Religious Observations of George
Carlin:
There Is No God
Transcribed,
introduced, and footnoted by David M. Fitzpatrick
Last updated
Tuesday, 30 August 2005
 I want you to
know, when it comes to believing in God: I really tried. I really, really
tried. I tried to believe that there is a God who created each of us in
his own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on
things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell ya... the longer
you live, the more you look around, the more you realize: Something is fucked
up. Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger,
filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something
is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God
can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé
of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office
temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any
decently-run universe, this guy would have been out on his all-powerful
ass a long time ago. And by the way, I say this guy because I firmly
believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a
man. No woman could or would ever fuck things up like this!1
So ... if there is a God ... I think most
reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent and maybe—just
maybe—doesn't give a shit.2
Doesn't give a shit! Which I admire in a person, and which would explain a
lot of these bad results. So rather than be just another one of these
mindless religious robots3, blindly believing
that all of this is all in the hands of some spooky, incompetent father
figure who doesn't give a shit, I decided to look around for something else
to worship... something I could really count on. And immediately, I thought
of the sun. Happened like that ... overnight, I became a sun worshipper.
Well, not overnight, you can't see the sun at night... but first thing the
next morning, I became a sun worshipper.4
Several reasons... first of all, I can see the
sun... unlike some other gods I could mention, I can actually see the
sun. I'm big on that. If I can see something, I dunno, kinda helps the
credibility along, you know? So every day, I can see the sun, as it gives me
everything I need: heat, light, food, flowers in the park, reflections on
the lake... an occasional skin cancer, but hey, at least there are no
crucifixions and we're not setting people on fire simply because they don't
agree with us.5 Sun
worship is fairly simple. There are no mysteries, no miracles, no pageantry,
no one asks for money, there are no songs to learn, and we don't have a
special building where we all gather once a week to compare clothing. And
the best thing, the best thing about the sun is that it never tells me I'm
unworthy. Doesn't tell me I'm a bad person who needs to be saved, hasn't
said an unkind word: treats me fine.6 So, I
worship the sun. But, I don't pray to
the sun. Know why? I wouldn't presume on our friendship. It's not polite.
I've often thought people treat God rather rudely, don't you? Trillions and
trillions of prayers every day, asking and pleading and begging for
favors—"Do this," "Gimme that," "I need a new car," "I want a better job"
...and most of this praying takes place on Sunday: his day off. It's not
nice, and it's no way to treat a friend. But people do pray and they pray
for a lot of different things... you know, your sister needs an operation
on her crotch, your brother was arrested for defecating in a mall... but
most of all, you'd like to fuck that hot little redhead down at the
convenience store. You know, the one with the eye patch and the club foot,
huh? Can you pray for that? I think you'd have to.
And I say, fine, pray for anything you want,
pray for anything. But what about the Divine Plan? Remember that? The Divine
Plan. Long time ago, God made a Divine Plan. Gave it a lot of thought,
decided it was a good plan, put it into practice. And for billions and
billions of years, the Divine Plan has been doing just fine. Now you come
along and pray for something. Well, suppose the thing you want isn't in
God's Divine Plan. What do you want him to do? Change his plan just for you?
Doesn't that seem a little arrogant? It's a Divine Plan! What's the use of
being God if every two-dollar schmuck with a prayer book can come along and
fuck up your plan? And here's
something else, another problem you might have: suppose your prayers aren't
answered. What do you say? "Well, it's God's will. Thy will be done." Fine,
but if it's God's will, and he's gonna do what he wants to anyway... why the
fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to
me! Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go right to "his will?"
It's all very confusing. So to get around all
of this, I decided to worship the sun. But, as I said, I don't pray to the
sun. You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. ... Two reasons: first of all, I
think he's a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a
guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around! Doesn't fuck
around! In fact, in fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things
God was having trouble with. For years, I asked God to do something about
that noisy neighbor with the barking dog... Joe Pesci straightened that cocksucker
out with one visit! It's amazing what you can accomplish with a simple
baseball bat. So I've been praying to
Joe for about a year now, and I've noticed something. I've noticed that all
the prayers that I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to
Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I
get what I want... half the time I don't. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the
four leaf clover, the horseshoe, the rabbit's foot, and the wishing well.
