A Blood Moon prophetic disaster?

The restart of the LHC makes big bang of doom?

Mercury in retrograde? Heaven forfend!

There are all these weird noises too! What does it all mean? The Apocalypse? Well if you buy into tabloids, and religious and conspiracy sites hype (specifically from the WND site), it sounds like the End. But we doubt it. While it may sound sciencey on the surface, such claims are a bunch of pseudoscientific nonsense. So you can stop worrying, really. OK, here’s the reasoning.

End of the world claims are common. Remember, the world was supposed to end in 2011 (twice), in 2012 (multiple dates), 2014, and when Pope Benedict was done with his tenure. See all the dozens of other times that the Apocalypse was predicted. All such predictions failed.

In early September, we told you about reverend John Hagee who was promoting his new book on the end times culminating with the “Blood Moon” concocted scare to happen on September 27-28. As we noted then,

Prophecy isn’t real.

Religion is not science.

Hagee is selling a book, encouraging fear to bring people to his brand of religion.

There is no natural reason why the end of the world has anything to do with this date.

There have been 62 tetrads since the first century, these are natural cycles, nothing special.

A story about the END OF THE WORLD!!! is guaranteed click-bait. Jewish mystics and Christian End Times evangelists promoting this view cite various recent catastrophes (drought, fires, volcanoes and earthquakes), increased murder rates [only in some cities], gay marriage legalization, signs in the sky, and Pope Francis’ visit to the US now as signals of the return of Jesus. Bookies are taking bets; I can’t quite figure how those will pay out.

Earth-Sky has this on the Blood Moon hype:

From what we’ve been able to gather, two Christian pastors, Mark Blitz and John Hagee, use the term Blood Moon to apply to the full moons of the ongoing tetrad – four successive total lunar eclipses, with no partial lunar eclipses in between, each of which is separated from the other by six lunar months (six full moons) – in 2014 and 2015. John Hagee appears to have popularized the term in his 2013 book Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change. Mark Blitz and John Hagee speak of a lunar tetrad as representing a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. After all, the moon is supposed to turn blood red before the end times, isn’t it? As described in Joel 2:31 (Common English Bible): The sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood before the great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. That description, by the way, describes both a total solar eclipse and total lunar eclipse. Sun turned to darkness = moon directly between the Earth and sun in a total solar eclipse. Moon turned to blood = Earth directly between the sun and moon, Earth’s shadow falling on the moon in a total lunar eclipse.

So, the Blood Moon stuff is nothing special. However, let’s all freak out over the restart of the Large Hadron Collider. This great machine, a particle accelerator, is being co-opted for the ultimate in fear mongering by people who really don’t understand what the purpose of it is. Never mind that pesky little black hole rumored to be inevitable, it can do a whole lot more:

The LHC could generate a magnetic field that could pull an iron-rich asteroid towards Earth. {Nope}

The LHC could open up a portal from another dimension (“Stargate”) through which an unexpected comet or asteroid could suddenly appear. {Uh, nope.}

And, the crackpot winner: The LHC could summon the Anti-Christ to earth to cause an apocalypse. {What a great plot for a sci-fi movie!}

We’ve given the Anti-Christ so many opportunities by now. It’s a cliche. The LHC-induced disaster reportedly will hit before the Blood Moon on September 24 It hardly matters that no evidence whatsoever is provided for this. It’s scary. It’s news. Visit CERN to read about LHC safety.

And if THAT isn’t enough to ruin your week, the icing on the cake for the superstitious and scientifically disadvantaged types is Mercury in retrograde through October.

According to astrological hucksters (and the flocks who follow them), the three periods each year when Mercury appears to be moving backward are total pandemonium, a time when the stars are liable to wreak havoc on technical devices, morning commutes and official documents.

Has anyone pointed out that Mercury in retrograde may cause the LHC to malfunction and BOOM!? J/K

Mercury just APPEARS to go in the other direction. It doesn’t really. As with the rest of astrology, this feature is BS inside and out. Such astrological “signs” or conditions make easy scapegoats. But positions of celestial bodies hold no power over people, except in their own minds and in the court of public opinion. Sadly, belief in absurd astronomy may be increasing. It’s trendy… to use nonsense to inform your actions. Strange. We don’t recommend that for a fulfilling and useful life.

Yet, there are people who will see merit to stringing unlike and unsupported causes together and will be afraid that these really are End Times. They suffer because of irresponsible fear mongering over technology and events that we SHOULD be trying to understand. Instead, the media and crackpot commentators whip up more horrors.

Societies have always feared the end of the world as we know it. We’re all still here.

(Edited for clarity, 22-Sept 2015)