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Solar Eclipse: By Design or “Happy Celestial Circumstance”?

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Speaking of fire and intelligent design, our colleague Sarah Chaffee had an excellent post the other day on the upcoming solar eclipse. When the sun’s fire is blocked by the shade of the moon, it’s not only an awesome visual spectacle. It is also a reminder of the rare privileged nature of our planet, seemingly designed for scientific discovery.

This caught the attention of the estimable Eric Metaxas, who devotes a BreakPoint commentary to the subject. He reminds us of the role of an eclipse in Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” On the specifics of what makes an eclipse possible and why it matters:

Sarah Chaffee at Evolution News & Views cites astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards, who argue that our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery. That’s the subtitle of their book, “The Privileged Planet,” in which they document how vital total solar eclipses are to science.

For example, these phenomena were key in validating Einstein’s theory of relativity, which predicted that gravity bends light. By observing stars that are invisible except during an eclipse, astronomers were able to watch the sun bend their light, making them appear out of place in the sky, and confirming Einstein’s prediction. Eclipses were also how man first observed solar flares and coronal mass ejections on the surface of the sun. These phenomena are normally invisible to the naked eye, but appear briefly around the edges of the moon during an eclipse.

It turns out the conditions for this dazzling display are incredibly rare. The moon has to be just the right size, orbiting a planet just the right distance from its host star. And it so happens that although the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon, it’s also (coincidence?) 400 times further from us, meaning that the two objects appear roughly the same size in the sky. This allows the moon to block the sun in precisely the right way for scientists to study the solar atmosphere.

And of course, all of these conditions must be met on a planet that also supports intelligent life capable of appreciating the eclipse. The Earth, conclude Gonzalez and Richards, is uniquely suited as an observatory for such astronomical wonders — almost as if it were designed for that purpose.

Amazingly, many remain unconvinced. Writing at Phys.org, David Dickinson denies that all of this planetary engineering suggests intelligent design. He calls the many preconditions necessary for solar eclipses a “happy celestial circumstance.”

“Happy celestial circumstance”? Translation: a fluke, like all the other evidence of extreme, unique fitness — cosmic, planetary, anatomical — that define what biologist Michael Denton calls a unique “path” — “already built into nature” — at the end of which lies civilization, including science, and life as we know it.

Photo: 2009 total eclipse from Panchagarh District, Bangladesh, by Muntasir Mamun Imran (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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David Klinghoffer

Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute and the editor of Evolution News & Science Today, the daily voice of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, reporting on intelligent design, evolution, and the intersection of science and culture. Klinghoffer is also the author of six books, a former senior editor and literary editor at National Review magazine, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Commentary, and other publications. Born in Santa Monica, California, he graduated from Brown University in 1987 with an A.B. magna cum laude in comparative literature and religious studies. David lives near Seattle, Washington, with his wife and children.

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