force.

First, we had Pastor John Hagee, of Texas's Cornerstone Church, who claims that the "four blood moons" are signs of the End Times:

In Acts 2:19-20, it is written, “And I will show wonders in Heaven above and signs in the Earth beneath, the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord...”  Just as in biblical times, God is controlling the sun, the moon, and the stars to send our generation a signal that something big is about to happen.  The question is: Are we watching and listening to His message?

No, Pastor Hagee, actually the question is, do you understand how eclipses work?  There's nothing supernatural about them, so there's nothing supernatural about four in a row, either.  There was one such "tetrad" in 1949, and another in 1967, and the world didn't end.

Oh, but Hagee says, stuff happened both times!  Big stuff!  1967 was the year of the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, and 1949 was... um... soon after the state of Israel was founded.  Okay, two years after, but maybe god was busy elsewhere and didn't get to that event's Four Blood Moons until later.  He's got a lot to manage, okay?

Not to be outdone, Pastor Mark Biltz said that not only were the Four Blood Moons a portent of evil, it was President Obama's fault:

Barack Obama quite recently, expressing his frustration that Republican members of Congress won’t give him what he wants, threatened arbitrary executive action, promising that he has a “pen and phone.” 

But there are “flashing red warning lights” in the heavens that should command peoples’ attention right now, because the one behind those warnings, God, had “more than a pen and a phone in his hand,” according to the author of “Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs.” 

Pastor Mark Biltz, whose book is creating a tidal wave of interest right now with the first of four lunar eclipses expected to become visible early Tuesday, was speaking to Breaking Israel News... 

“I believe the moons are like flashing red warning lights at a heavenly intersection saying to Israel as well as the nations they will be crossing heavenly red lines and if they do, they will understand as Pharaoh did on Passover night 3,500 years ago that the Creator backs up what He says. 

“Like Pharaoh the leaders and pundits of today will realize when it comes to crossing the red lines of the Creator of the universe he has more than a pen and a phone in his hand.” 

Whooo-weee, that's one persuasive argument.  "The Moon looks funny tonight" + "I don't like Obama" + "I don't understand science at all" = "God agrees with my political beliefs and is trying to send the Democrats a sign by coloring the Moon red."

Well, can't argue with that.

What's funniest about Biltz's argument, though, is that he's acting as if somehow god could have stopped the lunar eclipses from happening, if only President Obama had been a good boy.  It's not like we haven't known for years that this "tetrad" was going to occur; it would have happened even if Mitt Romney had been elected.  So how the hell can this be a portent of anything if it would have happened no matter what?

And the scary thing is, Biltz and Hagee are only two of hundreds.  If you Google "blood moons end times" you will get thousands of hits on sites all owned by people who apparently don't know a single thing about planetary astronomy.

I shouldn't let this kind of thing frustrate me, I suppose, but I keep hoping that humanity will one day choose science over superstition.  People like Hagee and Biltz, however, don't make it easy, with their appeal to people's primal fears and political biases.

As for me, I'm just going to enjoy the photographs people have posted of the event, and hope for better weather in October.  And I'll be willing to bet that we'll make it through all four lunar eclipses unscathed, with no sign of the Antichrist -- just as we've done countless times in the past.