. . . But He Loves You
Much of George Carlin's monologue on religion is top-notch stuff. His dismantling of the logic of prayer, and of a god who is essentially a passive aggressive little dictator but is supposed to be understood as caring for you succeeds perfectly.
Other bits less so. Most interesting, perhaps, is that once he's so effectively made nonsense of the idea of a loving god who punishes us with lightning strikes and/or eternal damnation, his claim that there is no god ("Not one") is supposed to be demonstrated by asking god to strike him dead. We might reasonably take this as confirmation that the god he already made nonsense of doesn't exist, but that's only one of many possible conceptions of divinity, and while it may make the point about that One God (TM?), it doesn't go any further than that. In other words, he might be demonstrating that the One God who loves us in an omni-passive-aggressive way doesn't exist, but not that "not one" god exists. Depending, of course, on what the meaning of "exists" is.
All that said, the piece is not only funny, but a great example of humor/comedy as a powerful philosophical tool. This is the one thing the left in America seems to have gotten better than the right in America. Our answer to Bill O'Reilly is Jon Stewart. Our answer to Scarborough is Colbert. And our answer to Pat Robertson is George Carlin.
I wish I were that funny. But I'm not, so watch the 10-minute monologue.
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