Same as the mojo man, same as the voodoo lady who tells you your fortune by
squeezing the goat's testicles. It's all the same, 50-50. So just pick your
superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.
And for those of you who look to the Bible for
its literary qualities and moral lessons, I've got a couple of other stories
I might like to recommend for you. You might enjoy The Three Little Pigs.
That's a good one, has a nice, happy ending. Then there's Little Red
Riding Hood, although it does have that one X-rated part where the big,
bad wolf actually eats the grandmother... which I didn't care for, by the
way. And finally, I've always drawn a great deal of moral comfort from
Humpty Dumpty. The part I like the best: "All the king's horses and all the
king's men / couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again."
That's because there is no Humpty Dumpty, and
there is no God. None, not one, never was, no God. In fact, I'm gonna
put it this way: if there is a God, if there is a God... may he strike this
audience dead ... See? Nothing happened! Nothing happened! Everybody's okay!
... Tell you what, I'll raise the stakes ... If there is a God, may he
strike me dead. See, nothing happened... oh wait, got a little cramp in my
leg... and my balls hurt... plus, I'm blind... I'm bli— oh, now I'm okay
again; must have been Joe Pesci, huh?
God bless Joe Pesci! Thank you all! Joe bless
you!
1 No, if there were a God
and she were a woman, we'd still be fucked up in different ways. But since
God, and all ideas of gods and higher powers, are male-created creations
from eons of male-dominated society, God is called a "he" and everything
about Christianity and the Bible strongly reflects the male thought
processes. 2 A fact
that is evident throughout the Bible. If God allowed us free will, and
cared enough to let us make our own choices, he wouldn't have destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah and other little things like the entire world with the
flood. God taking out his vengeance on those who didn't do it just as he
wanted them to are everywhere in the Bible. But that's another essay.
3 And that's the saddest
part, and very true. Mindless robots indeed... and yet another essay.
4 Interesting point:
religion—specifically, worshipping of "higher powers"—began many tens of
thousands of years ago when humans evolved to the point where their brains
gave them pause to study things they didn't understand. Unlike a dumb
animal that may look at something and run from it, or simply accept it and
not care either way, humans wanted to understand things better. Being unable to, they
deified them. The sun is probably the earliest known worship object. Early
humans knew only that the sun gave them warmth and light, made their crops
grow, and so forth. They couldn't explain it, understand it, or begin to
fathom the basic science behind it. But they worshipped it—because it was
something they didn't understand and, they believed, must be a higher
power. Today, we're far more advanced, but people still believe in God
whenever they can't explain why a sick father miraculously returns from
certain death, or sobbing prayers to bring a lost cat home appear to be
answered, or a wanted job promotion happens. Funny thing of it is, when the
opposites occur, nobody blames God.
5 Seeing is believing. If
God were so powerful, and if he had no problem proving himself to others
in the past, why make himself completely incognito and not only refuse to
give us proof but apparently go out of his way to hide his existence?
Christians will argue that it's all part of the faith process—that we
simply have to have faith and we'll be rewarded and all of that. The
Christian argument for having faith, regardless of the obstacles and logic
issues with their religion, is a self-fooling device they use in order to
blind themselves from the simple truth: that there is no God. If they
allow themselves to listen to the logic, they won't have the illusion of
God. It would be nice to have an all-knowing, all-loving God who cared for
us and all... it makes people feel better, and takes away that fear of
"What happens when I die?" If they continue lying to themselves, it's
easier to accept that their lives will eventually be over and whatever
comes after—if anything!—must be faced in reality, not fantasy.
6 Christianity is marketed
as a tolerant religion in which everyone is loved equally and free will is
the whole point to human existence... yet, as shown in the Bible, when we've
annoyed God, he's destroyed cities and even the entire world. Free will
seems a complete farce, what with all the commandments given us by God in
the Bible. Not just The Big Ten, but orders from above all over the place.
It's more like a Nazi regime than a Supreme Being who loves everyone! We
must behave this way or that way, obey this rule and don't do
such-and-such... it's virtually impossible to become a model worshipper to
God, because there are too many rules and you're left hopping from one
foot to the next trying to figure out what the hell he wants. Meanwhile, you're
forgetting the main point: What the hell happened to free will?
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