Heliocentrism Meant What?

It's an old, old canard that says that people objected to heliocentrism because it made people feel unimportant on the cosmic scale. I guess the people who said this had never read Job:

“Who is this that obscures my plans
   with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
   I will question you,
   and you shall answer me.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
   Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
   Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
   or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
   and all the angels shouted for joy?
“Who shut up the sea behind doors
   when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
   and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
   and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
   here is where your proud waves halt’?
“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
   or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
   and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
   its features stand out like those of a garment.
The wicked are denied their light,
   and their upraised arm is broken.
“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
   or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
   Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
   Tell me, if you know all this.
“What is the way to the abode of light?
   And where does darkness reside?
Can you take them to their places?
   Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
Surely you know, for you were already born!
   You have lived so many years!
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
   or seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I reserve for times of trouble,
   for days of war and battle?
What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
   or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
   and a path for the thunderstorm,
to water a land where no one lives,
   an uninhabited desert,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland
   and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father?
   Who fathers the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
   Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,
   when the surface of the deep is frozen?
 “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
   Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
   or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
   Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?

Comments

  1. Now even Catholics are quoting the NIV? Our culture is doomed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. PSH, I know you are joking, but:

    1) I just took the first web version I found.

    2) You are accepting Bob's designation of me as a Catholic uncritically.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did I call you a Catholic? Or are you talking about Bob DeNiro?

    ReplyDelete

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