{"id":2875,"date":"2012-04-12T09:34:09","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T14:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2875"},"modified":"2012-04-12T09:34:09","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T14:34:09","slug":"god-hired-a-hit-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2875","title":{"rendered":"God Hired a Hit Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was reading an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religionnews.com\/ethics\/death-and-dying\/Five-years-later-mother-of-Virginia-Tech-victim-wrestles-with-God-finds-p\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> this morning about the mother of one of the Virginia Tech victims five years after the shooting. The mother was extremely religious and when her daughter died, she said that she stopped talking to God for a while but she recently started to talk to God again because God told her that he had a plan.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, God\u2019s plan was to hire a hit man to have this woman&#8217;s daughter brutally murdered. Or maybe that was just the first step in a much larger plan involving world domination\u2026 or something. I&#8217;m not sure.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the ridiculousness of people talking to an imaginary deity and claiming that that deity is responding literally, I take issue with this grieving mother\u2019s rationalization. For starters, it shows an obvious contradiction within the belief system. Either everyone has free will or God used this murderer as a pawn in his master plan. Both can\u2019t be true.<\/p>\n<p>More than that, it takes responsibility away from the killer. He had no choice; he was just playing his part in God\u2019s plan. In this sense, God is really the killer and the guy who pulled the trigger was just a hired gun\u2026 or worse, he was the actual gun with no choice but to fire when God pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n<p>I feel bad for the mother. I have two small children and I couldn\u2019t imagine what I would be feeling if one or both of them were brutally murdered. It is easy for me to be rational now, but if I were in her situation, I hope someone would help me stay rational instead of allowing me to lose my mind to ridiculous superstitions. This is one of the reasons why therapists exist.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=ee9f5400-37c8-4984-875f-4eb3aae6510c\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2875\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was reading an article this morning about the mother of one of the Virginia Tech victims five years after the shooting. The mother was extremely religious and when her daughter died, she said that she stopped talking to God for a while but she recently started to talk to God again because God told [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1039,1587,254,727,219,706,702],"tags":[11,2075,1349,2216,2217,506,1264,2076],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2876,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions\/2876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}