No, you religious fool, a total eclipse isn't a sign to repent

Yesterday there was a total eclipse in part of the United States. This follows on a total eclipse in 2017 whose path went right through where I live, Salem, Oregon. It was a cool experience. But certainly not a religious one.

After all, eclipses are 100% predictable by modern astronomers. Even not-so-modern astronomers had learned how to predict them.

I'm no expert on how this is done, but obviously it entails calculating the positions of the sun, moon, and earth -- since a total eclipse is when the moon, which amazingly is just the right size in the sky to do this, passes in front of the sun and obscures all of its light for a few minutes. 

But religious crazies don't let a little thing like facts stop them from making absurd statements about the Deeper Cosmic Meaning of a total eclipse.

Combine religious craziness with right-wing political craziness, and you get this post on X from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene-- which spurred Bill Kristol, a rational Republican, unlike Greene, to respond with a Spinoza quote.

Wow. Greene apparently didn't think (thinking is one of her least favorite activities) before she wrote her post. First, Greene doesn't say what the United States is supposed to repent for. If she'd said, "Electing Donald Trump as president in 2016," even though I'm an atheist, I could understand why God would be pissed off at Americans for being so stupid. 

Leaving aside the question of what deserves repentance, even if God were to exist, how could there be any divine meaning to a total eclipse that happens completely in accord with the laws of nature and is totally predictable?

Spinoza lived in the Netherlands in the 1600s. Science was much less advanced then. So there were more natural phenomena lacking discernible causes in that time. Miracles were much more common when scientific instruments, video cameras, and such weren't available to undermine their supposedly miraculous nature.

If some guy claimed he was able to walk on water today, he'd need to prove that this truly was possible and wasn't just a trick or illusion. But since the Bible was composed by people in a prescientific time, the miracle stories weren't examined with a critical eye, which made it possible for Christianity to claim that Jesus had divine powers.

Regarding earthquakes, Greene was referring to a 4.8 magnitude earthquake that hit New York City recently. Earthquakes are fairly rare in New York City, but 5.2 magnitude earthquakes hit in 1737 and 1884. So I guess God was demanding some serious repenting back then also.

Worldwide, there are about 20,000 earthquakes a year. Sorry, Representative Greene. God sure isn't sending a strong sign to America to repent if that same sign is being sent 20,000 times a year to places all over the globe. 

Thanks, though, for sharing such a ridiculous X post. It makes my day when I can make fun of someone who is both religiously and politically crazy -- as most Republican politicians these days are.

Comments

[sant64]

Hard to disagree with this one. I'd heard of MTG but had no idea she held such medieval opinions.

But on the other hand, wrong as this view is, I don't see how it's not innocuous. Where's the harm if some people choose to see earthquakes and eclipses as calls for repentance?

I wish our science-based minders were as benign. Remember how they told us covid was an existential threat? Not only the elderly and sick, but to everyone? And so, we were put into detention, and 2 years of our lives were sacrificed. Sacrificed for nothing. Millions of children whose lives were retarded. According to the NYT, many children still aren't going to school.

Then the science experts told us that gender is "fluid," and that there's no difference between male and female. Sounds incredible, but that's really what they told us, and moreover, they told us we had to believe it was true. Yes, to the point where, sorry ladies, but men are now allowed in your bathrooms. And in your daughter's bathrooms, and the lockerrooms in school. You must believe we are in the right, it's science.

Oh, and btw, science tells us that your children are wiser than their parents, and should be able to choose to change their gender with drugs and surgery. Allow it! You bigot, you don't want your kid to kill himself do you?

As much as I loathe the flat earthers and the God causes earthquakes advocates like MTG, I don't see them hurting people as the in-the-cloak-of-science shitheels have.

[Ron E.]

We’re a sorry lot us humans. Always wanting something other than simply being with just this; meaning, the life we are experiencing right now. Nothing wrong with wanting to improve our lot, to help make lives saner and more liveable. But just a look around at all the divisive conflicts between countries, groups and individuals. With the world going through the effects of a warming planet, here we are still wasting time and resource on fighting wars; billions spent on weapons destroying homes, towns and cities while a quarter of the world’s population live in poverty.

We have the knowledge and technology to benefit all – so why don’t we employ our know-how and resources to benefit all people and the world? Is it perhaps the fact that we all have separate belief systems such as religious, political and nationalistic? Systems that we invest in to ostensibly maintain our hopes, aspirations and standards of living, while the reality is in maintaining and defending them, we ultimately tend to destroy them.

It seems that our main drive is to maintain, not only an apparently secure way of life but a way of life that we invest in to maintain ‘me’ and automatically latch-on to any abstract belief structures that basically uphold the tenuous sense of ‘me’ as being a more special creation than anyone or anything else. And we do have a tendency to elect sociopathic leaders who promise to deliver and uphold our cravings.

Well essentially, we are I suppose, just like any other creature putting our personal survival and by extension, the survival of our particular group foremost! It will probably all end in tears – or extinction.