Art in the Heavens

          Looking up in wonder 

         Admiring the vastness

        Transfixed by the beauty

   Sparkling lights above our heads

There’s no debate about the beauty of the stars.

Both atheists and Christians alike look up at them in awe and none charge the galaxies with inelegance.

The Christian faith provides an explanation for their existence and their beauty: They are the artwork of the Divine Artist. The first book of the Bible gives an account of their creation:  

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the dayfrom the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser lightto rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth.

(Genesis 1:14-17)

Why are they beautiful?

Because they reflect the perfect beauty of the Artist.

 One thing have I asked of the Lord, That will I seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

(Psalm 27:4)

Just as the warm glow of light captured in the paintings of the Dutch golden age reflects the genius of the Dutch masters, so the innumerable lights spanning the heavens reflect the incomprehensible power and goodness of our Creator.

Instead of leaving us in pitch darkness, God hung shining lanterns up for us—not merely shining sufficiently but scintillating like diamonds, suspended perpetually so that every eye can ascertain His eternal power and divine nature simply by looking up

 Unfortunately, the atheist admires the starry host, while denying the Star
Maker.  He’s gladdened by the glittering cosmos, but claims it is nothing more than a free lunch.

American author and atheist, Sam Harris, says, “No myth needs to be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshipped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation.”

It’s true that one need not acknoweldge God to appreciate the beauty, but one must acknowledge Him to give a rational account for its existence, our ability to apprehend it, and the ability to communicate about it! In his quote, Mr. Harris borrows the concepts of awe and beauty from Christianity since atheism cannot provide a standard by which to make aesthetic judgments. Atheism does not have an ultimate standard by which to call anything beautiful. Plus, beauty itself is an immaterial concept, not a physical thing. It could not have evolved by random mutation and natural selection acting upon physical matter. (More and more scientists are rejecting Darwinian evolution due to its failure to account for what we experience in the real world.)

Answers given by atheists are not only uncompelling, they’re ugly.

The existence and beauty of the stars proclaims how
infinitely powerful and beautiful God is, and when we look up at the night sky today, we still can hear their proclamation:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.

(Psalm 19:1-3)

The art in the heavens is all the evidence anyone needs.

 

 

 

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