Zweerink, who earned his Ph.D. in astrophysics from Iowa State University, and is a project scientist at UCLA and research scholar for the apologetics ministry Reasons to Believe, told The Christian Post in a phone interview that he's been anticipating the eclipse for nearly 10 years, as it will be the first total solar eclipse he has ever seen.
"God has made a pretty spectacular creation for us to live in," Zweerink said, calling the upcoming celestial event "beautiful" and "awesome."
Because of how spectacular this is, and the fact that many people are wanting to talk about the total eclipse...
"And Creation is remarkably reliable," Zweerink added.
Naturally occurring phenomena can be predicted and talked about thousands of years into the future as well as in the past because of its reliability.
"That's a very biblical principle," Zweerink said. "God's reliability in keeping His promises is likened to how Creation behaves."
Such remarkable order to the cosmos is anchored in God's character, he went on to explain, and it's His character that upholds creation so reliably.
"From a scientific perspective, the first big experimental test of Einstein's theory of general relativity explicitly codifies the idea that the laws of physics are constant throughout the universe."
"And if that were not the case," Zweerink continued, "we would not be able to do science and understand how far away are things, and how old are things, and how do they operate, how do galaxies form, and what are neutrons, stars, and black holes. We just couldn't do that because what we do here doesn't have any relation as to what goes on out in the universe."
This reliability and the ability to predict solar eclipses and how awesome they appear and what they communicate about how the world works is deeply connection to the God of the Bible. And Zweerink considers this a conversation starter with non-Christians who are interested in celestial phenomena.
...
Total solar eclipses occur at least once every two years, Zweerink explained, and while spectacular to behold, there's nothing out of the ordinary about them.
"These have happened since the dawn of human civilization and they will happen until the end of humanity is here," he said, adding that the idea that the Aug. 21 eclipse is somehow a sign of the End Times "just doesn't resonate."
"This is a great opportunity for Christians to engage in conversations with people and to share the Gospel," he reiterated. "It's just a neat opportunity to go out and talk to people about the physics that goes on. The sun is so much larger than the moon, so much further away, but yet they take up the same size on the sky so that we can have solar eclipses like this to make the scientific measurements and actually, just see the beauty of it — I'm just excited about it."
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