{"id":11903,"date":"2025-03-14T09:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T14:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=11903"},"modified":"2025-03-14T12:31:33","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T17:31:33","slug":"rich-gnat-poor-camel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=11903","title":{"rendered":"Rich gnat, poor camel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I chuckle&#8211;morosely&#8211;anytime I hear a religious person state their belief that someone surviving a life-threatening event such as a shooting is &#8220;god&#8217;s will&#8221;, especially when someone else dies. Quite a god you got there. Sounds a bit capricious, sort of like Zeus.<\/p>\n<p>There are shootings all the time. Some bullets hit their mark, others don&#8217;t. Some people live, others die. &#8220;Time and chance happen to them all&#8221; reads Ecclesiastes 9:11.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s ironic in the case of the current &#8220;subject of discussion&#8221; is the widespread belief that a bullet that missed him is regarded as a sign of a god&#8217;s favor and somehow makes him an &#8220;instrument&#8221; of that god&#8217;s will. But at the same time, the survivor&#8217;s words and deeds show no signs of obedience to the plethora of &#8220;plain sense&#8221; holy writ that directs a mortal in how to conform to that god&#8217;s will.<\/p>\n<p>Something doesn&#8217;t add up: 2 + 2 = 4, not 5.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, quite a god. More like the wishful imaginings of a child. The weak sauce theology it takes to cook up a god like that strikes me as &#8220;straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The gnat is winning. Again.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I chuckle&#8211;morosely&#8211;anytime I hear a religious person state their belief that someone surviving a life-threatening event such as a shooting is &#8220;god&#8217;s will&#8221;, especially when someone else dies. Quite a god you got there. Sounds a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","comments-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11903"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11911,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11903\/revisions\/11911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}