{"id":7166,"date":"2012-04-04T16:25:53","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T16:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=7166"},"modified":"2012-04-04T19:39:57","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T19:39:57","slug":"another-non-muslim-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/another-non-muslim-shooting\/","title":{"rendered":"Another non-Muslim shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lethal gun rampage <\/a>at Oikos University in Oakland, California,\u00a0on Monday was\u00a0a horrific tragedy, mind-numbing in its incomprehensibility for the seven victims\u2019 families and for anyone connected to the school.\u00a0 Secular Right sends its condolences to the community.<\/p>\n

The Oikos shooting is just the latest in a series of school and workplace rampages over the last several years, none of which were committed by Muslims.\u00a0 If a Muslim had in fact pulled the trigger, the country\u2019s police departments would be on high alert, the aviation system hunkered down even further.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 What is the difference?\u00a0 Last December and January, a disgruntled young German almost brought Los Angeles to its knees with a set of arson attacks on cars in the Hollywood area.\u00a0 It appears that it is not all that difficult to inflict group violence and collective fear in this country.\u00a0 If the U.S. harbored even a handful of Muslim terrorists, presumably they would occasionally have taken advantage of that ease to wreak havoc themselves.\u00a0 The vast expenditures of the Department of Homeland Security, doled out to law enforcement agencies across the country for anti-terror equipment and training, presume just such a national threat.\u00a0 As the years go by without an Islamic terrorist incident on our soil, do we ever get to revise downward our assessment of the risk?\u00a0<\/p>\n

An Oikos student who was not killed in the rampage told the New York Times<\/a><\/em> that she was frightened during the shooting, but added:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a Christian, and I believe God protects me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why then didn\u2019t he protect the seven victims?\u00a0 If solipsistic believers feel compelled to ask such questions\u2014seeking the bare minimum of justice, which consists of treating likes alike and distinguishing unlikes,\u00a0from their allegedly rational God–they don\u2019t often let on.\u00a0 Unless this Christian survivor believes that she is more worthy of God\u2019s protection than the seven victims, the usual answer to the question of why God didn\u2019t protect the seven victims is that he did<\/em> protect them\u2014in his way.\u00a0 But surely that<\/em> way was not what was meant by anyone who was praying for protection from the shooter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another\u00a0typical answer to the question of selective protection from yesterday\u2019s Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

when a prayer goes unanswered, God’s refusal springs from love rather than indifference.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

i.e., God did not answer the undoubted prayers of the victims for protection out of love, rather than indifference.\u00a0 It is the fate of non-believers to look on such explanations as if across a vast and forever unbridgeable abyss.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lethal gun rampage at Oikos University in Oakland, California,\u00a0on Monday was\u00a0a horrific tragedy, mind-numbing in its incomprehensibility for the seven victims\u2019 families and for anyone connected to the school.\u00a0 Secular Right sends its condolences to the community. The Oikos … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[169,905],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7166"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7173,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166\/revisions\/7173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}