George Carlin

George Carlin died yesterday. A very sad thing. I found this clip of my favorite of his routines on Cosmic Variance.



I have never believed in God, but it took me a while before I knew that I outright disbelieved in the whole concept. The first half of that was realizing that religious people were not just kidding themselves "emperor has no clothes" style (which I had always just assumed), and the second half was seeing that other people found it just as absurd as I did. And when you're on the fence about how strongly you feel, doubting that you should be presumptuous enough, as a fairly young person, to completely dismiss this entire philosophy that 90% of people take really seriously, it helps to hear someone like George Carlin. Someone who is just blunt and witty and brutally honest, who has no problem saying the kind of stuff that is so far off the radar of Acceptable, Serious Discourse, helps you see that yes, all those contradictions you noticed about christianity when you were 8 were perfectly valid. And yes, the pat, trite answers that you got in Sunday school when you asked about them were just as silly as you thought. And no, ridiculing people's seriously held beliefs is not wrong when they are completely full of shit...as long as you can be funny about it. So thank you George Carlin, for showing us that bluntness and honesty (occasionally tempered by humor) can go a long way. Joe bless you!