Moon | Be Holy!

Blood Moon: Should we separate scientific and spiritual interpretation?

Happy Passover. Also, happy Blood Moon lunar eclipse day! The first in a set of four consecutive total “blood moon” eclipses visible from the United States. Don’t worry, a blood moon eclipse is fairly normal from a scientific standpoint. View the story below from USA Today to see all the buzz about this particular set of events:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/14/blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-john-hagee-end-of-world/7694331/

I am bringing this blood moon topic up in my blog in order to address an issue I see recurring throughout the media, science, and even religious or spiritual conversation. Often these topics are brought up this way:

“such and such pastor/spiritual leader/religious enthusiast said this..”

“but SCIENTISTS disagree saying this….”

Is this how we should come at these topics? I don’t think so. To me, science should explain phenomena. How often do blood moons occur? Can we predict them? What is the astronomical significance if there is any?

Science does not explain causation, purpose, or belief. Yes, there will be a blood moon tonight. Yes, it coincides with Passover. Scientists (and others) should not belittle any religious or spiritual significance to the interesting correlation between the two. Perhaps a scientist is atheist/agnostic/non-Judeo-Christian. His or her INTERPRETATION of these events would be thus:

“These events may be happening at the same time, but this is merely coincidence and means nothing”

OK, but a Jewish or Christian person might INTERPRET it this way:

“These correlating events have spiritual meaning to me. God allowed for this to happen as a reminder to us to look to Him in these times.”

My point is that scientific explanation does not need produce an interpretation that is purely void of God or spirituality. Who is the scientist to say there is no God, or that God didn’t know about this simply because we can explain astronomical phenomena? Explanation is not causation and does not eliminate the possibility of a being who understood or allowed these things to happen.

Interpretation of scientific events CAN have spiritual meaning to individuals. Scientists, can’t you allow for this type of thinking? Oh no, you can’t. That’s why I am a scientist who hides her opinions in an anonymous blog.

Psalms 19:1-2

via Sarah’s thoughts on science, spirituality, and practicality | How do we learn to love God and not be a judgmental jerk about it?.

The Physics of Sunsets – Starts With A Bang.

The first and most obvious is the change in coloration of the Sun, as well as a severe drop in the Sun’s brightness. On an airless world like the Moon, the Sun at sunset would look no different than at any other time. But it’s the Earth’s atmosphere that makes sunsets so special.

When the Sun appears progressively lower and lower on the horizon, its light needs to pass through more and more of the atmosphere to reach our eyes. You might not think of the atmosphere as being a very good prism, but when you pass through around 1000 miles of it just before the Sun dips below the horizon, it starts to add up.

The bluer wavelengths of light get scattered away, leaving only the reddest wavelengths that reach your eye. As the sun drops towards the horizon, it progressively loses violets and blues, then greens and yellows, and finally even the oranges, leaving only the reds behind.

You may not even realize it, but by time you’d see a sunset like the picture above, the Sun has already technically set, it’s only due to the fact that the atmosphere bends light that we’re still seeing it like this.

This is why, if you time a sunset, it will take longer than the expected 120 seconds to go from the moment it touches the horizon to the moment it dips below, even during the equinox at the equator, where it rises and sets as close to completely vertical to the horizon as possible. The Sun appears to linger due to the refraction of our atmosphere. READ MORE………