@WassimBerbar said in #1:
> Guys, this is not a joke. I genuinely think Judgement day is dangerously close.
Let's see:
Eid al-Fitr is a holiday celebrated within Islam. This year it's scheduled to begin on the 10th of April at the earliest (might begin later, namely when the new moon is sighted by local religious authorities). It marks the end of Ramadan. And is celebrated every year.
Then there's a total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States (Middle and North America in general) on the 8th of April. It's one of 20 solar eclipses this decade (on average they occur more often than once every six months):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_centuryAnd finally a group of religious fundamentalists (both Jewish and Evangelical Christians from Texas, USA) have bred five especially red cows (well, reddish-brown really), because they believe that they can purify themselves with the ashes of these cows which will somehow help them rebuild the third temple in Jerusalem in a place already occupied by a holy mosque. This in turn is believed by some to be a sign of the return of the messiah.
So if I understand correctly, you conclude that "Judgement day is dangerously close" from the non-coincidental temporal proximity (it's not even the same day) of a regular event that happens once a year and a predictable event that happens more than twice a year on average.
And based on the religious beliefs of people belonging to a different religion than you do. Religions which you consider to be false religions (as you have previously indicated, please correct me if I misread you).
This year's temporal proximity of Eid al-Fitr, a holiday celebrated after the first sighting of the new moon (after Ramadan), and a solar eclipse, an event that can only occur during the new moon phase, is hardly surprising, as both follow regular cycles (and occasional co-occurrence is to be expected because the lengths of those cycles have a least common multiple). Namely variations of the lunar cycle.
Have a look:
August 22, 1979: Annular eclipse (Southern Ocean/Southern Pacific near the west coast of South America)
August 25, 1979: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
August 10, 1980: Annular eclipse (Pacific ocean, South America)
August 13, 1980: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
July 31, 1981: Total eclipse (Kazakhstan, Russia)
August 2, 1981: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
July 20, 1982: Partial eclipse (Arctic circle)
July 23, 1982: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
December 25, 2000: Partial eclipse (Canada, USA)
December 28, 2000: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
December 14, 2001: Annular eclipse (Nicaragua and Costa Rica)
December 17, 2001: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
December 4, 2002: Total eclipse (South Australia and South Africa)
December 6, 2002: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
November 23, 2003: Total eclipse (East Antarctica)
November 26, 2003: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
April 30, 2022: Partial eclipse (Southeast Pacific, Southern America)
May 2, 2022: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
April 20, 2023: Hybrid eclipse (Indonesia, Australia, Timor-Leste)
April 21/22, 2023: Eid al-Fitr in the UK
April 8, 2024: Total eclipse (Mexico, USA, Canada)
April 10, 2024: Eid al-Fitr said to occur in the UK
March 29, 2025: Partial eclipse (Northwest Africa, Europe, northern Russia)
March 31, 2025: Eid al-Fitr said to occur in the UK
Source 1:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_20th_centurySource 2:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_centurySource 3:
www.timeanddate.com/holidays/uk/eid-al-fitrSee the regularity there? Seems to happen to line up about four times every 22 years (with ≈18.5 year long intermissions). Based on that rate this co-occurrence of a solar eclipse and Eid al-Fitr would have been realised roughly 260 times since the birth of Muhammad (≈570 CE). There's roughly an 18.2% chance of picking a year with such a co-occurrence if the year is randomly selected. Rolling a single 2 on a fair, six-sided die is literally less likely (≈16.7%) and thus a less common occurrence.
Predictions of end-time events have been made many times in the past and invariably turn out to be wrong. Of course that doesn't in itself imply that the world cannot ever end (it may or may not, there's no way of knowing), but it does strongly suggest that anyone making such a prediction is highly unlikely to actually understand any underlying mechanism. They have a bad feeling and that's about it. Just like countless of their ancestors had a bad feeling that the world will end within THEIR lifetime (unsurprisingly they were all wrong):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events#Past_predictions