{"id":31790,"date":"2011-12-16T00:03:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T07:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=31790"},"modified":"2014-12-30T19:15:41","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T02:15:41","slug":"while-im-being-all-sciencey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2011\/12\/while-im-being-all-sciencey.html","title":{"rendered":"While I’m Being All Sciencey…."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This is just a reminder that the Incarnation of the Son of God took place, not because of our awesomeness, but because of His dizzying condescension to our low estate:<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nPsalm 8<\/p>\nO LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! \nThou whose glory above the heavens is chanted \n by the mouth of babes and infants, \nthou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes, \nto still the enemy and the avenger. \n\tWhen I look at thy heavens, \nthe work of thy fingers, \nthe moon and the stars which thou hast established; \n what is man that thou art mindful of him, \nand the son of man that thou dost care for him? \n\tYet thou hast made him little less than God, \nand dost crown him with glory and honor. \n Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; \nthou hast put all things under his feet, \n\tall sheep and oxen, \nand also the beasts of the field, \n\tthe birds of the air, \nand the fish of the sea, \nwhatever passes along the paths of the sea. \n\tO LORD, our Lord, \nhow majestic is thy name in all the earth! <\/p>\nModerns who imagine that ancients (being, of course, 3000 years stupider than the culture that has given us Rosie O\u2019Donnell, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher, and Richard Dawkins) were too dumb to know the universe is really big. They therefore ignorantly declare that ancients assumed we were important because of our size and declare it \u201carrogant\u201d for them to think we were made in God\u2019s image. Such people have never given any serious thougt to Psalm 8 (or common sense). For, of course, it has always been obvious to anybody who stood out under a night sky that we are vanishingly puny. The Jews know that it is divine goodness, not human awesomeness, that is the factor at work here. The effect of all the recent atheistic claptrap about man\u2019s insignificance in comparison to the universe is not to exalt man\u2019s dignity and free him from a Bronze Age myth that leaves him cowering in fear before Almighty God. It is to humiliate and oppress ordinary people and to celebrate and play sycophant to the vanishingly few rich and powerful people who crush and oppress the poor. Atheism is the modern form of the court prophet, always eager to grind the face of the oppressed and tell him, \u201cNot only are you the loser in the Darwinian struggle, your death will mean nothing, just as your life means nothing. Look and see how puny and insignificant you are, you germ!\u201d Like all heresies, it takes part of the truth (the delightful fact of our smallness) and uses it as a weapon against the rest of the truth (the fact that what makes our smallness delightful is that a great and awesome God loves us).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is just a reminder that the Incarnation of the Son of God took place, not because of our awesomeness, but because of His dizzying condescension to our low estate: Psalm 8 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>While I'm Being All Sciencey....<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is just a reminder that the Incarnation of the Son of God took place, not because of our awesomeness, but because of His dizzying condescension to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2011\/12\/while-im-being-all-sciencey.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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