{"id":452,"date":"2009-07-30T22:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-30T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/07\/30\/probably-not-a-miracle\/"},"modified":"2009-07-30T22:59:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-30T22:59:00","slug":"probably-not-a-miracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/07\/30\/probably-not-a-miracle\/","title":{"rendered":"Probably not a miracle"},"content":{"rendered":"

This fire <\/a>happened just a few blocks from my house this morning. We first saw it on the news just as we started to hear the helicopters and smell the smoke. Thankfully, no-one seems to have been hurt.<\/p>\n

From the CBC article:<\/p>\n

A suspicious fire has destroyed the Khalsa<\/span> School near the intersection of Fraser Street and 45th<\/span> Avenue in East Vancouver, but the school’s holy book has been miraculously recovered from the burnt remains of the buildings. […] It is was not known what condition the book was in as firefighters brought it out covered in a white cloth, but members of the temple attributed its preservation to the will of God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Members of the temple are free to say whatever they feel to be the truth… but is anyone else a little surprised that the (publicly funded) CBC would use the word “miraculously” in such a way?<\/p>\n

I seem to remember similar claims being made about a religious relic that survived another fire that I saw in person – York Minster in 1984<\/a>. I was a wishy<\/span>-washy kind of Christian at the time and believed the claim (as well as my Grandmother’s allegedly eyewitness account of a sudden fog saving Durham Cathedral from being bombed during WWII*), but I remember touring the Minster when I was a bit older and noticing that the whole area in which the relic was stored was almost completely undamaged anyway.<\/p>\n

IMHO it is much more likely that the most treasured items in a given building are the best protected.<\/p>\n

ETA: and now Blackcomb<\/span> Mountain (part of the Whistler resort) is on fire too<\/a>. I wonder if some miracle will save Seventh Heaven <\/a>(my favourite ski area on either mountain), or if the militant Olympics NIMBYs<\/span> <\/a>will have something to cheer about.<\/p>\n

————————-<\/p>\n

*Corroborating story about 2\/3 of the way down <\/span>this page<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This fire happened just a few blocks from my house this morning. We first saw it on the news just as we started to hear the helicopters and smell the smoke. Thankfully, no-one seems to have been hurt. From the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,75,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-secularism","category-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}