{"id":51138,"date":"2016-07-03T18:51:28","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T18:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=51138"},"modified":"2016-07-03T18:51:28","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T18:51:28","slug":"sunday-surprise-the-second-the-laws-of-nature-and-natures-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=51138","title":{"rendered":"Sunday surprise the second &#8212; the Laws of Nature and Nature&#8217;s God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles <\/strong>Cameron &#8212; wishing you all blessings on the Fourth ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>My eye was caught today by yet another disaster &#8212; which in turn reminded me of tomorrow, the Fourth of July. It&#8217;s just one example among many: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Flood hits mosque in Pakistan, dozens feared dead <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hXA1vTP8Gy\">https:\/\/t.co\/hXA1vTP8Gy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/New_Narrative\/status\/749659375896301569\">July 3, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8212; but it brings up again the question of whether we think in terms of &#8220;acts of God&#8221; or &#8220;laws of Nature&#8221; or &#8212; somehow &#8212; both. And that&#8217;s where thw roding of the Constitution comes in, with the phrase &#8220;the Laws of Nature and of Nature&#8217;s God&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Nature-and-Natures-God-DQ.png\" alt=\"Nature and Nature&#039;s God DQ\" width=\"600\" height=\"644\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-51140\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Nature-and-Natures-God-DQ.png 600w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Nature-and-Natures-God-DQ-280x300.png 280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>If I used that phrasing &#8212; &#8220;the Laws of Nature and of Nature&#8217;s God&#8221; &#8212; today, I might well be attempting to please or at least placate readers who variously:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li>believe in a God separate from and superior to Nature, and author of Nature&#8217;s laws\n<li>believe in a God essentially indistinguishable from Nature, wholly immanent, &#038;\n<li>disbelieve in any kind of God, but recognize Nature as a catchall term for the Whole System.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I don&#8217;t suppose that would necessarily be the case in 1776, though, and wonder whether the phrase should be read as:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>the Laws &#8212; of Nature and of Nature&#8217;s God<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>or:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>the Laws of Nature &#8212; and of Nature&#8217;s God<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and if the second, whether the and marks a distinction between Nature and nature&#8217;s God, or also covers the possibility of their being one and the same.<\/p>\n<p>And once we&#8217;ve cleared that up, and bearing in mind that <strong>John Donne<\/strong> could write &#8220;At the round earth&#8217;s imagin&#8217;d corners&#8221; &#8212; thus conflating the old, imaginative, square earth with the new, scientific, spherical one &#8212; how feasible do you think it is to hold simultaneously the idea that a given earthquake, hurricane, tsunami or volcanic eruption is an act of God and a natural disaster?<\/p>\n<p>A worldview paradox?<\/p>\n<p>**<br \/>\n<strong>Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li><strong>July 4, 1776<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.givemeliberty.org\/docs\/declaration.htm\">The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America<\/a>\n<li><strong>November 18, 2013<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2013\/11\/18\/natural-disasters-or-acts-of-god\">Room for Debate: Natural Disasters or \u2018Acts of God\u2019?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; wishing you all blessings on the Fourth ] . My eye was caught today by yet another disaster &#8212; which in turn reminded me of tomorrow, the Fourth of July. It&#8217;s just one example among many: Flood hits mosque in Pakistan, dozens feared dead https:\/\/t.co\/hXA1vTP8Gy &mdash; Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) July [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,1014,1383,627,739,96,502,840,741,533,32,946,523,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-declaration-of-independence","category-disaster","category-doublequotes","category-nature","category-new-york-times","category-pakistan","category-paradox","category-poetry","category-religion","category-science","category-sunday-surprise","category-theology","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51138"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51148,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51138\/revisions\/51148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}