Tue, 29. July 2014
Sunset With Undertones
It was a glorious sight, lasting several minutes, as the sunlight surged through a cloudless horizon to illuminate the underside of the cloud which covered the entire rest of the sky.
Sunset over Leumeah: Wide Field of View (98° x 75°). (c) R.P.
I took a number of shots whilst also taking time to enjoy the moment. Pictures much similar to the above appeared on the internet and even on the evening TV news.
Then it all got spoiled when one of my extended family members posted his own sunset photo, with the hashtag #godsanartist.
No she's not!
His photo showed the beautiful sunset with power poles and crisscrossing overhead wires. This was followed by chatter from others such as "His mighty works"; "the touch of the master's hand"; "The powerlines are in the sign of the cross, soooo beautiful!" My bullshit detector went off the scale reading these comments. What unadulterated rubbish!
Religious folks really seem to think that their god decided, in her infinite wisdom, to treat all the good people of South West Sydney to a red sunset! As if their imagined Lord Creator and Controller of the Universe would care what is going on here on Earth, this tiny speck of dust afloat in a mighty galaxy in an inconceivably large Universe.
It is not too difficult to work out why this sunset occurred - and it was not supernatural. The sky was almost completely covered with a relatively level strata of cloud but near the horizon, beyond the Blue Mountains, there was a gap of clear sky. As the Sun approached the horizon, it shone through that gap and illuminated the underside of the clouds. Because the Sun was low in the sky, it was shining through a much greater amount of the Earth's atmosphere and much of the light was absorbed, whilst the red component passed through, making the clouds appear red.
At the very least it is just lazy thinking for people to attribute something to a god, just because of it's beauty. At it's worst, it is religious dishonesty. If only churches would devote (say) five per cent of their time to teaching science and critical thinking, their followers may not be so scientifically illiterate as to think their god chooses when we see a pretty sunset.
Oh well, maybe it's best not to let it get me down! It was a fantastic sight and I have the photos to remember it by. Here is a second photo I took a few minutes before the beauty really erupted over us. This one was taken with a telephoto lens, looking towards the Blue Mountains:
Blue Mountains, 60 kilometres West of Sydney. Narrow Field of View & Cropped (3° x 2° approx). (c) R.P.
The Blue Mountains are often blue in colour - but not this time!