{"id":1440,"date":"2005-02-01T15:00:18","date_gmt":"2005-02-01T19:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1440"},"modified":"2005-02-01T15:00:18","modified_gmt":"2005-02-01T19:00:18","slug":"oh-for-the-wings-of-a-nut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1440","title":{"rendered":"Oh for the wings of a nut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Friends in the business have been sending me a fine list of religious reasons for the tsunami. I thought nothing could top <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/article_archive.php?issue=2005-01-15&amp;id=5549\">Paul Johnson<\/a>&#8216;s proof, in the <em>Spectator,<\/em> that the disaster proves the existence of a benevolent God but I was wrong. A truly creative theologian can use it to prove not just God&#8217;s general benevolence, but His particular care for His favourite causes. A former chief rabbi of Israel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jpost.com\/servlet\/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&amp;cid=1106796050503\">has explained<\/a> that it&#8217;s all the fault of the people pressing Israel to withdraw from any part of the Occupied Territories:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>In the latest edition of <em>Mayanei Hayeshua,<\/em> a weekly Torah pamphlet distributed to thousands of synagogues throughout the country, Eliyahu was asked how we are to understand the tsunami.<br \/>\nEliyahu answered, &#8220;The [Babylonian] Talmud [the tractate of Berachot] says that when God is angry at the nations of the world for not aiding Israel &#8211; they want to evacuate, to disengage, to interfere in our affairs, He claps his hands, causing an earthquake.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>(The quote comes from the <em>Jerusalem Post.<\/em>) The only remaining question is why God, when he zapped Iran last year, didn&#8217;t manage to remove their nuclear programme too.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friends in the business have been sending me a fine list of religious reasons for the tsunami. I thought nothing could top Paul Johnson&#8216;s proof, in the Spectator, that the disaster proves the existence of a benevolent God but I &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1440\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1440\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}